Swiggy needs to reclaim its past glory

The Swiggy of 2024 is a shadow of its former self. 

Boxed in by younger, nimbler and hungrier competitors from all sides, it has been defending itself for so long that it seems to have forgotten how to play offense. 

It wasn’t always like this. Swiggy used to define innovation, product chops and “Bengaluru cool”. 

In many ways, it pioneered food delivery in 2014 after pivoting from a courier service.

Zomato, originally a restaurant discovery company, got into food delivery a year after Swiggy. It may have started as a late follower, but today, Zomato’s market share in the food delivery space is estimated at 56-57% by Goldman Sachs, with Swiggy in second place.

Then there’s quick commerce. In 2020, Swiggy was the first to launch a quick commerce grocery business, which we now know as Instamart. Zomato, meanwhile, bought Blinkit and rapidly integrated and scaled it across India. Once again, it would go on to beat Swiggy in market share. Blinkit is estimated to have a 46% market share, followed by Swiggy at number 2. 

Underpinning all of Swiggy’s business were its apps and products, long considered the gold standard of user experience and design. They were slick, intuitive, fast, and fun. 

But Swiggy’s apps today are a haphazard and constantly changing collection of sub-products, menu items, offers and distinct sections. 

How did it come to this?

This week on Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan discuss Swiggy with Arnav Gupta, the Director of Engineering at Jio Cinema, and Deepak Shenoy – the co-founder and CEO of Capitalmind*. 

Arnav, who used to lead product and engineering for Zomato's consumer apps, explains how product and teams work within a food delivery company. Deepak runs a company handling 2000 crores worth of investments and is a great expert on how the public markets work. He breaks down exactly what the market wants and needs from Swiggy, and what it needs to do to succeed once it goes public.

Additional Reading:

Swiggy is at the mercy of Zomato for its IPO

Swiggy and Timidity 

1,500 stories about India’s complex relationships with Swiggy Instamart, Blinkit, Zepto, and Bigbasket

* Both Rohin and Praveen are investors with Capitalmind.

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This episode of Two by Two was produced by Anushka Mukherjee. Hari Krishna is our lead writer and researcher and our resident sound engineer Rajiv C N is our audio producer.

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