‘Profits not the top priority for us’

BENGALURU:FOOD delivery start-up Swiggy is among the few survivors of the last funding bubble burst. In the years since 2014, co-founder and chief executive Sriharsha Majety and his team have worked to maintain the company’s market leadership and chase growth at all costs.

Recently, Swiggy hired Vivek Sunder as its chief operating officer, among other top recruitments. In their first media interaction, Majety and Sunder spoke about the funding boom in food delivery, the battle against Zomato, Uber Eats and Ola; the company’s burn rates and discounting; and new leadership hiring, among others. Edited excerpts from an interview:

How is the current boom in food tech different from what we saw back in 201415?

There are similarities and differences. Similarities in the sense that there are some in the market who degrade fundamentals to buy growth. Differences are that it’s all happening at a larger scale, in the sense that there are companies that have gone through the cycle. It’s not a bubble in the sense that we know now that the demand for the category is limitless, going by consumer demand. It was largely untested in 2015.

How much room is there for more than one player to survive in the business of food delivery? Do you think it’s a winnertakesall business?

Actually, there is no market in India where the winner has taken all. If you compare it with e-commerce and cabs, there are two players. In this case also, there will be a few leaders who will have a disproportionate share of the market and some others who may not be as relevant in the long term.

Definitely it’s a very large market, so it can accommodate a few players. There will still be a concentration of power, and not a bunch of equally-sized companies.

You spoke about having a path to profitability. Is profitability a near term goal?

Not right now. Sitting where we are, we are just scratching the surface of this category. And it may not be the right time, right now to have a short-term goal on that.

Growth is absolutely the priority.

Sunder: Solving different types of issues is the priority and if you solve it better than other people, then growth is a natural outcome of that. And it’s a slight nuanced difference. If you go after growth, you’ll say any growth is good growth.

What are 23 of your most immediate priorities as COO?

Sunder: We have to think about how to structure the company differently, how to operate the company differently, how to give levers of control, what’s the balance between local autonomy, speed and quick decisionmaking, versus the power of scale and sophistication that comes from doing things. All of that stuff has to be done well.