Swiggy - a master
class in scale
2014
The Beginning
We first met Harsha over a Skype call in August, 2014. Swiggy was still pre-launch then – in fact, just a splash page. At that time, the food delivery space was extremely competitive, with plenty of well-funded teams and rampant discounting. But we had not been able to build conviction on any of the larger players and business models.
However, after just one conversation with Harsha, we knew Swiggy was different. Harsha’s customer obsession and real understanding of industry pain points stood out very clearly. He had deep conviction that a platform like Swiggy should own delivery operations, ensuring complete control over the most critical factor in the user’s experience: on-time delivery. Swiggy prioritized reliability over discounts as well as the number of restaurants on the platform. This model also enabled restaurants without delivery capabilities to reach a far wider audience. It was a ground-level insight that other start-ups had missed completely.
Swiggy's first pitch deck
“At the time, one would typically rate a restaurant a ‘good’ service provider if they delivered within an hour."
"And we just couldn’t understand why this was so if Domino’s could deliver in thirty minutes. It’s a relatively easy problem if you take a logistics-first view and hack away at it. We couldn’t see how the problem would be solved the way competitors were thinking about it – the bare minimum acceptable customer experience needed us to own delivery. We believed this category could pop-open only logistics-first, if it had to become large.”
- Harsha Majety, co-founder & CEO, Swiggy
Swiggy's website at launch
Meeting Harsha and Nandan in person made us even more excited about their vision.
However, we sat tight until the company had a tech co-founder – we knew that tech was going to be critical to win this space.
We met the team again in October 2014. By now, Rahul had joined as the tech co-founder, which was very encouraging. Swiggy had also been live for a few weeks now, and early data proved that the team's customer service focus was getting results. User retention was strong, and customers were ordering very frequently, even though Swiggy was charging a delivery fee on every order.
Swiggy's second office
“We picked only the ‘good’ restaurants that didn’t deliver or had a problem with delivery, so that the need was acutely felt."
"Where restaurants didn’t want to partner with us but we wanted them onboard, we bought food ourselves and took photographs at home. Once some of the restaurants realized we were helping them get business they would have lost otherwise, they started asking us for hundreds of pamphlets and pushed these themselves to customers – and that drove the flywheel."
Harsha Majety, co-founder & CEO, Swiggy
We had no doubt that Harsha, Nandan, and Rahul were the strongest team in this space. So we went all in.
Elevation invested $1M in January 2015
At the time we signed a term sheet with Swiggy in October 2014 they had:
25
Restaurants
in Koramangala, Bengaluru
35
Orders/Day
Average daily order total
04
Orders/ Month
4 orders per customer per month
35
Minutes
Average delivery time
1000 daily orders
By April 2015, Swiggy had 1,000 average daily orders
Launch of real time order tracking
Swiggy launches real-time order tracking, which receives deep customer love, and has now become the industry standard
$16.5M Raised
$16.5M raised from Norwest, Elevation, Accel, Apoletto
10,000 Daily Orders
By September 2015, Swiggy had hit the ground running, with 10,000 average daily orders
$42 Million
“We were going through a rough patch, when in 2015, in a great show of confidence, Elevation supported us by leading a round when a lot of things were unproven - that was probably one of the most pivotal moments for us in Swiggy’s journey.”
Harsha Majety, co-founder & CEO, Swiggy
$42M Raised
Elevation leads a $42M round; other investors include Bessemer Venture Partners, Norwest, Accel
100,000 daily orders
By May 2017, Swiggy was sitting at 100,000 average daily orders
$1.3B Raised
From May 2017 to Dec 2018 Swiggy raised $1.3B from Elevation, Naspers, DST, Meituan, Coatue, Tencent, Hillhouse Capital, Wellington Management, Accel, Bessemer Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and Harmony Partners
SuprDaily Acquisition
Swiggy’s vision expands beyond food delivery to deliver the same level of customer delight across multiple categories; this journey starts with the acquisition of SuprDaily
1,000,000 Daily Orders
Swiggy Genie Launches
Swiggy launches its pickup and drop service, Swiggy Genie
Instamart launches
Swiggy forays into grocery with Instamart
$1.2B Raised
Swiggy raises $1.25B in a round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, its first investment in the Indian food delivery category
Decacorn Status
Swiggy became India's fourth decacorn after a $700M funding led by Invesco
Dineout Acquisition
Swiggy acquires Dineout; introduces restaurant discovery, bookings and payments services through the Swiggy app for dine-in.
IPO
Lists on Indian stock exchanges. Raises $1.4B in the largest tech IPO of 2024 globally
110M
Crosses 110 million ever-transacted users on its platforms; Swiggy One crosses 5.7 million members.
Instamart Scales
100
Cities
30k
SKUs
700
Dark stores
Swiggy Today
One big contributor to Swiggy’s success has been Harsha’s ability to build a best-in-class team at every stage. We still share team slides from Swiggy’s old pitch decks with younger portfolio companies to set a benchmark for the kind of teams they should aspire to build.
While Swiggy’s journey and growth over the years has been well documented, the most rewarding part of the partnership has been seeing Harsha become a phenomenal leader, and build an amazing team and culture. We look forward to continuing our partnership with Swiggy as they scale greater heights.
700
Cities
540k
Delivery Partners
240k
Restaurant Partners
3b
Orders Delivered
“We at Elevation Capital are really proud and privileged to be a part of this journey right from the start when we led the seed investment in Oct 2014. We have watched Swiggy grow from just 25 restaurants and 40 orders per day when we invested, to today creating positive impact in the lives of tens of millions of consumers, over half a million delivery partners and hundreds of thousands of restaurants. And beyond these numbers, Swiggy has completely redefined convenience for Indian consumers, and has become a household name.
Also watching Harsha closely over the last decade has been a leadership masterclass. His deep customer-obsession truly unlocked food delivery as a category in India, his long-term thinking led to pioneering moves like Instamart, and his authentic and respectful leadership style has helped build one of India tech’s strongest executive teams. And what is truly special is the way Harsha has done all of this this while remaining humble and grounded - it feels so so fulfilling to see good guys win!”
