Swiggy ups its game against Zomato, serves up membership programme Swiggy SUPER

Indian food technology unicorn Swiggy on Tuesday announced the launch of its membership programme, Swiggy SUPER, which allows users unlimited free deliveries across all restaurants, irrespective of the distance or time of day.

In addition to free deliveries at all times, the membership will also offer benefits such as no surge fee and quicker issue resolution through a dedicated customer care team, a statement from the company said.

The subscription will be divided into one-month and three-month subscription plans, with the current fee ranging from Rs 99 to Rs 149 for a one-month plan. Further, the feature will be of use to those who order as individuals or in groups.

Speaking at the launch, Anuj Rathi, VP of Product at Swiggy, said,

“With a very large restaurant partner network and an industry-best delivery time, Swiggy has become an integral part of the food ordering experiences of Indian consumers. SUPER is the result of understanding some of their biggest pain points when it comes to food delivery and making it more convenient, affordable and simple.”

He also added that in the coming months, the company will be bringing more value through SUPER with additional benefits and growing the existing offerings on this service.

At present, Swiggy SUPER has been rolled out to close to two lakh users across seven cities in India and will be launched for all Swiggy users in the coming months.

The food ordering platform launched its newer features POP and Scheduled earlier this year.

During this announcement, the company stated that it had over 35,000 restaurants across 17 cities on its platform.

Swiggy’s new subscription product, SUPER now competes with its archrival Zomato’s subscription product, Zomato Gold. The Gurugram-based startup launched its subscription back in November last year, allowing users to get complimentary food and drinks across top restaurants on its platform.

To further retain customers, earlier this month, Zomato launched its new loyalty programme, Piggybank. With the Piggybank membership, customers could get 10 percent of their order value as Zomato credits, called Z coins.

Further, these points could be redeemed to pay 10 percent of the value of the next order. The company is looking to launch this paid subscription programme at Rs 299 to customers.

It is reported that subscription-based services and food delivery together have become the key revenue drivers for Zomato, now forming about 60 percent of its revenue pie.

It is no wonder, then, that even Swiggy is warming up to the subscription game.

In June, Swiggy confirmed that it is had raised $210 million in Series-G funding, in round led by existing investor Naspers and new investors DST Global and Coatue Management. Existing shareholder Meituan-Dianping also participated in this round of funding.

The funding valued the four-year-old startup at over a billion dollars.

Earlier, in February, Swiggy had raised $100 million in Series-F funding, in a round led by Naspers and Meituan-Dianping. With this fundraise the total funding raised by Swiggy will be at $465 million, one of the highest funded startups in the foodtech segment.

In February, Zomato Media Pvt. Ltd had raised $200 million from Ant Small and Micro Financial Services Group, putting the valuing of the company at about $1.1 billion.