Swiggy to invest $700 mn in its express grocery delivery service Instamart

Food delivery giant Swiggy said that it will invest $700 million in its express grocery delivery service Instamart. Launched in Gurugram and Bengaluru in 2020, Swiggy Instamart is now serving customers across 18 cities, and doing over 1 million orders per week.

In the last few months, Swiggy Instatmart has on-boarded more than one seller-run dark store every day. By January 2022, it will make deliveries in 15 minutes by having the network of dark stores very close to the majority of its customers.

“At our current growth trajectory, Instamart is set to reach an annualised GMV (gross merchandise value) run rate of $1 billion in the next three quarters,” said Sriharsha Majety, CEO, Swiggy. “With our food delivery business trending at a $3 billion annualised GMV run rate, and Instamart’s super-charged growth, we’re very excited about our convenience mission coming to life in a very big way.”

The platform offers an assortment of products across categories like fresh fruits and vegetables, daily bread and eggs, cooking essentials, beverages, instant food and munchies, personal and baby care, home and cleaning, specially curated to suit the demand requirements of each location. It is available in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Coimbatore, Chandigarh, Delhi, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kolkata, Kochi, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Mumbai, Noida, Pune and Vizag as early as 7 am and as late as 1 am.

In July this year, Swiggy closed a $1.25-billion fundraise, marking the first investment in the category by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. This took the valuation of the Bengaluru-based startup up by more than 50 per cent to $5.5 billion from $3.6 billion earlier, according to industry sources.

The investment is not only giving enough firepower to Swiggy to counter competition from rivals Zomato, Amazon, Dunzo, but it is also accelerating Swiggy’s multi-year strategy of growing its core food delivery business and building new food and non-food segments. To support this, the company is enhancing its capabilities in technology and AI, and strengthening teams across engineering, product, data science and analytics as well as in business and supply chain for its newer initiatives.

Majety had said that the scope of food delivery in India is massive and over the next few years, and the firm will continue to invest aggressively into growing this category. “Our biggest investments will be in our non-food businesses that have witnessed tremendous consumer love and growth in a short span, especially in the past 15 months of the pandemic,” he had said.

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