History Of Swiggy

In this article we are going to see about History of Swiggy... 

Every entrepreneur’s journey is different from their share of highs and lows, but what binds each one of them is the passion to commit and the ‘never-say-no’ attitude. We at Accel are proud to have associated with such go-getters, whose journeys are motivating life lessons for many new and upcoming entrepreneurs. Here, we share one such inspirational founder’s story. Nandan Reddy (29) and Sriharsha Majety (31) both alumni of Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilaniare second-time lucky entrepreneurs. Back in the year 2014, they worked together on their first startup venture, Bundl,a logistics aggregator that connected small and medium companies to courier service providers. The business started off fine. However, after almost a year into it, they realized their focus needed to change from the courier service field to the food industry.

In the year of working with like-minded people. Nandan and Sriharsha realized there was a strong need for an online hyperlocal logistics company in the restaurant industry. By 14 August, the duo made their dream into a reality by rolling out Swiggy, the country’s first online food ordering platform. They roped in Rahul Janimini, an IIT Kharagpur alumni, to do coding work for the platform.

Back in 2014, Swiggy was founded in an office space in Koramangala, Bangalore. One neighborhood, six delivery executives and 25 partner restaurants are what Swiggy started off within the beginning, Growing at 25 percent month-on-month, Almost four years into the field, Swiggy now has a major presence in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Kolkata. Not just that, they are partnered with 12,000 restaurants and over 13,000 delivery executives. According to the RoC data filed by the company, the net worth of the company is Rs 3,86,34,590 with a turnover of Rs 7,41,702.

Coming from a background of entrepreneurs, Sriharsha (Harsha) Majety, founder and CEO of Swiggy says, “Entrepreneurship was always in my blood. My father runs a restaurant in Vijayawada and plans to invest in the hospitality sector and my mother is a doctor by profession and has her clinic. She is also planning to start her chain of beauty parlors. Seeing my family members being in charge, and taking control of what they do was an inspiration from early years.” says Harsha.

He also credits his journey to pursuing an Engineering degree at BITS Pilani, where he got an opportunity to meet people from different backgrounds and cultures. “I think those were my formative years. Unlike other colleges, Pilani never forced students with attendance, which gave us a lot of time to pursue our passions. I met a lot of people and dabbled in a lot of passions like quizzing, photography, and travel.

Being a travel buff, Harsha went on a lot of backpacking trips across South-East Asia and Europe. His traveling pursuits taught him a lesson or two about the world, which has also helped in his entrepreneurial journey.

In one of his backpacking trips, Harsha realized how to tackle failures and unpreparedness with calmness and patience. “I went on a bicycle trip across Portugal and was not at all prepared for the weather conditions. I was exhausted, stranded and on the verge of giving up on the trip. I was helped by my holiday host, who took me in and helped instill the confidence to continue the journey. I was under a lot of pressure and he just told me that if I can’t cycle uphill then I should hitch a ride uphill, and cycle only downhill. Which made a lot of sense then. He also made me understand that it was okay to pause and take a break and think about the long-term goal and not short-term failures.”

These incidents have shaped Harsha, and even today he thinks that the issues of short-term can be resolved by not trying to put too much pressure and thinking about the long-term goals. “I think I have tried to apply the Zen approach in life to the extent possible and this has been immensely helpful in gaining some composure. That whole trip was about three months of cycling which was about 4,000 km by myself from Portugal to Turkey.”

According to Harsha, one personality trait that has shaped him as an entrepreneur is stubbornness.“I was stubborn about doing things that excited me and was ready to commit myself to it”.This is one of the reasons why he chose to give up campus placements and took a one-year gap before joining IIM-Calcutta

For Harsha, the inspiration came from Phanindra Sama, Founder of RedBus. In 2006, when Sama discussed his venture plans of going public, Harsha thought it was a crazy idea. But after returning to India he saw the growth of the RedBus, which instilled the idea of taking the plunge.

He started meeting and discussing ideas with Nandan Reddy (Co-founder, Swiggy) and both saw a huge opportunity in the e-commerce industry with successful platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, e-Bay and more. One thing both were sure of was doing a business that is a mix of technology jobs as well as offline jobs.

“We thought that we will find that competitive advantage by being not just a pure software company or not just a pure offline company,” adds Harsha, They realized saw potential in the unorganized logistics and shipping sector within the e-commerce industry, and thus was born their first venture, Bundle, in August 2013.

From the time of its inception, this online platform has raised large sums of money which more than proves Swiggy’s worth as a food ordering platform. Starting from discovery through visual menus, massive reduction in delivery time and no minimum order, Swiggy has become the highest used online platform. With over 12,000 restaurants in their roster, industry best average delivery time of 37 minutes and reduced overhead costs, Swiggy has positioned itself at the top of this field. To make sure they are here for the long run, Swiggy has launched a host of exciting features like Swiggy Pop, Swiggy Access and Swiggy Schedule. With constant developments in their technology, Swiggy has made sure it has secured the number one position in the country concerning the online food ordering food.

Swiggy Success Story

What do you do when you don’t feel like eating the “sabzi” your mom made? What do you do when you don’t feel like eating your mess food? We all just ‘Swiggy’ it, right? Although there is quite a few food delivery applications readily available to us now, the scenario wasn’t the same even a few years back. But, how did Swiggy come into existence? How did it become synonymous to food ordering?

BITS-Pilani alumni Sriharsha Majety and Nandan Reddy were always passionate about kick-starting their own start-up. Finally, in 2013, they came up with a technology product called Bundl to connect courier companies across India. But, unfortunately, it wasn’t off to a great start and the duo had to shut shop very soon. It was after their courier tech fiasco that the duo understood they needed to venture into something more needed by the common public. That’s when they had the idea of the food-delivery business. Since none of them were good with the coding part, they roped in Rahul Jaimini, an IIT Kharagpur graduate.

In 2014, the start-up kicked off with six delivery executives and 25 restaurants on there in the upscale neighborhood of Bengaluru called Koramangala. Within a year, Swiggy expanded to 11 localities in Bengaluru and also opened the business in Gurgaon and Delhi. As their business expanded, the founders started putting more innovative thoughts into their model. They hired more delivery executives, partnered up with 300 restaurants within their functional area, and added more user-friendly features to the application. The same year Swiggy received its first funding of $2million from Accel and SAIF Partners and broadened its horizon to the other five big cities- Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, and Chennai.

As good as 2015 was in respect of the funding boom, it slowly died away the following year in 2016. But, Swiggy was on its own victory high. Singapore-based RB Investments and New York-based Harmony Partners invested a lump sum amount of $35 million in Swiggy. While other similar platforms struggled to keep up with the fast-growing pace of Swiggy, it kept on adding new features and extending. A new component called Swiggy express was launched along with the introduction of surge pricing in case of excessive rain, festivals, or national holidays.

With services like the Bowl Company, delivery till 2 a.m, and lucrative discounts, Swiggy was a huge hit among millennials. Students or young professionals no longer had to cry or grump about food. In 2018, Swiggy entered the prestigious club of Unicorns (start-ups valued at over 1 million). Today, Swiggy holds a record of 5 million monthly orders.

Although, Swiggy has not really been left out from its share of controversies and crisis, but it has made its mark in the start-up industry and how! With features like Swiggy Pop (orders of Rs.99-200 from local restaurants without any extra charges), Swiggy scheduled (one can schedule their order according to their time), Swiggy Super (a monthly subscription pack) and so much more Swiggy is here to stay.