Swiggy denies exodus of restaurants amid deep discounting concerns

Amid reports about hundreds of restaurants delisting from Swiggy Dineout, sources said only 20 brands with nearly 400 outlets have delisted from Swiggy’s dining out platform. They said out of 400 food outlets, 250 belong to one of the brands alone.

Industry sources said besides Swiggy these restaurants have deregistered themselves from most of the restaurant discovery platforms including Zomato Pay and EazyDiner, amid discounting concerns. Some of these brands include Smoke House Deli, Social, The Beer Cafe, Mamagoto, and Wow! Momo.

A Swiggy spokesperson said that Swiggy Dineout works with over 15,000 restaurant partners on the platform in over 20 cities and continuously engages with them to improve offerings and make this partnership viable for everyone. 

“Restaurant partners on Swiggy Dineout have complete liberty to decide on how much discount they wish to offer to customers through their listing on the app,” said a Swiggy spokesperson. “Thousands of partners continue to join us each month and list on Swiggy Dineout and only a handful of restaurant partners have expressed their desire to delist from the platform. We continue to engage with restaurant partners and NRAI (National Restaurant Association of India) representatives to revisit their choices.”

Your Story publication earlier reported, quoting from the National Restaurants Association of India (NRAI) sources, that at least 400 brands and more than 900 dining outlets across 13 cities in the country have sent delisting notices to Swiggy in the last two weeks.

NRAI on Thursday didn’t confirm these numbers. 

"The aggregators have been active in the delivery space and we anyway have pre-existing issues with them in that space, which we are actively trying to resolve. The difference now is that with Swiggy owning backing and owning the dine-in programme, the games of engagement are going to change," said Kabir Suri, president, National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI).

“With Swiggy entering the dine-in business, which is the main bread and butter of restaurants, margins are set to be impacted,” added Suri. 

Suri said NRAI is in discussion with players like Swiggy about various factors like charging commissions on converting an existing customer into an online one, converting a full-paying customer to a discount customer, and how that hurts the restaurants. 

In May this year, Swiggy said it has entered into a definitive agreement with Times Internet to acquire Dineout, a leading dining out and restaurant tech platform. According to sources, it was a $120 million deal. Dineout continues to operate as an independent app post the acquisition.

Designed to capitalize on Dineout’s unique assets and leading position in the dining-out space, the acquisition enabled Swiggy to cater to every food occasion. Swiggy doubled down on the synergies with Dineout’s offerings, including dining-out table reservations and events. In time, restaurant partners are also able to reach more customers and grow their business. 

Dineout brought with it an industry-leading network of over 50,000 restaurant partners along with experience and proven technology. Founders Ankit Mehrotra, Nikhil Bakshi, Sahil Jain and Vivek Kapoor joined Swiggy once the acquisition was completed.