CEO Sriharsha Majety said he’s made a deliberate decision not to try and keep pace as Walmart Inc.’s local arm and billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail Ltd. compete to deliver goods to more people in as fast as 10 minutes. The younger company is willing to sacrifice some users in the short run while retaining more lucrative, loyal customers, he told Bloomberg News in an interview.
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Majety is pledging restraint even as India hosts one of the world’s most closely watched consumer-tech battles. Investors including SoftBank Group Corp., Temasek Holdings Pte. and Middle Eastern sovereign funds have poured billions into the sector, betting that dense cities, lower labor costs and ubiquitous digital payments can support a quick-delivery model that struggled in the US and Europe.
Swiggy’s Instamart unit currently operates more than 1,100 small warehouses in cities around the country that feed fleets of gig-workers delivering groceries, electronics and household items in minutes. The company, which also runs one of India’s top two meal delivery apps, added just seven stores in the March quarter.
“Investors are giving us the feedback that we remain unconvinced till you show that clear bridge,” to growth and profitability at Instamart, Majety said this week, referring to its popular quick-commerce business. “Joining the spending only postpones the problem.”
BloombergSwiggy, which raised about 100 billion rupees ($1 billion) in December, is trying to reassure investors after its shares fell more than 30% this year.JM Financial Ltd. analysts warned in April that the firm risks losing relevance if it cedes momentum in quick commerce. A shareholder vote on a governance restructuring narrowly failed earlier this month, while growth at Instamart, increasingly seen as central to Swiggy’s future, has slowed for two consecutive quarters.
Majety’s response has been to lean harder into differentiation rather than matching rivals incentive for incentive. That means giving customers reasons to return that are harder to copy than mere discounts.
Part of that strategy centers on a nascent private-label grocery business built around fresher, harder-to-source products, including Indian cottage cheese with a shelf life of only a few days and fresh clotted cream typically unavailable in large retail chains. Majety said customers who buy those products show materially higher repeat purchases and retention. He compared the strategy to segmentation in US retail.
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“Whole Foods solves a very different consumer problem from Walmart, from Costco, from a bodega,” he said.
BloombergMajety has long argued the business would ultimately depend less on access to capital than on logistics density and hyper-local execution. He raised the example of a telecom industry battle.
Earlier this year, a top executive from Bharti Airtel Ltd. spoke to Swiggy’s leadership at an off-site about how the company responded after Ambani’s Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. triggered a price war. Rather than chase subscriber growth, Airtel protected its economics when rivals cut prices. Several competitors eventually disappeared or consolidated.
“Airtel, when Jio came, proactively reduced their users at the time with a moment of clarity,” Majety said. “I actually believe that those are moments where you have to make choices.”
Majety said Swiggy is already seeing the benefits of restraint. Instamart has improved unit economics by five to six percentage points over the past four quarters, according to the company. And food-delivery growth accelerated to its strongest pace in nearly four years in the March quarter.
“If I join the short-term market share fight through just buying orders, I worry deeply about my long-term market share,” he said.
That debate is increasingly shaping the sector. Blinkit Chief Executive Officer Albinder Dhindsa told Bloomberg News in December that India’s quick-commerce industry is heading toward a shakeout as weaker rivals struggle to sustain losses and fund raising becomes harder.
Majety said most of his own time is now spent on Instamart. He dismissed JM Financial’s note, which suggested the best outcome for Swiggy investors may be for the company to be sold to a larger player.
“If we lose, capital will not be the reason to lose,” Majety said. “I say that also because I have 150 billion rupees in the bank.”