The Free Press Journal

Swiggy to invest $700 mn in grocery app Instamart

- AGENCIES

Food delivery platform Swiggy on Thursday said it will invest USD 700 million (about Rs 5,250 crore) in its express grocery delivery service Instamart.

Swiggy Instamart launched in Gurugram and Bengaluru last year - is now available across 18 cities and handles over one million orders per week.

In the last few months, Swiggy Instamart has onboarded more than one seller-run dark store every day, a statement said.

By January 2022, it will make deliveries in 15 minutes by having the network of dark stores very close to the majority of its customers, it added.

While traditiona­l e-commerce deliveries take a day or longer, quick commerce (or q-commerce) enables customers to get small quantities of goods to customers in a shorter period of time.

Instamart competes with quick commerce (q-commerce) services offered by players like Zomato-backed Grofers and Dunzo. Last month, Ola had also started piloting a quick delivery service for items like groceries in Bengaluru.

In November, Grofers had said its dark store network was at over 200 stores, and that it is adding new stores at an aggressive pace. The company is looking at making these deliveries in under 10 minutes.

According to a RedSeer report, the quick commerce sector in India is expected to grow to USD 5 billion by 2025 from the current USD 0.3 billion.

Quik commerce is growing in India on the back of trends like a shift in consumer behaviour, entry of big players like BigBasket and Grofers, and rise of instant delivery platforms, as per the report.

Swiggy CEO Sriharsha Majety said Instamart is set to reach an annualised GMV run rate of USD 1 billion in the next three quarters at its current growth trajectory.

"With our food delivery business trending at a USD 3 billion annualised GMV run rate and Instamart's super-charged growth, we are very excited about our convenienc­e mission coming to life in a very big way," he added.

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