Costs near Rs 10K crore, Swiggy losses widen 2x to Rs 3.6K crore

Its FY22 results show 2.3x improvement in revenue

Food delivery aggregator Swiggy’s losses widened 2.24 times to Rs 3,628.9 crore during last financial year, as its expenses stood at 227 per cent of the previous year's cost. This was even as the decacorn’s revenue jumped more than twofold to Rs 5,704.9 crore in FY22, according to details from company research platform Tofler. 

While the company’s losses surged from a base of Rs 1,616.9 crore in FY21, its total expense in FY22 touched Rs 9,748.7 crore, from Rs 4,292.8 crore a year ago.

Swiggy, the unlisted key competitor of Zomato, spent 300 per cent more on advertisement and promotional charges and the figure hit Rs 1,848.7 crore in FY22, up from Rs 461 crore in FY21. Outsourcing cost, too, came in at Rs  2,249.7 crore in FY22, against Rs 985.1 core a year ago.

The 124 per cent jump in the revenue from Rs 2,546.9 crore in FY21 was backed by collections from rendering platform services which jumped over 83 per cent to Rs 3,444 crore in FY22 versus Rs 1,879 crore in FY21. There was also nearly fourfold jump in grocery & FMCG product sales, which came in at Rs 2,036 crore. 

The company in its regulatory filings noted that it has a presence in over 550 cities across India. “Swiggy leverages its technology, scale, density of restaurant, delivery network, and learnings from over 1.6 billion delivered orders to continuously improve on-demand food delivery services and develop new offerings to our customers like concierge services and essentials on-demand,” the company stated.

On quick e-commerce, where it competes with Blinkit, Swiggy said that the vertical is growing. “Instamart (currently live in 27 Cities), which allows customers to order groceries and essentials throughout the day in 10-30 minutes with a spread of over 5000 SKUs (stock keeping units) and 500+ leading FMCG and D2C brands, continues to grow within existing cities and expand into newer cities. High availability and very low cancellations/ complaints, while driving economic efficiency to our bottom line, remain at the core of our operations,” said the company.

Swiggy was valued at $10 billion, when it raised $700 million in a funding round led by Invesco in January 2022.

While the company did not share any latest numbers, Prosus, the investment arm of South African multinational Naspers, in its H1FY23 financial update stated that Swiggy’s core restaurant food delivery business’ gross merchandise value (GMV) grew by 40 per cent, while its quick e-commerce GMV increased 15x during the first six months of the year. “Our share of Swiggy’s revenue grew 118 per cent to $150m,” said Prosus in its filing.