Swiggy launches first paid subscription service for users

After Zomato’s subscription-driven playbook to upsclae the food-tech market, Swiggy has started to follow its footsteps. The Bengaluru-based food delivery firm has started first ever paid subscription-based membership program called Swiggy Super.

A membership aimed to reduce the delivery costs on the platform for a customer, Swiggy Super will offer users unlimited free deliveries across all 35,000 restaurants enlisted in its name, irrespective of the distance or time of day. Besides, the membership program will ensure no surge fee for the user and a dedicated customer care team for quicker resolution of the queries.

“Swiggy Super is the result of understanding some of (customers’) biggest pain points when it comes to food delivery and making it more convenient, affordable and simple,” said Anuj Rathi, Vice President of Product at Swiggy. “In the coming months, we will continue to bring more value through ‘Super’ by adding more benefits and growing the existing offerings on this service,” he added.

The loyalty program fee is decided Rs 99-149 for a 1 month subscription and is also available as a 3 month subscription plan.

The first phase of the program has been started across 7 cities for over 2 lakh users and will be formally launched for all users over the next three months. Swiggy Super will also offer subscribers exclusive offers from its restaurant and payment partners going forward.

For Swiggy, which has been spending heavily to gain market share in markets dominated by Zomato, it is losing about Rs 40 per delivery, according to people aware of the firm’s on-ground operations. Swiggy Super will not only aid in churning frequency of order volumes for the firm, currently at over 14 million per month, but also help in recovering some parts of the delivery cost thus borne, according to the people cited above.

Swiggy’s has launched its loyalty program when Gurgaon-based rival, Zomato, has been building a moat with a slew of subscription-based services, including the successful Gold offer. Zomato also offers Treats and the recently launched PiggyBank program to specifically aid customer stickiness and improve repeat purchases for its food delivery business.

Zomato counts over 4,00,000 paid subscribers with over 11 million orders per month for its Gold offering, about 2,50,000 for Treats with over 500,000 sign-ups for PiggyBank.

Subscription-based services together with food delivery are the key generators of revenue now for Zomato, which forms 60% of its revenue pie. Until FY18, Zomato’s advertising business were the key revenue sources forming 75% of the pie in FY17. Revenues from the advertising business have come down to about 40% currently.