Exclusive: Swiggy introduces Domino’s akin ‘30 minutes delivery or free’ feature

Foodtech has turned out to be hyper-competitive segment as deep-pocketed players are fighting out to dominate a larger market share. Besides dishing out discounts, Zomato and Swiggy have been offering a slew of features including subscription to make online ordering frequent and sticky.

Despite solving several pains attached with food ordering, consumers still have to wait anywhere between 45 to 60 minutes to get a hold on food. To weed out this pain, Swiggy is guaranteeing delivery in 30 minutes else it will refund the order value (amount).

“The company has successfully completed a pilot in Gurugram and has rolled out ‘30 minutes delivery or free’ feature in Delhi NCR and select areas of Bengaluru,” said multiple restaurant partners who have been a part of the programme.

Currently, about two-thirds of participating restaurants are cloud kitchen as their response time (food preparation to packaging) is quick. “Besides, it also onboarded restaurants that can prepare and package food within 15 minutes in 2 km radius,” added above restaurant partners.

Although, ‘30 minutes delivery or free’ feature is dynamic and Swiggy keeps removing and adding the offer as per the availability of riders.

Importantly, Swiggy has become the first aggregator to offers 30 minutes delivery or free service. So far, quick service pizza chain Domino's has only been able to execute 30 minutes delivery on a huge scale.

“During the pilot, Swiggy was bearing 90 per cent cost in case of refund while with a full-fledged launch, it’s bearing 70-80 per cent (depending on nature of terms and condition) cost if it fails to deliver within 30 minutes timeline. Remaining amount to be incurred by restaurant partners.

Swiggy’s spokesperson has confirmed that the 30 minutes delivery or free feature is live with select partners in both cities.

Last year, the Naspers-backed company had introduced Swiggy Assured where one used to see the delivery time and entitle for 20 per cent cash back (up to Rs 100) if it missed the promised timeline.

Two months after Zomato launched the pickup feature, the Bengaluru-based firm had recently launched Swiggy Takeaway that lets users picking up food from restaurants directly.

While the 30 minutes delivery or free service certainly gives convenience to customers as well as an edge to Swiggy over competitors, it’s not easy to execute for the company across all operational cities. At the same time, it’s also doable and Domino’s has proved it.

Going forward, it would be interesting to see how Swiggy executes it on the scale and how fast Zomato and Foodpanda come up with a similar offering.