Moving beyond being just a food delivery service, Swiggy is reportedly looking at diversifying into new categories in a bid to boost volume on its platform. According to a report in Economic Times, the FoodTech major is looking at launching a new service ‘Dash’ that would deliver medicines and hyperlocal groceries.
Swiggy is reportedly looking at several categories but might do a pilot in the next few months, starting with medicines, then moving on to groceries and other categories.
The idea is to optimize costs and utilization of its 30,000+-strong workforce in hours when order volumes are low. This would be in late in the afternoon or before dinner time.
Interestingly, news on its diversification plans comes at a time when Swiggy is looking to raise funds and is reportedly in talks with DST Global, Coatue Management to raise over $200 million. ET reports that this funding round could see Swiggy joining the unicorn club.
The FoodTech market too, overall, has been seeing immense traction and investor interest. Swiggy’s biggest rival Zomato recently raised $150 million from Alibaba’s Ant Financial and is reportedly now looking to raise between $200 million and $400 million.
Swiggy too, raised $100 million from existing investor Naspers and Meituan-Dianping in the same month as Zomato.
Its most recent investor Meituan-Dianping, which offers a host of delivery services such as ordering meals, groceries, haircuts, salon services and more, could possibly be behind Swiggy’s new diversification plans.
At the same time, Ola, which recently acquired Foodpanda, is also reportedly looking to raise funds for its food delivery arm. There were also reports that Ola was in talks to acquire FreshMenu to boost its foodtech business.
When contacted, Swiggy didn’t deny the development but said, “At Swiggy, we’re continuously experimenting with ways in which we can enrich the lives of our consumers and partners by making it more convenient and hassle-free,” in a statement.
Swiggy is currently the market leader in India’s online-food delivery space and sees an order volume of nearly seven million orders a month. ET reports that Zomato claims to have crossed the 5.5-million order mark across both India and the UAE markets