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Swiggy, India’s leading food delivery startup, said Friday it has started to deliver meals in 10 minutes across parts of major cities, intensifying the quick commerce race in the world’s second-largest internet market.
The Bengaluru-headuartered startup, which is targeting to go public in about a month, said it has partnered with more than 2,700 restaurants, including global chains KFC, McDonald’s, and Starbucks to deliver meals to customers within 10 minutes.
The service, called Bolt, focuses on quick-to-prepare items and operates within a 2-kilometer radius of customers. Swiggy’s head of food delivery Rohit Kapoor said the service aims to reduce wait times for frequently ordered items like coffee, burgers, and biryani.
“Ten years ago, Swiggy revolutionized food delivery by cutting average wait times to 30 minutes. Now, we’re reducing that wait even further for frequently ordered items,” he said in a statement.
Bolt is live in key locations across Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, New Delhi, Mumbai, and Pune, said Swiggy, which competes with publicly-listed Zomato.
The launch intensifies competition in India’s fast-growing quick commerce market, which has grown by more than 100% in a year. Zomato’s BlinkIt, Instamart (Swiggy’s quick commerce offering), StepStone-backed Zepto, and Tata-owned BigBasket are changing the way millions of Indians shop, training consumers to expect instant gratification for an ever-expanding range of products.
Some analysts say that quick commerce players are beginning to eat away business from e-commerce giants. Flipkart recently launched its own quick commerce offering.
Swiggy, which delivers to millions of customers monthly across 600 cities, said its delivery partners would not face penalties or receive incentives based on the timing of Bolt orders, as they aren’t being informed of the distinction between Bolt and regular orders.
Manish Singh is a senior reporter at TechCrunch, covering India’s startup scene and venture capital investments. He also reports on global tech firms’ India play. Before joining TechCrunch in 2019, Singh wrote for about a dozen publications, including CNBC and VentureBeat. He graduated in Computer Science and Engineering in 2015. He is reachable on manish(at)techcrunch(dot)com.
