Swiggy will now deliver home essentials, along with restaurant food

Swiggy, an online food delivering service on Tuesday announced that it would be expanding its business and is now going to deliver home essentials as well. Earlier it had tied up with restaurants only to deliver food and beverages.Now it has tied up with stores to deliver groceries, fruits, vegetables, baby care items, health products and much more, the company said in a statement.

It would deliver “categories such as fruits and vegetables, kiranas and supermarkets, florists, baby care, health and supplements among others. Today’s announcement takes Swiggy to categories beyond food, where we hope to deliver the same level of delightful experiences to consumers for their everyday needs,” Swiggy’s CEO Sriharsha Majety said.

This new service is named ‘Swiggy Stores’ and just like its food delivering app, it too will be accessible via the mobile app. Although it is a first step towards the delivery of home goods by the company, other companies have been doing it  from before. BigBasket and Grofers is an example of such service.

Swiggy has to compete with big market share holders like BigBasket, which has the Chinese MNC AliBaba backing it up. Over that the Badshah of Bollywood, Shahrukh Khan, is its brand ambassador.  So, it can be said that BigBasket has already made a name for itself and has most of the market share presently. So, Swiggy has to do a better job than its competitor if it were to survive in the market.

Swiggy currently operates in more than 80 major Indian cities through its mobile app and website. It surely has a base from its food delivering service so it doesn’t have to start from scratch. Last week Swiggy bought an Artificial Intelligence (AI) named Kint.io that uses machine learning, deep learning and computer vision to recognize objects. Swiggy would use the AI for the Swiggy Stores service, too.

Introducing Swiggy STORES, a more easy, efficient and convenient way of ordering from stores around you! Now in Gurgaon:) https://t.co/TxK1CXK4bt

— Swiggy (@swiggy_in) February 12, 2019

According to the company the next step would be to spread its reach to every store in every Indian city. The merchants who would partner with them would also be able to get new customers and this in turn will help their business, too. To the delivery partners, the company would give them a new and  additional way of getting more income.

Founded in 2014, Swiggy is serving in a lot of cities, delivering food from over 60,000 restaurant, which is a big achievement for the company. Will they be able to make a mark in the competitive “kirana” sector as well? We will come to know in a few quarters.