Swiggy launches membership programme with unlimited free deliveries

Bengaluru: India’s largest food delivery service Swiggy has launched a new membership programme that will unlock unlimited free deliveries across all restaurants on its platform for subscribers.

This is part of a broader strategy to increase order volumes, amid a market share battle against rivals such as Zomato and Uber Eats.

Swiggy said it will roll out the programme, Swiggy Super, this week and offer customers one-month and three-month subscription plans, with the monthly plan priced between ₹ 99 and ₹ 149.

Apart from free deliveries, customers subscribing to the membership programme will also not be charged surge fees during peak-hour. Swiggy will also include other benefits such as discounted orders.

So far, Swiggy Super has been rolled out to a select bunch of users in seven cities. According to Anuj Rathi, vice-president of product management at Swiggy, Swiggy Super will be rolled out to at least 200,000 customers by the end of this week.

“We’ve been thinking about this programme for quite some time. As you know, Swiggy is an extremely high-repeat platform—we have users who order multiple times during a week or month. So, it made sense for us to come out with a programme that rewards loyal customers,” Rathi told Mint.

In June, Swiggy raised $210 million from a group of investors led by Naspers and billionaire Yuri Milner’s DST Global that catapulted its valuation to over $1 billion, surpassing rival Zomato’s valuation based on a February fundraising round. Zomato is in talks to raise more funds, Mint reported in June.

Flush with funds, Swiggy and Zomato have gone all out to acquire new customers and increase the volume of orders on their respective platforms. Most food delivery start-ups have also gone on a hiring spree and have increased their delivery staff, as the food delivery business in India has boomed.

Bangalore-based Swiggy, which operates in 15 cities, including Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Kolkata, claims to have over 35,000 restaurant partners on its platform and a delivery fleet of 55,000.