Swish cooks up fresh plan in India’s hot 10-min delivery fight

India’s food delivery giant Zomato may have pulled the plug on its quick food delivery platform just four months into its launch, but that isn’t stopping Swish, the youngest kid on the block, from going all-in on the same turf.

Photo credit: Swish

Less than a year old, Swish was founded by Aniket Shah, Ujjwal Sukheja, and Saran S and promises food delivery in 10 minutes. While customers in India aren’t short on speedy delivery options, Swish is promising that food will be fresher and tastier on arrival.

Two big names dominate the space in India: Swiggy Bolt and Zepto Cafe. While Swiggy Bolt partners with restaurants and Zepto Cafe buys “almost-ready food” from third-party vendors, Swish claims it owns the entire food delivery experience.

“We control every aspect of the process, from the food preparation to packaging to delivery,” co-founder and CEO Shah tells Tech in Asia.

Currently, Swish prepares the food in its own cloud kitchens — dubbed “delight centers” — though its services are only available in a few areas in Bengaluru, according to Tech in Asia’s findings.

Indeed, when we tried ordering from Swish in Bengaluru, the service was unavailable in the area.

But customers seem to like the platform: One Swish user posted on LinkedIn that the food they ordered on the platform “looks nice, smells better than it looks, and tastes better than it smells.”

So far, the startup has raised over US$16 million from investors including Accel and Hara Global.

However, standing out in a sector dominated by well-funded giants with massive user bases will take more than taste and speed. How does Swish plan to become the “billion-dollar-revenue” business that Shah wants it to be?

A winning recipe?

Over the years, food delivery players in India have added new features like group ordering, live tracking, and order scheduling, but the core user experience has remained largely unchanged.

Traditional food delivery platforms, which typically deliver items between 30 and 50 minutes, address impulse-driven food cravings to some extent, but Shah says there’s still a gap that is mostly unaddressed.

Quick food delivery providers go a step further: With faster delivery speeds, they are better able to hit users’ snacking needs or coffee and tea cravings.

Swish appears focused on “hot, freshly prepared meals – a category with very different operational demands and consumer expectations,” says Ashish Taneja, founding partner and CEO of VC firm GrowX Ventures.

Billion-dollar dream