Food-delivery platform Swiggy plans to hire 3 lakh people in 18 months. With that the food delivery platform is planning to take its employee strength to 5 lakh. If this follows through then Swiggy will emerge as the third-largest employer in the country.
Co-founder and CEO Sriharsha Majety, at an annual tech conference called Gigabytes said, "If some of our growth estimates continue, it will not be too many years before we can be the third-largest source of employment in the country, behind the Army and Indian Railways."
The Indian Army employs 12.5 lakh people while Indian Railways had over 12 lakh employees at the end of March 2018. So far, IT major TCS with a staff strength of 4.5 lakh employees is the largest private-sector employer. If Swiggy manages to increase its employee strength to 5 lakh, then it will surpass TCS to become the largest private-sector employer.
While these three entities give employee benefits and full-time employment, Swiggy is looking at blue collar jobs and delivery personnel who are paid depending on the work done. The online food-delivery platform has 2.1 lakh monthly active delivery staff and around 8,000 people in corporate gigs. Swiggy considers an employee who logs in once a month to be a delivery partner.
Swiggy's rival Zomato had 2.3 lakh delivery executives in September, while Flipkart has 1 lakh delivery executives. Amazon India did not disclose its executives, as mentioned in a report in Times of India.
Majety also said that they aim to have 100 million customers transacting on the platform 15 times every month over the next 10-15 years.
Swiggy is currently valued at $3.3 billion and operates in around 500 cities in India. The platform witnesses around 500 million orders every year. South Africa's Naspers is its largest investor. The platform is also expanding its cloud kitchen business and plans to open 'pods', where several restaurants use one common kitchen and through which deliveries will be done in 10 minutes.
Also read: RIL Q2 results: Refining, petchem improve margins; Reliance Jio, Reliance Retail emerge as winners
Also read: Corporate income tax cut to help revive investment in India: IMF