Bolt has the potential to reshape food delivery: Rohit Kapoor, CEO of Food Marketplace, Swiggy

Do people really need food in ten minutes? Indian consumers have addressed this scepticism with their wallet, voting in favour of quick service, says Rohit Kapoor, CEO of Food Marketplace at Swiggy.

Swiggy's latest offering Bolt, a 10-minute food delivery service, already accounts for 5% of its total food delivery orders, within just two months of its launch. The service has been scaled to 400 cities and it now offers more than 10 lakh menu items, usually those that require no or minimal preparation time.

With strong consumer traction, the service has piqued investor and analyst interest with respect to economic sustainability.

Kapoor believes Bolt has the potential to reshape food delivery.

Bolt has been one of Swiggy's fastest executions in terms of concept and scale and will account for 10% of all food delivery orders in the near term, says Kapoor in an exclusive interview with YourStory.

Swiggy's core business of food delivery reported its first profitable quarter, with a 22% rise in operating revenue—fuelled by newer offerings like Bolt, Eatlists (a feature that helps users discover and share food recommendations) and PocketHero (offers cashback and discounts on food orders from select restaurants).

In the second quarter of FY25, Swiggy's food delivery segment clocked a net profit of Rs 121 crore against a loss of Rs 43 crore in the same period last year, aided by improvements in contribution margins on the back of higher monetisation in advertising and reduced delivery costs, while maintaining delivery partner earnings.

The company has managed to rein in its marketing, indirect and absolute costs by tapping into the efficiencies of a unified app comprising food delivery, quick commerce and dine-out. Swiggy has also been increasingly focusing on going deep in existing cities and spreading its operations in the peripheries of big cities like Bengaluru.

Kapoor sheds light on the operations behind Bolt, how Swiggy is looking at the 10-minute food delivery space, and overall competition.

Edited excerpts from the interview:

YourStory [YS] : How do you see Bolt showing up in your P&L in any way?

Rohit Kapoor (RK): We don’t see a problem from a P&L standpoint in running Bolt right now. It has been one of our fastest executions in terms of concept and scale. We see it touching 10% of all food delivery orders at some point in the near term.

YS: What kind of different value propositions do you see with Swiggy Bolt, Swiggy Cafe (a curated service that offers snacks and drinks under Swiggy's label and some other brands), and Insta Cafe (a 10-minute food delivery service on Instamart).

RK: I think Bolt is a speed proposition on the entire food delivery spectrum, with its core offering being 10-minute food delivery. There was a lot of scepticism about why food is needed in 10 minutes, but Indian consumers have voted with their wallet to show that they want things faster. 

On the other hand, a cafe is very distinctive with curated offerings for consumers who do not want to go into 10 options. It is sort of a derivative of the marketplace model itself, where brands are coming up and serving customers in different setups. For instance, we have partnered with brands like Blue Tokai and Whole Truth.

Swiggy Cafe is currently available on the food delivery page, but we can add this as a storefront on the Instamart page as well. There is no separate infrastructure being built for Insta Cafe in any way. 

We believe in the quick delivery food phenomenon, and we want our tentacles on every model out there. Since it's early days and there is no clarity on which model will work, we want to be present in every model.

YS: Are you thinking of amalgamating the fleet of grocery delivery service Instamart and Bolt?

RK: Instamart is at a scale where it requires its own fleet by itself. There is no real advantage in trying to cross-utilise Instamart's fleet with food, as Instamart anyway gets a large number of orders. The fleet is being utilised well.

YS: What is the innovation behind Bolt's operations?

Due to heavy competition in the space, I won’t be able to share the economics of Bolt but there is a lot of product development that has happened on the delivery side. It is a complex execution because you have to be really precise on the distance from restaurants, timing, and the kind of menu to include and not include. If you include too less, then there is an assortment problem, while too many options can affect speed as it can increase the preparation time .

We are working with restaurant partners to curate a menu that is aligned to faster prep and fast delivery and iron out inefficiencies. The simple principle is: you are serving a high-density supplier to a high-density consumer location largely. 

YS: How do you look at the rise in subscription pricing of Swiggy One, a premium membership programme?

RK: It is definitely guided a little bit by the competitive mechanism out there and what the consumers are looking for. In our mind, Swiggy One squares up more with Zomato Gold; Zepto Pass is not even in the frame of our reference right now. 

Despite increasing Swiggy One's subscription pricing, and offering free delivery at a larger scale, there is no dent in the overall profitability of the category. There are a 100 line items which go into the profitability of the company and not just one.