Online food delivery platform Swiggy has expanded its Street Food Vendors program to 125 cities under the Prime Minister Street Vendor’s AtmaNibhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) scheme to bring over 36,000 street food vendors onto its platform. This follows a pilot that Swiggy initiated in Ahmedabad, Varanasi, Chennai, Delhi and Indore where it had onboarded over 300 street vendors on its platform.
Swiggy has created a special destination on the app where consumers can discover street food vendors. By updating the Swiggy app, customers in Chennai, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Indore and Varanasi can find “Street Vendor” under the restaurant category. The app homepage also has banners that lead users directly to a range of street vendor listings.
Swiggy will now also list street vendors from Tier-2 & Tier-3 cities such as Visakhapatnam, Indore, Varanasi, Gwalior, Vadodara, Udaipur, Lucknow and Bhilai that are famous for their street food.
Swiggy said in a statement that all vendors are registered with the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) at the time of onboarding. Swiggy says it will then facilitate a Food Safety Training and Certification (FOSTAC) in partnership with FSSAI and their empaneled partners.
After the training and registration, all vendors are required to do a self-audit and demonstrate the standards they abide by. These standards are modelled on the lines of FSSAI’s guidelines to ensure that essential hygienic practices are observed, the food delivery major said.
“Swiggy also understands the changes and challenges that street food vendors had faced in the wake of the pandemic and which had forced many of them to shut shop overnight. In an effort to provide meaningful support to the street food vendors to revive their business and offer much-needed visibility, Swiggy is leveraging its platform and large delivery fleet to bring street food to the doorsteps of customers safely and hygienically,” Swiggy said in a statement.
The SVANidhi Scheme has reportedly received loan applications from 1.47 lakh street food vendors so far. From these, in the first phase alone, Swiggy will onboard 36,000 vendors to whom the loan has been disbursed in 125 cities.
“Even as we go through more stages of Unlock, there has been a long-term change in consumer behaviour regarding continued social distancing and heightened demand for online services like food delivery. As a platform committed to bringing the widest choice of food to the doorsteps of consumers safely and hygienically, we’re delighted to bring them their favourite street food which they have been missing for many months now,” said Vivek Sunder, COO, Swiggy.