Quick food delivery startup Swish has raised $24 million as part of its ongoing Series B round from Bertelsmann India Investments, the company said on Thursday. Existing investors Accel, Bain Capital Ventures and Hara Global also participated.
“This essentially helps us expand our kitchen network. We're planning to expand in existing cities as well as new cities build,” said Aniket Shah, co-founder and chief executive of Swish in an interview with Mint. “It's part of a larger 3-5 year road map to expand across thousands of kitchens in the country.”
The Bengaluru-based startup’s fresh equity infusion comes barely five months after it raised $38 million in March in a round led by Hara Global and Bain Capital Ventures. Existing investors Accel, Alteria Capital and Stride Ventures also participated.
Swish’s latest fundraise comes as rivals in the market have either scaled back operations or slowed expansion. Eternal’s quick-commerce arm Blinkit, which runs Bistro, has scaled back its operations. Zepto, which operates Zepto Cafe, has also slowed expansion amid supply-chain strains, kitchen staffing shortages and a decline in daily orders.
India's food services market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 17-18%, according to a Redseer report from July. In 2025, the market was valued at $90 billion and is projected to grow to $150 billion by 2030.
Online food delivery, however, only accounted for 11% of the market last year, but is expected to grow to 18%, growing at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 18-22%, compared to offline, which Redseer pegged at 8-10%.
Density first
Swish currently operates in Bengaluru and the National Capital Region, serving roughly 50 pincodes through its outlets.
Shah declined to disclose the number of kitchens it operates, but said that four months ago, the company served just 15 pincodes across the two regions.
Rather than simply chase geographic expansion, Swish is focused on building density in existing markets. “The business is also about density. Our focus is to balance out the expansion and density alongside, and then continue to look at expanding more and more micro markets and pin codes,” Shah said.
Its model is built around neighbourhood kitchens located close to consumers, with an average delivery radius of about 1 km. Swish controls the supply chain, procuring raw materials directly from manufacturers and distributors, processing and portioning them at a central facility, and then sending them to neighbourhood kitchens.
Automation push
Alongside network expansion, Swish is investing in its supply chain, kitchen infrastructure and automation.
“Strengthening our supply chain and kitchen infrastructure is one part of it. There's also a bunch of automation we want to develop in our kitchens,” Shah said.
The startup has automated 10-15 kitchen processes using custom-built devices. “We are essentially trying to make a next-gen kitchen infrastructure which helps us make high volumes of food in great quality, consistent and efficient manner by essentially automating a lot of our production,” Shah said.
The automation is also designed to improve utilization of kitchen staff and infrastructure. For instance, once a portion of fries is placed in an automated fryer and a button is pressed, the machine handles the cooking cycle, allowing the employee to work on other orders. Swish said its kitchens process thousands of orders on average.
The company has also built food-safety monitoring into its operating systems. Each outlet sends photographs of its premises every hour, while quality audits are conducted weekly. Every kitchen has a manager responsible for quality, supported by a central team.
“We have a centralized control tower and quality audit team that essentially looks at it every hour, every day and ensures that the kitchens and processes are as per what we want them to be like,” Shah said.