Swiggy tightens focus on grocery delivery, as Zomato steps out

• Swiggy has decided to establish Supr Daily as a separate business unit within its parent company Bundl Technologies.
• It had acquired Supr Daily in 2019 from Puneet Kumar, Rohit Jain and Shreyas Nadgawane, who are now exiting the company.
• The Supr Daily entity will be led by Phani Kishan, who was elevated to the position of Swiggy’s co-founder earlier this year.

Grocery deliveries was the obvious next step for Indian food aggregator businesses like Zomato and Swiggy, which have reached a maturity stage. Both the companies have laid special emphasis on this sector since the last one year and have made strides in this segment.

While Zomato has decided to step away from direct competition in the segment for now, Swiggy has made a move in another direction.

The Bengaluru-based startup has decided to establish Supr Daily, daily grocery delivery service of Swiggy, as a separate business unit within its parent company Bundl Technologies Private Limited. It had acquired Supr Daily in 2019 from Puneet Kumar, Rohit Jain and Shreyas Nadgawane, who are now exiting the company.

Swiggy follows a similar model for its other units of food delivery, InstaMart, private brands and more. The company believes that establishing a separate entity would allow the leadership to keep a closer eye on the operations and “unlock its full potential”.

The Supr Daily entity will be led by Phani Kishan, who was elevated to the position of Swiggy’s co-founder earlier this year. He has previously worked as the vice president of strategy and investments at the food aggregation business.

“Phani’s involvement with Supr is not new – as part of the Supr board, he has been working closely with the leadership team on the strategy over the last three years. He’s also been engaged with the team over the last couple of months at an operational level,” Sriharsha Majety, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Swiggy, said in a blog post.

The latest development comes as several media reports have highlighted that Swiggy is in talks to raise $500-600 million from US-based asset manager Invesco and others. This round is expected to mark Swiggy’s entry to the decacorn club.

Decacorn, in the startup parlance, are companies valued above $10 billion.

Swiggy raised $1.25 billion funding in July 2021, only a few days after Zomato closed its $1.3 billion initial public offering (IPO). The Bengaluru-based private company’s round was led by SoftBank and Prosus (formerly known as Naspers).

The company, while announcing the funding round, had mentioned that it will use the capital to double down on its core business, make acquisitions and invest in its grocery delivery business Instamart.

Zomato had entered the grocery delivery segment last year during the pandemic in order to meet the rising demand for online groceries. The company stepped out of the segment earlier this year, saying that its entry into the groceries vertical last year was just to meet the dean and it will relaunch the operations soon.

The company later also invested $100 million in groceries delivery company Grofers to aid this plan. However, it recently decided to drop the plan of entering the groceries vertical.

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