Swiggy drives into on-demand product delivery

BENGALURU: Online food ordering and delivery service Swiggy has forayed into on-demand product deliveries from local stores, in a bid to diversify its delivery services beyond food. Called Swiggy Stores, the services will be available within the Swiggy app and will deliver products from physical stores across various categories like fruits and vegetables, kiranas and supermarkets, florists, baby care, health and supplements, pet care stores, meat stores, and pan shops among others in an hour or less.

Swiggy will use its growing delivery fleet of 1.25 lakh active delivery partners to make product deliveries, the company said in a statement. ET had first reported in April 2018 that Swiggy was readying a hyperlocal delivery product. The Bengaluru-based delivery platform was looking to enable buying and delivery of products from any store in the city including electronics, groceries, flower shops and gift shops.

Swiggy, which recently mopped up $1 billion in funding from existing investor Naspers and new investor Tencent, said the service is currently being piloted in Gurugram, wherein it will be offering products from more than 3,500 stores including 200 prominent brands like Le Marche, Needs Supermarket, Licious, Zappfresh, MomsCo, Apollo and Guardian Pharmacy. The firm declined to disclose details on further rollout of the service.