The winner of ET Startup of the Year Award, Swiggy, which is touted to have revolutionised the food delivery space in India, finds itself in a controversy. In the latest 'revelation' in a Tumblr blog, claiming to have been written by a few employees and ex-employees, the whole growth story of Swiggy is projected to be a farce. The company has however refuted these allegations, but is silent on who they think is behind the blog.
A Tumblr post says it was written by four Swiggy employees – current and past – and alleges mismanagement at Swiggy, detailing how the startup is cheating its restaurant partners, customers and investors.
Cheating restaurant owners
According to the post, restaurant owners are being taken for a ride.
“We are made to lie about our market share, as well as our order volumes to restaurant owners. The worst part is that instead of helping these restaurants grow their business, we are trained to arm-twist them to increase our commissions every couple of months. Some restaurants are paying us more than their net margins because Swiggy, in some areas in Hyderabad and Bangalore, has been able to become a significant portion of their revenues,” the post says.
Swiggy has allegedly increased its commission from 5% earlier to nearly 25% now. It now wants to increase this to 30% in the future, which according to the post, will eat into the business of the restaurants.
(Image posted in the Blog)
Cheating users
The blog also allege that all the good reviews for Swiggy are planted by the company or are paid for.
“On social media, genuine reviews (which are usually bad) get immediately removed and buried since they are mostly negative. Instead of working on customer support, we hide customer reviews on social media. Instead of offering customers redressal, we hide behind TnCs and clauses to protect ourselves,” the post claims.
Cheating investors
Investors too, are allegedly lied to, in terms of the order volumes shown. A presentation made when it last raised funds showed inflated order volumes, the post says.
“Our January 2017 order volumes were less than December 2016 volumes. Yes, we had a decline of order volumes in January. But we have seen the investor presentations, and they have shaved off the December numbers in the slides in order to show a linear growth curve across all months of our existence.”
The post speaks of a culture in Swiggy, where ‘the management will do anything and everything to move ahead in life’.
As against what is reported to investors and represented in the media, the sales team employees say that the unit economics is bad and the unit economics presented to investors and the team do not contain all the costs that should be a part of the story. All the money it is losing is kept in the dark, they allege.
Numbers reported in the media too, they say, are all inflated and do not reflect what actually is happening at Swiggy.
Cheating employees
According to them, equity and bonuses that were initially promised are never paid. There is a lot of employee dissatisfaction prevailing in the company and even the hiring done last year was a cover up intended to misguide the media and to conceal the number of people actually leaving the organisation.
Several employees who were fired, have allegedly not been paid their final settlements or bonuses.
Questionable company culture
The post alleges that the senior management is always plotting against each other. It is claimed that former VP Gunjan Shah, was fired because he disagreed with the management on several issues.
“Feedback is never welcome here. Office politics is the only way to grow. It’s a pity that with all the money in the bank, the company culture is in a major flux,” the post says.
Delivery boys too, are apparently treated badly. Incentive structures are changed every now and then and their monthly payouts are reportedly dwindling.
The post says that there is no background check done for delivery boys and nobody takes accountability for them.
“There are unions brewing inside Swiggy’s delivery fleet and there’s a lot of trouble coming — all for genuine reasons. If someone meets an accident, Swiggy doesn’t take any liability for it. Why? Because they are freelancers,” the post says.
When contacted, Swiggy claims that the blogpost is aimed at maligning the reputation of Swiggy as an organisation.
“The article carries inaccurate facts regarding business and order numbers. It not only references employee departures from a year and a half back, but also presents details on our partners out of context and with mischievous intent. Swiggy has grown over the last few years on the back of strong support from our restaurant partners, employees, delivery executives, consumers and investors. Our restaurant partners are at the heart of our success – our joint vision of providing a complete food ordering and delivery solution from the best neighbourhood restaurants inspire us. Our employees are the keepers of our soul – as a start-up organization, we take pride in the culture of mutual respect and common purpose that has helped us grow thus far. We are committed to winning together with all our stakeholders who we have always engaged with, in complete transparency and integrity,” Swiggy said in its statement.