Swiggy Story – How Swiggy Started | Business Model Of Swiggy

Swiggy is India’s largest online food item ordering & delivery chain, and it also tops the chart of India’s Unicorn startup lists. It’s a Bangalore-based food delivery startup started in 2014, and as of now, it’s expanded to more than 685 Indian cities.

Swiggy makes food ordering and delivery simple and fast for millions of people. With over 100 million app installs and partnerships with 2 lakh restaurants, it connects food lovers with a variety of local eateries and delivers their favourite meals in just 30 minutes.

It also offers a reliable pick-and-drop service for those quick errands. It’s a platform that not only brings delicious meals to your table but also provides delivery partners with a great way to earn by meeting customer needs.

Swiggy Company Overview

Point	Overview
Company Name	Swiggy
Founded	2014
Founders	Sriharsha Majety, Nandan Reddy & Rahul Jaimini
Headquarters	Bengaluru, India
Industry	Food Delivery & Quick Commerce
Coverage	685+ Indian cities
App Users	100M+ installs
Restaurant Partners	2 lakh+
Key Services	Food Delivery, Instamart, Dineout, Swiggy Scenes, Genie
Business Model	Dual model — Customers & Restaurant Partners
Revenue Sources	Commissions, Delivery Fees, Ads, Membership, Instamart
Valuation (2024)	$11.3 Billion
Current Status	Public company (IPO launched Nov 2024)

How Swiggy Started: History Of Swiggy

Swiggy came into existence in 2014 when two BITS Pilani graduates, Sriharsha Majety and Nandan Reddy, came up with the concept of ‘Hyper-local food delivery’. They got acquainted with Rahul Jaimini, who rejuvenated this vision with a principal site.

In August 2014, Swiggy started activities by joining a couple of eateries in the city of Koramangala in Bengaluru. Following that, they started conveying food to their customers in just 40 minutes.

Soon after this, in May 2015, Swiggy raised its initial funding round and came up with the mobile app. Through this innovative app, one can get delicious and fresh food right to their doorstep, save time and make it comfortable to deliver their favourite food. 

Now, Swiggy is getting almost 5 Million traffic per month organically with more than 6.5 thousand backlinks. (As per Ahrefs.com)

Here is the organic traffic growth chart of Swiggy since January 2017.

Services offered by Swiggy

As the online food ordering and delivery giants, they are now growing more digitally by launching various platforms and increasing their services because of conditions like “ when you don’t want to go out to the restaurant, then they bring the restaurant to you.

Swiggy has multiple offerings and services for its clients. It launched a platform for partners known as ‘Swiggy Partners’, designed specifically for its restaurant partners. The platform makes it easier for restaurants to manage orders by streamlining the entire process—from receiving an order to preparing it and ensuring it gets delivered.

In 2020, Swiggy launched Instamart for quick grocery and household item delivery in 10–15 minutes. Like Blinkit and Zepto, it focuses on high-margin products to boost profits.

In between, Swiggy introduced “Handpicked” (earlier called InsanelyGood) for premium groceries, offering curated items from local and regional brands, now fully integrated with Instamart.

In 2022, it launched Swiggy Dineout, which simplifies dining out by helping users discover restaurants, view menus, book tables, avail discounts, and make digital payments—all through a single platform.

And recently, in December 2024, Swiggy introduced Swiggy Scenes. A new feature inside the Swiggy app where you can easily find and book parties, DJ nights, live music, and other cool events hosted by partner restaurants.

It’s basically Swiggy’s version of Zomato’s District. And is designed for urban users who are always looking for premium dining and entertainment options.

For now, Scenes are available in Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Delhi NCR, and more cities will be added soon.

Swiggy Funding Rounds

Swiggy has raised a total funding of $3.62B over 18 rounds.

Date of Funding	Funding Amount	Round	Investors
6 Feb, 2015	$2M	Series A	Accel and Elevation Capital
5 June, 2015	$16.5M	Series B	Norwest Venture Partners, Accel, Elevation Capital, DST Global
31 Dec, 2015	$35M	Series C	Harmony Partners, RB Investments, Accel, Norwest Venture Partners, DST Global, Elevation Capital
22 April, 2016	$7M	Series C	Norwest Venture Partners, Accel, DST Global
16 Sept, 2016	$15M	Series D	Bessemer Venture Partners and Harmony Partners
9 Jan, 2017	$5M	Venture debt
29 May, 2017	$80M	Series E	Prosus and Naspers, Accel, Bessemer Venture Partners, Harmony Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Elevation Capital
16 Jan, 2018	$101M	Series F	Prosus and Naspers
20 June, 2018	$210M	Series G	DST Global, Prosus & Naspers
19 Dec, 2018	$1B	Series H	Naspers, Tencent, DST Global, Hillhouse, Wellington, Meituan, Coatue
19 Feb, 2020	$113M	Series I	Prosus and Naspers, Wellington, Meituan
3 April, 2020	$43M	Series I	Tencent, Naspers, ARK Impact Asset Management, Mirae Asset Capital Markets, Samsung Venture Investment, Korea Investment Partners
5 April, 2021	$1.25B	Series J	Prosus, SoftBank Vision Fund, and other investors
24 Jan, 2022	$700M	Series K	Invesco Mutual Fund, and other investors
29 Aug, 2023	$46.4M	Series K	P R Venketrama Raja, The Ramco Cements and other investors
28 Aug, 2024	Undisclosed	Series K
October, 2024	$83.5K	Series K	Leaders for India Organization

Swiggy Business Model

Swiggy operates on a dual business model. It serves both customers and restaurant partners. For customers, it provides a platform where they can browse through a wide range of restaurants, place their orders, and have their food delivered in 30-35 minutes.

