Daybreak - Sriharsha Majety is pressing hard reset on the Swiggy playbook

Episode Date: September 28, 2025

Swiggy, once the dominant force in India’s quick-commerce market, is now struggling to keep pace. Since its IPO, Instamart’s share has slipped to about 25%, well behind Blinkit’s commanding over 50%. To engineer a turnaround, CEO Sriharsha Majety is driving sweeping changes at the company—fuelled by a wave of ex-Flipkart hires, including Amitesh Jha as Instamart’s new chief. The shake-up marks a cultural pivot from Swiggy’s meticulous “doc culture” to a harder-edged “move fast, fail fast” ethos. But with Blinkit and Zepto racing ahead, whether this reset can restore Swiggy’s edge or leave it further behind in the quick-commerce race remains to be seen.Compete in India's first and only case competition.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcast, you've probably heard me. My interruptions, my analogies and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too? It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Raman Ganeshan, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the Sietamination. secret-source stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of

multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing and extensive post-production. Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording. Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get an alert as soon as we release our first episode, please follow Intermission on Spotify and Apple podcast or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. At 9.30am on a Wednesday in July, Swiggy's CEO Sri Hirshamajati was already on the phone.

Most employees hadn't even locked in at Swiggy's Bangalore office at the time. The 39-year-old co-founder wanted to know why the dashboard tracking the number of orders was blinking red. He rang up a senior executive who told him that one of the dark stores had serviceability and manpower issues. This is how Majeti's mornings begin these days, scanning the numbers and then immediately dialing the city head responsible. And all this before heading into office himself. In his 10th year at the helm, Majeti has found himself steering Swiggy out of a very tough spot. After dominating India's nascent quick commerce sector in January 2024, Swiggy's Instamart, which commanded, more than half the market in 2022, slid to second place.

Now, as we reported last week, its rival blanket has grown to capture more than half the market, and Zepto, still burning cash, is closing in. Swiggy Instamart meanwhile is just left with 25% of market share as of August this year. To put it simply, Swiggy has been pushed into a corner, and both founder and organization have some intense maneuvering to do if they are to get out of it. So it began with Swiggy cutting away the fat. It shut down several side projects, the most recent of which was Jeannie, its pickup and drop service.

But all this, so far at least, has made little difference to its market share. Which is why Majeti believes that doubling down on Instamart and QuickCommerce is the only way to win back lost ground. The morning calls are only a part of these changes. Another is the introduction of several ex-flip-cut employees. They have been brought in to replace many from the leadership team who have been leaving Swiggy over the last couple of years. And these former Flipkart folks aren't just bringing expertise to the company.

They're also bringing a whole different workplace attitude and workflow that's shaking up the way Swigy used to do things. So what's happening behind the scenes? The Ken reporter Noha Bubere spoke to a bunch of senior executives at Swigy to understand how the company has changed since it listed. And today, she's in the studio with us to tell us all about how Swiggy is setting up a new course for themselves and what challenges they have awaiting them.

Thank you so much for joining us, Noha. To begin with, can you set the scene for us a little? What sort of a position is Swiggy in right now? And, you know, especially after its IPO, which seemed to be broadly successful, right? What's happened since then that's warranting such big changes within the company? So, Swiggy used to be the market leader

in terms of quick commerce, and then in the past couple years, they lost track of their competition, the market, and lost a lot of market share even to someone like a Zepto, which was relatively newer. Blinket now has like over 50% market share. So that gap just kept widening. And even Zomato's shares, like, you know,

was valued at 2.5 times of Spiggy in November, 24. when Swiggy went public. And today the gap that we see is like roughly 3x. So Swigy has always been trailing largely behind its core competitors. And I think for it to change that it had to be some kind of a drastic organizational shift because the way the organization was functioning up until the IPO was like healing behind Blinket and Zepto and even Zomato. So it had to do something strictly. strategically different to change that perception altogether.

And that's when the people who had, like, you know, help Swiggy reach a point where they could go public were not the same people who could help it grow. So, and that was very, like, easily understood by Majetti and the senior executives there. Because a lot of people started leaving the organization around the time it was going to go public. So it was clearly, like, you know, Swiggy's way of saying that, either you like go big or go home, you have to bring something else to the table. We can't keep doing the same things we have been doing up until this point or like we will essentially die.

