Swiggy has rolled out its university campus initiative ‘Launchpad’ to over 75 universities including NIT Calicut, BITS Pilani, BITS Hyderabad, NIT Surathkal, IIT Roorkee, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Roorkee, among others. This comes as Swiggy announced it expansion to 500 cities, in total.
Swiggy Launchpad is an initiative where Swiggy will appoint a student as a Campus CEO, who will be responsible to set up Swiggy inside the university, guided by mentors from the company. The CEO will also have to enable marketing activations, drive customer engagement, build the brand and meet targets. The Swiggy CEO will be paid a monthly stipend and will also stand a chance to be hired by Swiggy after college. Swiggy plans to launch in over 200 universities by December 2019.
Students who apply will be contacted and will have to appear for a case study challenge after which shortlisted students will be interviewed and one Swiggy CEO per college will be appointed.
This is also ensure that universities have a dedicated food delivery platform.
Swiggy also announced that it extended its operations to 130 more cities, bringing its total presence to 500 cities in India. The newly launched cities include Bagalkot (Karnataka), Hindupur (Andhra Pradesh), Ramanathapuram and Sivakasi (Tamil Nadu), Nagaon, Sawantwadi and Sangamner (Maharashtra), Johrat (Assam), among others.
Swiggy said in a statement that it has gone from launching in one city every two months in early 2018 to launching in four cities a day in the month of September.
Since April 2019, Swiggy also claims to have increased the number of restaurant partners by almost 1.8x to 1.4 lakh restaurants currently. In tier 3 and 4 cities specifically, Swiggy has onboarded over 15,000 restaurants in the last six months.
Commenting on the 500 cities milestone, Vivek Sunder, Chief Operating Officer, Swiggy, said, “Swiggy’s vision is to elevate the quality of life of consumers by offering unparalleled convenience. As we work towards enabling this for a billion Indians, expanding to Tier 3 and 4 cities is a critical step. Our steady expansion in these cities has shown that there is a growing need for quality food, convenience and accessibility in smaller towns. With presence in 500 cities and 75 universities, Swiggy already has the widest reach in the country. We will further expand this to 600 cities and 200 universities by December 2019.”