Swiggy ties up with Indifi Technologies to provide loans to restaurants
1 min read 12 Oct 2017, 01:16 PM ISTOnline food delivery start-up Swiggy’s financing program will provide collateral-free loans without initial deposits to its restaurant partners
PremiumOnline food delivery start-up Swiggy (Bundl Technologies Pvt. Ltd) Thursday said it has tied up with lender Indifi Technologies to provide working capital loans to its restaurant partners. The financing program named Swiggy Capital Assist will provide collateral-free loans without initial deposits. The company did not disclose the interest rates for these loans.
Indifi will complete credit evaluation of Swiggy’s restaurant partners in less than 24 hours of document submission and the entire loan disbursal in a week.
Since launching its pilot in mid-September, the programme has received over 200 applications from restaurant partners across eight cities in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune and Chennai.
“Through Swiggy Capital Assist, we want to leverage our credibility to provide fair and hassle-free financing options to our restaurant partners. With this program, our objective is to enable small and medium scale restaurants to get quick access to capital, expand their presence, and continue on their journey to greater success," Sriharsha Majety, CEO, Swiggy said in a statement.
Swiggy is pushing hard to compete better in the online food delivery space which counts competitors like Zomato, UberEats, Foodpanda and Faasos, among others. Zomato said last month that it had turned “profitable" on an Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) level and would forgo commissions charged to restaurants on food orders, as well as for table reservations.
Swiggy, on the other hand, is in the process of launching ‘cloud kitchens’ which allow restaurant partners to lease kitchen spaces in areas they don’t deliver food. It claims to have more than 18,000 restaurant partners across eight cities.
The company raised $80 million from Naspers Ltd, Accel Partners, SAIF Partners and others in May and has an in-house delivery unit to deliver food. It had also started hiring third-party logistics providers since July last year to help scale its business. Its biggest rival Zomato, on the other hand, acquired logistics company Runnr last month to reinforce its food delivery capabilities.
