Will have 2-3 other promising businesses beyond 2021: Swiggy's Vivek Sunder

Like several other sectors, restaurants have been badly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. This also impacted the online food delivery firms, especially during the lockdown period. In an interview, VIVEK SUNDER, chief operating officer (COO), Swiggy, shares his learning experiences with Bibhu Ranjan Mishra. Edited excerpts:

What has been Swiggy’s experiences in the past 7-8 months?

In late 2019, we had actually completed our round of geographic expansion. We had hit 550 cities and the idea was to leverage the economies of scale. We had also made it clear about our plans to diversify the business and use our reach to try out some thing new. We had also done a small pilot for grocery (delivery) in Gurugram. During lockdown, we felt that we had to go after new businesses. We focused on a few things which were considered essential services and those have been quite successful.

What are the triggers behind launching new businesses?

If you want to take products from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ and you don’t want to go out of your house, we will do it for you. This is a spin-off business. Genie, Instamart or Grocery are part of this. We started delivering groceries, food, and over-the counter medicines. A lot of new businesses were actually germi­nated during the lockdown period.

Did you not foray into some of these segments, even before the lockdown?

We had done some one zone experiment here and there, but definitely not at the scale of launching those across 300 plus cities. We had to ramp up our service during the pandemic. We moved from 0 to 300 cities for our grocery business during the lockdown in less than two weeks. As consumers were at home, we felt that we should deliver their groceries on their doorsteps.

What have been the key learning during the pandemic?

Imagine a company that is starting across six different verticals with not a single employee leaving home and meeting each other. That means, we were trying to start a business that actually require a lot of on-ground operations. So, we have to do all sorts of video training for our grocery partners and delivery fleets. Also, while launching these businesses, we knew that that some of those may not last once unlock happens. But, without getting to be bothered about what’s really going to happen in the future, we went ahead and launched these businesses.

Where does Swiggy stand today as far as various various businesses are concerned?

The Swiggy that you see today in the post-unlock world is a completely different one than what it was before the pandemic. We have meaningful offers in the grocery segment — Genie and Instamart. And, we also have the ‘food delivery’ business which is different from the pre-Covid period. I think, the reason why we were able to do this successfully is because of the manner we looked after our people and businesses during the early phases of the pandemic. We did a lot with the restaurant community which was badly affected just like the airlines and travel industry. We knew that a lot of these restaurants would go out of business. This is a reason why our recovery has been very fast and we feel confident going into 2021.

Will ‘food’ continue to be the dominant business of the new Swiggy that we are talking about?

We have not done a precise forecast, yet. A lot of these businesses are new. Honestly across 2021, and as the food delivery business continues to grow, it will still be the majority business for us. The reasons are, it is a major business for us right now, and it is not stagnant but growing. 

However, it is fair to say that we will have two or three other businesses which are actually looking quite attractive and promising beyond 2021. So, now we have one business which is large and growing, while there are two or three other businesses that are small yet promising. So, we think that we will actually be a much more sustainable and attractive company in 2021 than what we are in 2020 or what we were in 2019.