Swiggy eyes category larger than food delivery; to change Supr's structure

Food delivery firm Swiggy (Bundl Technologies) said it has decided to change its daily grocery delivery service Supr Daily’s organisational structure to a Business Unit (BU) within Bundl. This will help Supr deal with with the unfair advantages that Swiggy has access to and accelerate its journey.

Over the last 15 months, Swiggy CEO Sriharsha Majety said it has made some exciting progress on its food delivery business. “We’re now comfortably surpassing our pre-covid peak, while also being on the path to overall profitability,” said Majety in a blog post.

While food delivery continues to be the firm’s flagship category, Swiggy also made some great progress in realising its larger vision of elevating the quality of life by delivering unparalleled convenience.

“We’ve done this on the back of strong traction in the grocery delivery business,” said Majety. “This business is 10x the size of the food services industry; I strongly believe that with the right investments and focus, we have the potential to build a category that is larger than our food delivery business.”

Swiggy’s foray into grocery delivery started with the acquisition of Supr Daily in 2018. Over the last three years, the business has grown by leaps and bounds. Supr Daily currently serves about 500,000 customers on a monthly basis and delivers around 200,000 daily orders across six cities. “The category has immense potential and we’ve been thinking through the several structures that best set it up for success in the long term,” said Majety.

With the organisational change, the support functions of human resources, administration, legal, IT and finance from Supr will be integrated into the relevant functions with Swiggy. It would immediately start tapping into the resources and structures available at Swiggy. The company acquired Supr Daily in 2018. Swiggy co-founder Phani Kishan will take over the reins as the CEO of Supr Daily.

“Supr Daily will continue to have dedicated business teams to ensure the necessary focus and nimbleness to achieve their goals,” said Majety. "Moments of change are moments of contemplation and after much reflection, the founding team of Supr Daily comprising Puneet (Kumar), Shreyas (Nagdawane) and Rohit (Jain) have decided to pursue new interests outside of Swiggy. I thank them for their contributions in helping Supr scale to where it is today and for building an amazing team,” he said.

Swiggy co-founder Phani Kishan will now be working full-time with the Supr Daily team to hit the firm’s ambitious goals. But Kishan’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.

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.