'Swiggy pays tips to delivery partners on a weekly basis,' shows X user's deep dive

Ever wondered how the tip you pay on Swiggy app to the delivery person reaches them? Apparently, it's not as straightforward as you thought. 

Vivek Raju, who helps founders at Series A/B/C stage "build a compelling investor/sales narrative", said there's a lot more at play when you tip your Swiggy delivery person for the effort it took them to deliver your order on time.

Raju's deep dive on the subject on the X platform (formerly Twitter) was spurred by his conversation with a Swiggy deliver person who claimed to not get the Rs 30 tip that he paid through the app apart from the Rs 36 delivery fee levied by Swiggy. 

He later spoke to an expert on this subject and Swiggy's customer care service to gauge a flurry of reasons why the delivery people don't see the tips after delivering the order.

"- Tips earned are shown to delivery partner only next day. The reason is to allow tip plough back in case customer asks for refund on bad service (assuming tip is already paid at checkout - which is what I did in my case)

- Delivery partners are shown 100% of the tip as earned

- Earnings (and tips) are paid out to delivery partner on a weekly basis. So tips are accumulated till end of weekly cycle and then the cash is paid out.

- What's unclear is if delivery partner gets paid 100% of amount or a TDS is cut before payout. 

"- I am extrapolating here but this means the Rs 36 I saw in the delivery partner's phone is the total earnings for that order without the tip (I may be wrong here)."

Many netizens reacted to this deep dive by Raju with a range of reactions. 

"Guys, to avoid this confusion, please pay them cash while he/she delivers the food. I do this and their (delivery agents) expression is priceless," said one X user while another one hoped the total earning excludes petrol cost. 

"I give cash tips at time of delivery to avoid this confusion I had," said another X user. 

"I can assure you it doesn’t go to the restaurants. Aggregators don’t even share details of how much delivery cost is charged on any order," remarked another X user. 

SotBank-backed Swiggy is eyeing a 2024 stock market listing and has initiated talks with bankers to assess its valuation, after halting the process for months due to weak markets, reported Reuters in August.

Swiggy was valued at $10.7 billion in its last fundraising in 2022 but like many Indian startups put its IPO plans on hold amid a funding crunch and investor concerns about stretched valuations.

After two back-to-back markdowns, investor Invesco last valued Swiggy at around $5.5 billion while Baron Capital pegged its valuation at around $7.3 billion.

The current m-cap of Swiggy's listed peer Zomato is Rs 1.06 lakh crore.

Swiggy is likely to have shortlisted 7 investment banks, including Kotak Mahindra Capital, Citi, as advisors for the mega IPO, Moneycontrol reported last week.