Swiggy offers olive branch to new restaurants

Swiggy, India’s largest food delivery platform has over 250,000 partners across India. These partners include small eateries, mid-sized local cuisine restaurants as well as pan-India QSR chains such as McDonalds, Subway, KFC, etc. In an initiative to attract and onboard new restaurant partners, Swiggy Launchpad will offer a one-month free of commission trial, so the restaurant partners see the benefits of incremental sales coming from the online ordering platform.

Rohit Kapoor, CEO of Food Marketplace, Swiggy said, “We are consistently looking at avenues to encourage new food entrepreneurs to experience online food delivery. With 0% commissions for the first one month of their operations, we hope more restaurants, cloud kitchens, and other food entrepreneurs feel confident about online food delivery and take the plunge. We look forward to welcoming many new partners”.

New restaurant partners can avail of several benefits enabling them to control operational costs and drive growth as they get oriented to online food delivery. This not only includes the commission waiver but also support in the form of a dedicated growth manager, free advertisements on the Swiggy app, extended delivery radius, apps to manage business performance and create high-quality menus, as well as data & insights through business intelligence dashboards.

Founded in 2014, Swiggy has become a household name in India, and rose to popularity during the pandemic lockdown when thousands of first time users logged on to the portal and ordered for doorstep delivery. With a surge in number of orders, Swiggy along with its well respected competitor Zomato, started to increase the price of online menu (compared to the ones at the respective restaurants), decreased disccounts while also significantly improving their gross earnings, thanks to higher commission payouts from restaurant partners. Due to a natural churn, restaurants keep deboarding from the platform, at times due to higher commissions, at times due to increased traction at the physical outlets.

The proposed move by Swiggy is a welcome one in many ways. The overall restaurant market size in India is estimated to be USD 40 Bn. Of this, the online delivery market, with all players put together is less than 5%. By offering an opportunity to test waters such as this, Swiggy could be building a much higher pipeline of restaurants at lower cost of acquisition.