Yeah, I'm sure that's quite a lot of pressure. And especially in a time like this, a lot of responsibility must fall on the founder, right? So how are Majeti's employees seeing his leadership in this particular period? Among my conversations, one thing, like one thing if I could point out, which was, um, very clear across executives was how Harsha was as a leader. He's a calm person. He does not shout at people. He has a way of talking to them and getting his point across.

And he is a person who keeps to himself. He's a very introverted kind of a leader, but he knows when and where to step up when the organization needs it. And he prefers it that way. He doesn't want himself to overshadow Swiggy beyond a certain point. But yeah, he's like, he's mostly in meetings when he's in office. One meeting ends, the other starts.

He's very much in tune with being simple rather than someone else just because he's a founder of a very large organisation now. He's not someone who's like very heavy on building personal rapper with most of his employees, but at least with the senior leaders, he used to have the Saturday connects where people in the M team, which is the leadership team at Swiggy, used to get together and they would just like, you know, get coffee somewhere, talk about things beyond work. You're not talking about Swiggy with him then. I think I'd ask something like, you know, what stands out about Harsha when he's in a room?

And someone was like, the one thing you'll always notice is that the Swiggy jacket that he's wearing. And I was like, okay, that's interesting, interesting wardrobe choice. But yeah, that's how he is. Right. So, okay, speaking of the leadership team at Swiggy, part of what's happening differently at the organization right now is, as we mentioned earlier, the sudden and rather large influx of ex-flip-Cart employees joining Swiggy. When did this, you know, migration start?

We have seen a lot of FlipCard executives come into Swiggy Instamard, literally the entire leadership team in Instamart now, which is headed by Amity Shah, who was previously at Flipkart. for over a decade. So now he's the CEO for Instamart and like under him we see a lot of people from the company coming into the organization. I had one really interesting conversation where just one line was told by the executive that like you know, Amateesh coming to Swiggy from Flipcard has made Swiggy more Flipcard now

than sticking to like what Swiggy's values and principles used to stand for. It was clear that there was a certain thing. way that Swiggy used to function earlier focused more on like the Amazonian way of doing things where you have a talk culture, you write everything out and then you present it in meetings. But with Flipkart coming in, they always have a kind of a mentality where you take risky bets, you do things faster and you fail fast if that is the case, but you have to try. So that is what Amit Asian, other Flipkart executives are bringing into Swiggy. where the focus went away from document to now Excel sheets.

Right. So that explains the extra focus on numbers. You know from the story we had in the beginning of how Majeti called up that executive to ask him why the dashboard was blinking. So we know that this influx began with Amitya Chha joining as the Instamad CEO. And of course, because he was at Flipkart for more than a decade,

he would definitely have people who are ready to follow his lead even at a new organization. But how has so? Sviggy have been adjusting to this development. Of course, when change happens, either two things will happen. People who were known or like who used to work a certain way would leave because this is not the way they intend to work in an organization. Or the second way is the organization changes.

And both things happened. So Instamart started losing people who grew the business a certain way And then on the other hand, even executives like Harsha himself started adapting to this change of, okay, things used to work a certain way. But now let's see if the new way of working will benefit Swiggy in the long run. You could see that Amityesh was bringing in FIPCARD people on priority because those are the people he knows best and has worked with for the longest time. Yeah. And maturity did not want to like, you know, interject or make any decisions.

and wanted to give Amitya the opportunity to do what he wanted to do, let him be a proper leader for Instamard, and make those decisions which come with being the CEO. For Swiggy, maybe for them, the Flipkart way of working was a new challenge that they wanted to accept to see that maybe if that is the way for them to grow. It's not necessarily that what didn't work for Flipkart would not work for Swiggy. So they wanted to like bet on that. and take that challenge up.

That's what they did. And once that started happening, we saw more and more people come from Flipkartiswigi. And that did not go unnoticed by the Swiggy people who were already there and the change of culture that they started seeing. In the last one year, I think if there were two or three town halls that happened, the most upvoted question, basically you send questions in anonymously in these larger town halls, was that why are we at Swiggy hiring so many people from

Flipcard. Why are we okay with this change of culture happening right now? Of course, that makes sense. Just to kind of flesh it out for our listeners, could you tell us how many people roughly have moved from Flipcard to Swiggy? In the leadership ring at Instamart, even in the food business that are people from Flipkart have come in, but I would say it's like would be 15 to 20 people just in like leadership or like, you know, second or third managerial positions. Wow, that's quite a lot. So now that all of these changes have started taking place, what kind of a place is Swiggy in right now as we speak?

