After a decade of a slow and steady journey culminating in an IPO, Swiggy is now betting big on sundry avatars of quick commerce—Instamart, Bolt, and Café—to make a quick killing. Can the 10-minute food and grocery delivery gambit help it take pole position?
Team Swiggy (from left): Phani Kishan Addepalli, co-founder; Sriharsha Majety, co-founder and group CEO; Girish Menon, head of HR
Image: Selvaprakash Lakshmanan for Forbes India
The ETA (estimated time of arrival) was March 2020. The karmic delivery was running late—six years after Sriharsha Majety co-founded his second startup in 2014—but when it eventually showed up, it was swift and almost gutted the founder. To make matters worse, the timing was cruel.
For Swiggy, 2019 was a year of heightened investment. “The company was in a high cash burn phase,” recalls Majety, alluding to heavy investments made in cloud kitchens—billed as the next ‘big’ thing in the foodtech world. The startup was also making promising bets on Swiggy Stores—hyperlocal delivery marketplaces which went beyond food—and a slew of other food-related initiatives. The results, as expected, took a toll on the bottom line. Losses ballooned alarmingly: From ₹385 crore in FY18 to ₹2,345.6 crore in FY19, according to Entrackr, a media venture tracking startups and internet economy in India. Revenue, too, jumped during the same period, but paled when contrasted with the losses: From ₹417 crore to ₹1,121.7 crore.
The timing indeed was brutal. Even as Majety was doing his bit to mow the burn towards the fag end of 2019, a raging pandemic snuffed out all hopes of any funding after the first quarter of 2020. Things soon quickly spiralled out of control. “Just three months after our wild investment calendar ended, the pandemic arrived,” recounts Majety. Though Covid was unforgiving for most of the businesses, for the ones in food delivery, it was the unkindest. Swiggy’s business plunged by 90 percent, its funding runway was pegged to last roughly between six and nine months, and the co-founder was compelled to do something that he had never done in his entrepreneurial journey: Go for layoffs.
(This story appears in the 24 January, 2025 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)