As Swiggy’s footprint expands over India, its losses are ballooning too.
Swiggy saw its losses rise sixfold to Rs. 2,364 crore in the financial year ending March 31, 2019. Its losses last year were Rs. 397 crore. Revenues, on the other hand, increased only 2.7x to Rs. 1,297 crore.
“We saw a 4.2x increase in order volumes and a 2.8x increase in operating revenue despite a higher baseline, underscoring our ability to grow in a sustainable manner over the long term. During the year, we made many strategic bets and investments in technology, brand, and supply creation that have been the drivers of category growth in Indian food delivery and will bear fruit in Swiggy’s vision,” Swiggy said in a statement.
Swiggy has been expanding aggressively over the last year. It now operates in 500 cities, up from 30 a year ago, and has expanded into several new verticals. It now performs Dunzo-like concierge deliveries through Swiggy Go, and delivers groceries through Swiggy Store.
But competition in the space is still intense. Even though Foodpanda has bowed out of the food aggregator race, Swiggy is currently battling it out with Uber Eats and Zomato for its share of the food delivery pie. Zomato, for its part, had revenues of Rs. 1420 crore compared to Swiggy’s 1297 crore, and had losses of 2026 crore, compared to Swiggy’s 2364 crore. There are also talks that Zomato might end up acquiring Uber Eats in the near future, which could somewhat ease the competition in India’s food delivery space.