Swiggy has turned profitable (excluding ESOP costs) in the food delivery business as of March 2023, CEO Sriharsha Majety said in a company blog on Thursday.
The company is also very excited about the trajectory of Instamart. “We pioneered and built this category from the ground up, and have made disproportionate investments in Instamart given the attractiveness of the consumer proposition and its strategic importance to us,” said Majety. He added, ”The peak of our investments is behind us and today, Instamart is one of the leading players in the quick commerce space globally.”
Three-year-old, Swiggy Instamart is expected to hit contribution neutrality in the next few weeks. “Swiggy’s innovation culture and builder bias have made us the only horizontal hyperlocal player with offerings across food, grocery, hyper-local commerce, and concierge services. The ability to run low-investment but high-value experiments like Maxx, Minis, InsanelyGood, and many more is core to our DNA and a strength we never take for grant,” he added.
Also read: Swiggy disbursed over ₹31 crore in claim amounts to delivery partners in FY22-23
Majety also noted that it is the early days in India’s journey of eating out and food delivery, and is very sanguine about the growth potential over the next 2 decades. “We will continue to make responsible and measured interventions to fuel further growth in food delivery. There are many underserved geographic and consumer segments, and our goal remains to outpace industry growth by continuously investing in the right levers,” he added.
This development comes as multiple investors have slashed Swiggy’s valuation in their books. Baron Capital slashed the food delivery major’s valuation to $7.3 billion from the earlier $10.7 billion, which is a 32 per cent cut. Similarly, Invesco has cut Swigg’s valuation to $5.5 billion in January 2023, from its last valuation of $10.7 billion in January 2022.
Also read: Despite funding winter, India is the third largest startup ecosystem globally: NASSCOM
Market watchers told businessline that the primary reason for such valuation cuts is that unicorns are very close to initial public offering (IPO) and so quite comparable to publicly-listed companies. Now, if the publicly-listed comparable company is trading much lower then a private company’s valuation also gets slashed.
Zomato has seen a significant haircut from its listing valuation in January 2023 and that seems to have reflected in Swiggy’s private valuations as well. As funding winter continues, many other unicorns have also seen a drop in their private valuations, including Byju’s, Ola, PharmEasy, and PineLabs.