Swiggy pumps in $700 million to boost its grocery delivery service

In a highly competitive quick commerce segment, online food delivery platform Swiggy will take on rivals like Zomato, Big Basket and Zepto by pumping in $700 million in Instamart, its express grocery delivery segment.

Swiggy said that its Instamart is now serving customers across 18 cities and doing over 1 million orders per week.

The food-delivery major also said that its Instamart vertical has onboarded more than one seller-run dark store every day. By January 2022, it will make deliveries in 15 minutes by having the network of dark stores very close to the majority of its customers.

"At our current growth trajectory, Instamart is set to reach an annualised GMV run rate of $1 billion in the next three quarters. With our food delivery business trending at $3 billion annualised GMV run rate, and Instamart's super-charged growth, we're very excited about our convenience mission coming to life in a very big way," Sriharsha Majety, CEO, Swiggy said.

Currently Swiggy's Instamart service offers an assortment of products across categories like fresh fruits and vegetables, daily bread and eggs, cooking essentials, beverages, instant food and munchies, personal and baby care, home and cleaning, etc. The platform is available in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Coimbatore, Chandigarh, Delhi, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kolkata, Kochi, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Mumbai, Noida, Pune and Vizag from 7 am to 1 am.

In July this year, Swiggy raised $1.25 billion (Rs 9,375 crore) in a Series J round led by Sofbank's Vision Fund 2 and one of its long-term investors, Prosus Ventures. The announcement came on the heels of its rival Zomato closing its Rs 9,375 crore, IPO at an $8.7 billion valuation, which was highly oversubscribed by both the retail and institutional investors. Swiggy's valuation, in comparison, then stood at $5.5 billion.

Zomato -- which has recently bought a 10 per cent stake in the online grocery delivery platform Grofers -- has laid out is ambitions of entering into the quick grocery delivery segment by leveraging the existent network and logistics. Similarly, Zepto, a relatively new entrant in the field, as per sources, may close in a new funds-raise at half a billion-dollar valuation, with investors' interest spiking in the segment.

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