Swiggy raises $15 million in Series D round led by Bessemer

As food-tech startup Swiggy raised $15 million in a Series D funding from Bessemer Venture Partners.

The Bengaluru-based company’s existing including SAIF Partners, Accel India, and Norwest Venture Partners also participated in the fourth round of funding.

The Bengaluru-based company will use the investment for technology upgradation, improving delivery efficiency, adding more restaurants to its platform, and to improve customer experience. Vishal Gupta, MD at Bessemer Venture Partners, said Swiggy’s “full-stack approach coupled with great execution has resulted in unparalleled customer experience, retention and business economics”.Swiggy has 9,000 restaurants listed on its platform.

According to an official statement, with this fresh infused capital, Swiggy has raised around $75.5 Mn (INR 500 Cr) till date. In order to fuel the growth, Swiggy recently ramped up its senior leadership by hiring vice-presidents across the divisions of marketing, product, HR, design and finance. These leaders, as the press release states, have nurtured high-growth companies in the past, and will be instrumental in shaping the strategy and maintaining the company’s leadership position in a fast growing food-tech category.

ET was the first to report in its June 22 edition that Bessemer is in advanced talks to invest $12 million or Rs 80 crore in Swiggy.

The money will help Swiggy compete strongly with restaurant listing company Zomato, which entered food delivery business previous year, as well as the Nexus Venture Partners-backed RoadRunnr-TinyOwl combine and Rocket Internet portfolio company Foodpanda. Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Sriharsha Majety said, “Our vision is to change the way India eats and we want to be the top-of-mind recall for the users for all their four meals a day”.

Swiggy was founded by BITS-Pilani alumni Sriharsha Majety, along with college friend Nandan Reddy and Rahul Jaimini, an IIT-Kharagpur graduate. Swiggy’s average delivery time is of 37 minutes, which the company claims is an industry benchmark. The company, which claims to achieve unit level profitability in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, will however, will not expand beyond the eight cities where it is now operational, he added.