Swiggy launches Swiggy Serves; aims to distribute 50 million meals by 2030

Swiggy kickstarted partnership with a few restaurant partners such as Dana Choga Restaurants, Biryani by Kilo, Dosa Anna, Charcoal Eats, Urban Tandoor, and Foodies Cart, amongst others

Food aggregator platform Swiggy has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Robin Hood Army, an NGO focused on fighting hunger through surplus food distribution. The partnership aims to tackle food wastage and hunger, with a goal to distribute 50 million meals by 2030.

 

At the launch event, Rohit Kapoor, chief executive officer of Food Marketplace, Swiggy, said, "Swiggy Serves is a small initiative, to begin with, but we expect it to create a larger impact. The restaurant partners were themselves excited to jump on board and join the initiative. The mandate of the programme will increase in the future as we forge more partnerships."

 

 

Out of all restaurants operating in the country, Swiggy has partnered with over 80 per cent of them, Kapoor added.

 

With plans for expansion, Swiggy has kickstarted the partnership with a few restaurant partners such as Dana Choga Restaurants, Biryani by Kilo, Dosa Anna, Charcoal Eats, Urban Tandoor, and Foodies Cart, amongst others.

 

Neel Ghose, co-founder of Robin Hood Army, said, “This is one of our biggest partnerships. We are a zero-fund, volunteer-driven organisation and we have distributed nearly 153 million meals to date. With Swiggy's partnership, we can create impact and touch upon more lives.” 

 

Ghose added that while the MoU was signed on Thursday, the Swiggy Serves programme kickstarted in the first week of December 2024. The programme is currently active in 33 cities and has partnered with over 160 restaurants. Under the initiative, nearly 2,000 means have already been distributed.

 

"Initially, we started with 5 cities and added 28 more after the success of the pilot programme. Both Swiggy and Robin Hood Army are confident to scale this initiative in the future," Ghose elaborated. 

 

Commending the partnership with Swiggy, Veer Anukul Chandhok, chief executive officer of Dana Choga Restaurants, said, "With around 80 outlets, one of the major challenges that we face is in terms of predicting the accuracy in demand. There is a margin of error which leaves with food wastage."

 

Mentioning that food waste is a challenge, Kaushik Roy, founder and chief executive officer of Biryani by Kilo, said, "Waste happens at two places, one at the restaurants and at the consumer's end when they overorder sometimes. The partnership will help address the challenge."

 

In October 2024, Swiggy collaborated with the makers of the film Singham Again to deliver 11,000 vada pavs to children from schools supported by the Robin Hood Army, setting a Guinness World Record.

 

Swiggy's rival Zomato had introduced a feature on the application to minimise food wastage in November 2024. The feature, named Food Rescue, shows cancelled orders on the app of nearby users who can purchase them at a discounted price. According to Zomato, around 4 lakh food orders on their way to customers are cancelled every month.

 

Earlier, in 2019, Zomato acquired a non-profit organisation, Feeding India, with a mission to eradicate hunger and malnutrition in India. Under its ‘Daily Feeding Program,' it provides 2 lakh meals per day to underserved individuals across 39 cities, as per its Environmental, Social, and Governance latest report.