Food delivery platform Swiggy has set up a new engineering team in Chennai as it looks to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to build long term capabilities and highly scalable systems that will enhance aspects of the business as well as the consumer experience.
According to a statement from the company, the ten-member team is designed to operate as a startup within Swiggy, ‘with clear ownership over the roadmap and a mandate to innovate’.
The multi-functional team will be led by Pradnya Karbhari, who has joined Swiggy as a Distinguished Engineer and Vice President, Engineering. She is a startup entrepreneur, and a former Google Staff engineer, with a PhD from Georgia Tech.
The team comprising AI, Data Science, Engineering and QA specialists will work in the domain of Location Intelligence by building AI and Big Data systems that will process billions of location pings generated through the orders fulfilled by Swiggy.
These models will provide predictive business insights, help with anomaly detection, correction of missing/ incorrect location data and address normalization, which will directly improve the location guidance that delivery executives receive on-ground.
Based out of Swiggy's Chennai office, the team is also looking to hire Senior Software Development Engineers and Machine Learning Engineers for this Location Intelligence team.
Swiggy has reportedly rented office space in Nungambakkam in Chennai for the same.
This comes as Swiggy has recently expanded its offerings to delivering grocery, dairy and meat. It has also launched Swiggy Genie, an on-demand pick and drop off service.
Swiggy also recently laid off several employees as it looks to downsize its cloud kitchens offering. . According to reports, 500-900 people are expected to be impacted due to this. Swiggy’s cloud kitchen brands include Bowl Company and Homely. According to TechRadar, 50% of Swiggy’s kitchens are likely to be shut, and the ones to be laid off will be low performers.