Swiggy to foray into e-commerce with the launch of Minis — a marketplace for local stores

• Swiggy is reportedly working on an e-commerce platform dubbed as Minis.
• Minis will allow local retailers and direct-to-consumer brands to sell their products.
• The company plans to initially onboard electronic and fashion retailers.

Food delivery platform Swiggy is looking to expand its services and enter the e-commerce segment with the launch of Minis, a marketplace for local stores. The company had recently shutdown Supr Daily operations in six cities.

According to an Economic Times report, Swiggy is testing a marketplace model to onboard local stores and direct-to-consumer brands. According to sources familiar with the matter, the company has already started testing the pilot dubbed as Minis.

“We’re currently piloting a platform named Minis on Swiggy that enables D2C brands, small businesses and individual entrepreneurs to showcase their offerings directly to lakhs of customers,” Swiggy said in a statement to ET.

This hints that Minis will be a part of Swiggy, like Instamart and will not be launched as a separate platform.

In addition to food deliveries, Swiggy already offers groceries as part of its Instamart service. The company is now looking to offer other products such as electronics, fashion apparels and more.

“The idea right now is to onboard local electronics and fashion retailers onto the Swiggy platform,” a source familiar with the matter said.

Orders to be fulfilled by merchants

Unlike food and groceries, Swiggy will not use its delivery fleet to fulfill the orders. Instead, the merchant will be tasked with fulfilling the orders received by them.

However, this may change once the platform is commercially rolled out and the number of orders increases significantly.

National marketplace

The Minis platform will be designed as a national marketplace and is not a hyperlocal play like Instamart.

“This is not a hyperlocal play. They are building it as a national marketplace looking to enter the e-commerce business now. They are onboarding electronics merchants, too,” a source told ET.

It will be interesting to see how the platform shapes up. It will face stiff competition from existing players like Amazon and Flipkart that already dominate the e-commerce market in India.

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