India’s Swiggy reports wider quarterly loss on marketing cost spike

Swiggy’s quarterly loss nearly doubled from a year earlier as the Indian online delivery platform spent more on marketing to attract customers in a highly-competitive market, its results showed on Thursday.

Swiggy, a decade-old player and one of the market leaders in the food delivery business alongside Eternal’s Zomato, continues investing in the business through marketing, platform upgrades and loyalty programs.

It is also pouring money into its quick-commerce arm, Instamart, as it opens more stores, strengthens logistics, and offers discounts.

The company faced challenges related to lower availability of delivery partners due to earlier-than-expected monsoon showers in India.

Meanwhile, marketing investments remained high amid “sticky competitive intensity,” it said in a statement.

India’s quick commerce space is getting crowded with entrants like Tata-backed BigBasket and Amazon. The food delivery space is also seeing rising competition with the foray of ride-hailing platform, Rapido, in which Swiggy owns a 12 per cent stake.

Swiggy’s total revenue surged 54 per cent to 49.61 billion rupees ($566.2 million) in the quarter ended June 30, while its consolidated expenses jumped about 60 per cent to 62.44 billion rupees, as sales promotions more than doubled.

Its consolidated net loss widened to 11.97 billion rupees for the quarter, from a loss of 6.11 billion rupees a year ago.

Swiggy expanded to 127 cities from 124 in the previous quarter, added 41 stores, and continued scaling up store sizes.

Gross order value from its food delivery segment rose about 19 per cent to 80.86 billion rupees in the June quarter, while Instamart’s gross order value surged nearly 108 per cent to 56.55 billion rupees.

($1 = 87.5740 Indian rupees)

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