On the partner side, Swiggy collaborates with restaurants to help them expand their reach by helping them get more orders from customers using their Swiggy app. Thus, boosting their revenue.

Revenue Model of Swiggy: How Swiggy Makes Money?

Swiggy is growing its business at a rapid scale, and the revenue generation model of the company is simultaneously expanding.

1. Commissions

Swiggy acquires a major part of the revenue stream from commissions. It collects commissions from restaurants to generate sales leads and to deliver their food items through Swiggy’s application. Restaurants have to pay 15% to 25% on every order placed from Swiggy’s site.

2. Delivery Charges

The other main sort of income stream Swiggy acquired is from its customers. Swiggy doesn’t have a minimum order limit and delivers food even for less than ₹100. This works in its favour as it charges delivery fees on such small orders.

The company collects delivery charges from customers for orders that cost less than their minimum order of Rs. 250. A charge of 20 to 40 rupees is charged per order.

Sometimes in case of high demand, rain, special occasions or midnight deliveries, Swiggy increases its delivery charges. This is often referred to as surge pricing. 

3. Advertisement

Swiggy also earns advertising income in different ways. It displays ads for different restaurants and charges them for banner ads, regional promotions, and priority placement in search results.

These promotions help restaurants boost their visibility and attract more customers, with pricing varying based on the region and the level of exposure desired.

Also, some restaurants and cafes pay premium rates to Swiggy to get prioritised on the app from the list of accessible local eateries.

Swiggy also earns revenue by partnering with top financial institutions like American Express, Citibank, ICICI Bank, and HSBC. Here, customers get special credit card offers and rewards, while Swiggy earns revenue through these collaborations.

Other Income Sources

1. Swiggy Instamart (Quick Commerce)

Swiggy Instamart is a quick commerce platform operating in 75+ cities, delivering groceries and household essentials in 10–15 minutes. It offers products across 35+ categories, including dairy, snacks, fresh produce, personal care, and more.

To ensure fast delivery, Swiggy Instamart uses a network of dark stores (small warehouses) located near residential areas. It also partners up with local vendors and suppliers to expand its product range and speed up deliveries.

2. Swiggy One Membership

Swiggy Super was upgraded to Swiggy One in 2021, introducing a single membership that packs unlimited perks across restaurants, Instamart, and Genie orders on Swiggy.

Here’s what Swiggy One members can enjoy:

• Enjoy unlimited free deliveries at all restaurants (up to 7km)
• Save up to 30% on orders from popular restaurants
• Get free delivery on orders above ₹199 in Swiggy Instamart.
• Exclusive pre-book offers on Swiggy Dineout (Up To 50% Off on top restaurants)
• No surge fee.

The platform goes beyond just food and groceries, offering exciting deals across other platforms, free flight cancellations, seat selection, and meal options with Travel yatra, a flat 30% discount on movie tickets in Cinepolis, and offers on subscriptions to Amazon Prime, Disney+ Hotstar, and Sony LIV.

It also launched Swiggy One Lite, an affordable version of Swiggy One. While Swiggy One offers unlimited free deliveries on food orders within 7 km and grocery orders over ₹149 for ₹1199 (3 months), Swiggy One Lite provides free delivery on up to 10 food orders and 10 grocery orders over ₹99.

Swiggy Partnerships

1)- Swiggy joined hands with the fastest-growing fast-food outlets, Burger King, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Goli Vada Pav, Cafe Coffee Day and many more to provide seamless delivery services.

2)- It has also collaborated with Google Local Guide to encourage client reviews and with Sodexo to empower clients to pay through metal cards.

3)- It teamed up with Indifi Technologies to encourage a financing program for restaurant partners.

4)- Swiggy launched its own payment wallet ‘Swiggy Money’ in partnership with ICICI bank. The customers who don’t possess a bank account with ICICI can also avail the benefits of these services.

5)- It also partnered up with IRCTC to deliver food at stations across India. It has also partnered with Park+ to deliver FASTags to customers’ doorsteps. 

6)- Additionally, it has joined forces with Gogoro to provide smart scooters to its delivery partners.

Swiggy Competitors

Swiggy’s major competitors in the food delivery and quick commerce include:

• Zomato
• Uber Eats
• Big Basket
• Zepto
• Blinkit

Acquisitions by Swiggy

1)- In 2018, Swiggy bought Scootsy Logistics, a high-end food and essentials delivery service based in Mumbai. They merged Scootsy into Swiggy by 2020, and in 2022, Scootsy started selling its own products on Swiggy Instamart.

2)- In September 2018, Swiggy acquired SuprDaily, a milk delivery startup from Mumbai. In 2023, SuprDaily was rebranded as InsanelyGood and turned into a grocery delivery service (which is now merged with Swiggy Instamart).

3)- Swiggy also acquired Kint.io, an AI startup, on 4 February 2019.

4)- In 2022, Swiggy acquired Dineout, a dining and table reservation platform, in an all-stock deal worth $120 million.

5)- In 2023, Swiggy bought LYNK Logistics, a retail distribution company, from the Ramco Group.

Swiggy also made two investments in Fingerlix with a total amount of $143 million.

More about Swiggy

In April 2024, Swiggy became a public limited company and secretly filed for an IPO. In November 2024, Swiggy launched its IPO at ₹390 per share, valuing the company at $11.3 billion.

Swiggy – FAQs

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