In terms of business decisions, post the IPO, Swiggy has tried to like change a lot of things about itself to like, you know, become profitable, to grow sustainably. But when we talk about speaking in the context of how Blinket and Zepto have grown particularly Blinket, not even Zepto, we see that Blinket has always been someone who doesn't copy other competition as such. One example I could give which I also was like, you know,

pointed out during the course of the story was Zepto has started this Zepto Saver. as a feature on its quick commerce platform, Swigy followed that for Instamart with MacSaver, where like, you know, the idea is that people will buy in bulk and like, you know, the cost would be cheaper. And then you build that habit of where people will come back to you for like that feature. But you're also losing money, right? You're burning money when you're selling items for a cheaper price.

Blinket did not follow that. Blinket has always been someone which, Maybe they will start or like innovate first. Maybe it's in the categories that they are doing or the EMI option they started giving to their customers. But Swiggy from like, you know, being their number one platform in Quick Commerce went into this position where it was following more than creating something for the customers to see and feel that it's like an innovator company now. And they do want to, I think, break that perception and be seen as like a very tough competition to Blinket and even SEPTO. So I think post the IPO, a lot of effort has gone into changing that. And I'll make it to the position where like, you know, it is comparable across geographies, not just in one particular city to how Blinket has grown and Blinket has functioned.

Right, of course. And as we know, catching up with Blinket is going. going to be quite a daunting task. But is there something you think is working for Swiggy right now? Swigy as an organization, I would say, at least it is open to change. It's an organization which is like open to that kind of structural and behavioral change. I think Swiggy is in a position where it is making decisions that can help its leaders across its businesses to take those decisions even without majority being involved.

When I look at Swiggy, when I think that they are doing that, they're taking possible measures to change that maybe their cold DNA. Whether it works out in their favor or whether it becomes an even worse thing for them is like a second order effect. I see. So basically a lot of this we will only see playing out over the next few months. Of course, it's great for Swiggy that it's open to this kind of micro-level change, right? especially now that they're answerable to so many investors. And as our conversation has covered, a lot of big moves are already in motion.

So what do you think is the plan for Swiggy right now? And what challenges do you see coming up for them? I think in the last quarterly result, Amityi and Majetti had like said very particularly that they, there are certain features, like certain things that they're working on. And it's mostly, in some what, it is right now. like, you know, the focus, the key part of the entire puzzle at Swigene used to figure out where it fits better for them in terms of becoming a very growth-centric and profitable business.

And certain things like even the max saver feature, which they want to focus on to get more people to buy in bulk and like, you know, come onto the platform has its positives and negatives. because if you beyond a point are seen as an organization or a platform which is selling products for cheaper, then you'll be stuck in that rut where you can never sell anything for a premium price. And with commerce as a product itself is for Metro and Tier 1 cities. So people have the luxury of paying premium to get the convenience of 10-minute delivery. But even then in those parts, if your core proposition, starts sounding like a discount platform,

in the long run, it will only hurt the organisation. Vicky needs to raise at least like 500 million to like, you know, in the next two, three quarters just to like be able to function properly because they're running out of money, they're losing cash really fast because of the losses that are propping up. We have already seen that the growth of Instamart is also like, if we were willing to like,

the losses that are propping up for Swiggy right now. So they have to either change our proposition or think of like a middle ground where they can do both, where they can have different features for customers to like, you know, come on the platform more and more. But they also buy like higher AOV items so that like it goes hand in hand with how the market is currently functioning. To conclude, everything that's,

considered, it seems like Swiggy is done playing nice. Doubling down on Instamart and experimenting, innovating is the only way out for them. And as an executive said to Noha, the quick, agile and aggressive flip-cut way is no longer an option. It's a necessity. Swiggy has neither the market reign of Blinket nor does it have piles of cash to burn like Zepto. They're stuck squarely in between two giants who are also only growing. And that means Majeti, Jha and the rest of the M-Bronkidhi. team have to really up that game.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings. A full subscription offers daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and a whole bunch of premium podcasts. To subscribe, head to the Ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the Ken website. Today's episode was hosted and produced by my colleague Rachel Varghis and Eirgyz and

edited by Rajiv Sien.