Zomato claims food delivery biz across 300 cities; Swiggy formally launches Daily

Zomato has claimed that its online ordering operations are now present in over 300 cities in India. Looks like the Gurugram-based company has been setting operations at a very quick pace. Just a few weeks ago, it had crossed 200 cities mark.

“When you fundamentally move beyond the 40 cities to the 380, you are truly representing India. And this is central to our mission of better food for more people, to scale our service to every corner of India,” said Mohit Gupta via a blog post.

Its arch rival Swiggy has operations in about 175 cities at the moment. According to Zomato, it has three parameters for setting up operations in a city - 1 lakh plus population, significant number of students, and decent supply.

With this, the company claims to cover 250 million Indians across 300 cities.

In a separate development, Swiggy has announced subscription-based service 'Swiggy Daily’. Launched in Gurugram, it gives consumers access to a variety of simple homestyle meals prepared by home chefs, tiffin service providers and organised vendors.

Three weeks ago, Entrackr had exclusively reported about Swiggy Daily.

Daily allows users to schedule their meals in advance or opt for a daily, weekly or monthly subscription with flexibility to pause, skip, change or cancel a meal. Consumers can choose to schedule a single meal or opt for a 3-day, 7-day or a month-long subscription.

Notable vendors at Daily include Homely, Lunchly, Fig, iDabba, Caloriesmart, Dial a Meal and Dailymeals.in among others. Importantly, Swiggy Daily is a separate app and not bundled into the company’s native app.

While launching a separate app is quite surprising, Swiggy must have weighed merits in launching a separate app. Probably, the target audience, as well as supplies, are different from Swiggy. Also, the core app already has five sections - regular browsing, offers section, Swiggy Pop, Swiggy Super, and Swiggy Stores, and adding another section of Swiggy Daily would have made the interface too clustered.

Unlike Swiggy's regular app, it targets home chefs, not usual restaurants, kitchens and food joints.

Homestyle cooked food has immense potential in India. In fact, its market can be gauged from the sight in offices where employees prefer to order thali with local vendors. Many corporates and startups also facilitate food for their employees.

On the other hand, home chefs or tiffin services find hard to scale their business after a certain point. They could easily find a large serviceable market via Swiggy Daily.