Food and grocery delivery company Swiggy has started charging a “platform fee” of Rs 2 from customers for every food delivery order in cities like Bengaluru and Hyderabad.

The platform fee is levied in addition to the delivery charge, which is waived for customers of Swiggy One who make an upfront payment and get benefits like free delivery of food and grocery. But Swiggy One subscribers too will be charged the platform fee.

“The platform fee is a nominal flat fee charged on food orders,” a Swiggy spokesperson said. “This fee helps us operate and improve our platform and enhance app features to deliver a seamless app experience.”
The development comes at a time when food delivery business is largely flat in terms of growth. Swiggy cofounder Sriharsha Majety in an internal note to employees in January said the food delivery business growth had not been in line with projections.

According to a person aware of the matter, Swiggy does about 1.6 million orders a day.

Meanwhile, rival Zomato, since the relaunch of its loyalty programme Zomato Gold, has started reclaiming the market share it had lost in the second half of 2022 to Swiggy, HSBC Global Research said in a note in March. According to the report, Zomato had 54% of the market in the October-December quarter of 2022, with Swiggy holding 46%.

Swiggy’s food delivery business is headed by former Oyo executive Rohit Kapoor. He took over as the CEO of the food marketplace in August 2022.Swiggy has also been cutting costs across the board, and this year laid off about 380 employees and shut down its meat delivery business. At the same time, the company has been doubling down on ecommerce and grocery businesses. It recently started piloting Maxx, an ecommerce offering with categories like electronics, pet care, home and kitchen, and stationery.

“Maxx aims to be the destination for a wide variety of home and family shopping needs, delivered in 1 hour. We are currently running a pilot programme in Bangalore,” the company said in a statement.

It now has several grocery-delivery products: Instamart, Insanely Good and Handpicked.

Swiggy is also seeing changes at the top leadership. Its quick-commerce business head Karthik Gurumurthy will be stepping aside and cofounder Phani Kishan will be taking over the position. Chief technology officer Dale Vaz is also leaving the company.

Vaz, who joined Swiggy from Amazon in June 2018, will be replaced by the company’s senior vice-president of consumertech and fintech (engineering and product), Madhusudan Rao.

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