🛵 Swiggy's wish for Genie - more delivery partners!
When Swiggy suddenly shut down its Genie across Mumbai, Bangalore & Hyderabad, we got curious to know how BIG this problem is.
What does PEAK convenience look like?
The answer is simple — having all the necessities and luxuries of life delivered to you instantly at a press of a button!
Now, the modern startups have really taken the CONVENIENCE agenda to heart.
That's especially true for Swiggy. Just look at their products:
Siwggy's food delivery service
Quick grocery delivery service (Instamart)
On-demand delivery service (Swiggy Genie)
So, Swiggy is determined to provide an unparalleled instant delivery experience.
But after a dream run of highs, one after another, Swiggy finally has hit a slump:
- revenue took a HIT in FY21; dropped by 27%, and
- now it's facing a delivery person shortage
With all of Swiggy's businesses relying on its delivery fleet, it was time to offload under-performers. And just like that, Swiggy decided to shut down its Genie!
Curious to know what happened? Let's explore why this Genie was put back into the bottle.
Firstly, what exactly is Swiggy Genie?
Swiggy Genie is your personal delivery service that you can use however you like!
You can use Genie to:
perform quick pick-ups and drop-offs
quickly send something to a friend
buy something from a local store
Or if you are a business, you can use Genie to perform customer deliveries
But, why exactly did Swiggy buildd an instant delivery service?
Well, the story goes something like this — back in 2020, when the lockdowns began in India on 26th March, within a span of 10 days, food-delivery orders for both Swiggy and Zomato dropped by 70-80%!
The situation flipped so suddenly, that Swiggy was left overstaffed with its 250,000 fleet of delivery persons having nothing to do.
With restaurants closed, putting efforts to pump up food delivery orders was not an option. So, Swiggy turned to a different route!
Swiggy Go, an instant delivery service was already in operation in Bangalore since 2019. And, with lockdowns in place and people stuck in their homes, 2020 was the perfect time to roll out this service to the other cities.
Swiggy repackaged it as Swiggy Genie and launched it on April 9th in 30 different cities.
So, what's going on with Swiggy Genie now?
Seems like a great start for Genie, right? It began out of necessity and with Swiggy's top-notch logistics & existing delivery partners, Genie was an instant success.
So, out of nowhere, why did Swiggy randomly announce that they were closing Genie in 3 major cities — Mumbai, Bangalore, and Hyderabad?
Well, as the pandemic slowed down, food delivery orders started moving back up to the usual numbers. Swiggy's delivery persons fleet was now heavily needed across food delivery, grocery delivery and Genie. What was a surplus earlier, now suddenly turned into a shortage!
But, how bad are these numbers? Is the shortage so much that Swiggy has to shut down its operations?
Well, we did some quick math to get a sense!
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Stay tuned and keep buildd-ing 🚀
Cheers!
Hrishikesh
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