Swiggy beats Zomato in attrition and salary, but lags in gender balance

Food delivery majors Zomato and Swiggy have reported contrasting employee trends in FY25 as per their latest regulatory filings. Zomato, now operating under the umbrella of Eternal Limited, reported a significantly higher number of permanent employees compared to Swiggy. However, the Gurugram-based firm also witnessed a sharper spike in attrition and employee-related expenses.

Zomato closed FY25 with 6,903 permanent employees, whereas Swiggy reported a headcount of 4,488. Zomato, in contrast, takes a bigger workforce, a reflection of a more assertive approach in its hiring plan. This larger scale points at expansion across domains such as product, operations, and integration with Blinkit.

In terms of total workforce including permanent and other contractual or temporary staff, Swiggy had a slight edge with 7,431 employees compared to Zomato’s 7,406. This suggests that while Zomato leads in permanent roles, Swiggy maintains a leaner core team but engages more flexible or outsourced resources. According to their Q4 FY25 results, Swiggy had 5.4 lakhs monthly active gig workers (food delivery) while Zomato had 4.73 lakh.

In terms of gender diversity, Zomato fares better with a 71 to 29 male to female ratio compared to Swiggy’s 81 to 19. Despite the slight edge, the gender gap remains wide across both firms.

Notably, Swiggy also offers higher median salaries to its employees. Male employees at Swiggy earned a median salary of Rs 14.33 lakh in FY25 compared to Rs 7 lakh at Zomato. For female employees, the figures stood at Rs 13.5 lakh at Swiggy and Rs 6.3 lakh at Zomato. The gap could be attributed to differences in organizational structure, seniority distribution or compensation strategies.

Swiggy showed progress in employee retention as its attrition rate fell to 33.37%, a 41.3% year on year drop, which reflects improved workplace stability. Zomato, meanwhile, reported a 44.3% attrition rate. This figure shows a 19.7% rise compared to the previous fiscal period. Both companies mention that these attrition rates also include inter company movement from group companies to subsidiaries.

Employee benefits expenses also saw divergent trends. Zomato reported a 54.2% year on year increase in these costs while Swiggy’s expenses grew by a comparatively modest 26.7%. This could be reflective of Zomato’s higher hiring, salary adjustments and benefits provisioning across group entities like Blinkit and Hyperpure.

On workplace safety and compliance, Swiggy reported six POSH complaints during the year out of which four were resolved. Zomato received 19 complaints, resolving 17 of them.

While Zomato leads in workforce size and diversity, Swiggy appears to have made notable progress in retention, compensation, and cost discipline. With both companies focused on profitability and operational efficiency, FY26 may bring sharper contrasts as they recalibrate strategies in the hyper-competitive food delivery and quick commerce markets. For context, Zomato's parent, Eternal, posted a 70% jump in revenue to Rs 7,167 crore in Q1 FY26, while profit dropped 90% to Rs 25 crore. Swiggy, which has yet to file its report for Q1 FY26, registered a 45% increase in revenue to Rs 4,410 crore in Q4 FY25, while losses nearly doubled to Rs 1,081 crore.

Looking beyond the obvious, there is of course the big difference that numbers will never quite capture. The contrasting culture at the operating headquarters of both the firms. Zomato, which moved to Gurugram almost a decade back has shown a demonstrable zeitgeist of that city from the period since it’s been there. Looking at just the quantum and nature of coverage they attract, Zomato is arguably more aggressive, flashy, singularly growth focused and comfortable with criticism. Swiggy has been the quintessential Bengaluru startup, growing more carefully, popping out for publicity only when it has needed to, building plans around large dollops of funding and seemingly, much more careful to commit to new product offerings. The two firms offer a fascinating contrast in approaches while being in the same segment (broadly), and should offer researchers an opportunity for much more deeper studies of their cultural differences and the impact it has on their performance in the future as well.