Swiggy shuts down home-cooked meals platform

Bengaluru-based food technology platform Swiggy has shut down its home-cooked meals delivery service, Swiggy Daily. 

Launched in July 2019, the separate app let users order homestyle tiffin services for a single meal as well as three-day, seven-day to a month-long subscription. 

Swiggy began the service as a pilot in Gurugram and had plans to expand it to Bengaluru and Mumbai. Meal orders on the platform ranged from Rs 50 to Rs 150 at no delivery cost. 

The food tech platform shut down the meal service in May due to Covid-19 related lockdown and the associated loss in orders. The platform largely catered to students living in hostels of young working professionals. 

Entrackr first reported the development.

“We back burned it given the pandemic and other strategic priorities, but it continues to remain on our radar. In-line with our mission to offer unparalleled convenience to our consumers, Swiggy will continue to strengthen the core food delivery marketplace, offering the best selection of restaurants and cuisines while bolstering our non-food initiatives such as Grocery and Genie,” a Swiggy spokesperson said in response to specific queries sent by TechCircle.

Shutting down the meal service did not have a direct impact on employees. In May, Swiggy had announced laying-off 1,100 employees and scaling down its cloud kitchens to conserve cash. 

Rival Zomato has had trouble in expanding its own meal delivery service. In December 2019, Zomato backed platform for home-cooked lunches, Tinmen, also ended operations. 

The online food delivery segment suffered a major setback due to Covid-19 related lockdown, with restaurants being shut for a long time and the apprehension around eating out. Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal, in a recent blog, stated that the platform’s gross merchandise value has recovered to 85% of pre-Covid levels in August. GMV denotes the total value of the orders over the month and does not capture the volume of orders.