Daybreak - What does Swish know about 10-minute food delivery that Zomato or Swiggy doesn’t?

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

Swish launched less than a year ago with a simple promise: hot food in 10 minutes. It's already raised 16 million dollars, with another 30 to 35 million reportedly on the way. But the giants who tried this before — Zomato, Zepto, Swiggy — have all stumbled, scaled back, or shut down. The problem isn't the idea. It's the math. Small order sizes, a lack of dedicated riders and razor-thin margins. Swish and its investors thinks it has an edge the others didn't. But can a one-year-old startup crack what India's biggest food delivery companies couldn't?Tune in.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 podcasts, 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 Ganesh, 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 secret sauce 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 alert, as soon as we release our first studio recording, 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. Late last month, Swiggy, the food delivery giant, shut down snack. It's standalone quick delivery app that gets you your food in 10 to 15 minutes. It had been less than a year after it launched and the company said that it was facing difficulties in making

orders profitable. Snacks shut down is just the latest in a string of retreats where food delivery giants have been slowly reconsidering their expansion into quick delivery. Zomato shut down its vertical called quick after just five months and even Zepto scaled back its popular cafe network from 600 to 400 stores. It looks like the incumbents are being cautious because while speed excites consumers, for companies it strains margins heavily. But still, some and investors are doubling down on a one-year-old Bangalore startup with the exact same bet. I'm talking about Swish. It launched in August 2024 with a bold promise, hot meals in roughly 10 minutes. In less than a year, it raised $2 million in seed funding led by Axel than $14 million

in a Series A led by Hara Global. It's now reportedly in talks to raise another 30 to 35 million in a series B co-led by Axel and Bane Capital. That's a pretty serious vote of confidence, especially for a company that's built around one of the hardest promises in food, speed. And also, because the food delivery giants have already tested this promise, and like I mentioned earlier,

some have started to take a step back. But still, they're not giving up entirely. Take Swiggy, for example. Even after shutting down snack, Swiggy is still experimenting with Bolt, trying to compress a 40-minute delivery into 10 to 15 minutes. And considering the investors that are backing Swish, it seems like the interest in the category is still strong.

Because now, the debate itself has shifted. It's no longer about whether a company should enter fast food delivery. It's now about who can make the math work. Now, Swish isn't exactly profitable either. In fact, in the year that ended in March 2025, it posted a loss of around 20 crore against a revenue of just 4 crores. But its investors believe it has a structural edge

the giants don't. Swiss runs its own kitchens. It controls menus, standardizes recipes, manages procurement and limits the delivery radius to a few kilometers. But that edge is what could point to a path of profitability. Because now, all Swish needs to do is prove that if customers order frequently enough and from close enough,

the small order sizes stop mattering. And that's the problem, even the sector leaders have failed to solve until now. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host, Richard Rikis, and every day of the week, my co-host, Nikha Sharma and I will bring you one news story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Monday, the 9th of March. Zomato shut down quick within five months of its launch in early 2025. It told shareholders that the company did not see a part to profitability without compromising

customer experience. Now, there have been many experiments in rapid food delivery. Still, none of the models, including Zepto Cafe, have been able to scale without stretching their margins. Angkor Bissend, from the knowledge company, a management consultancy, told my colleague, the Ken reporter Supratanubam, that Swiki and Zomato's food delivery segments have matured, and the growth is mostly coming from their quick commerce segments now. But that doesn't mean food delivery has hit a ceiling. For over a decade, decade, the two giants have been piloting dozens of products trying to crack the market. Still, Ankur says that they've only scratched the surface.

Take Swiggy Access, which was launched in 2017. It was a cloud kitchen program that gave restaurant partners space in high demand areas without actually having to pay the real estate or infrastructure costs. After expanding to over 1,000 kitchens in 14 cities, Swiggy sold the vertical in 2023. A year after that came Bolt, promising food is. In 10 minutes. Within a year, Swiggy claimed that Bolt was alive in 700 cities. While it accounts for more than one in 10 food delivery orders on the platform,

lower average order value and lower margins remain a challenge for Bolt. When it comes to Zomato, other than quick, it has also launched Bistro under Blinket, which delivers affordable meals and snacks. The company says that there are early signs of product market fit, but Bistro is still mostly limited to 45 kitchens in Delhi and Bangalore. And that's what the incumbents have been up to. But it was actually Zepto, a relatively new player that was actually the first to experiment with this style of delivery system. The trick they cracked was optimizing its existing assets, real estate and manpower.

Back in April 2022, it noticed that its dark stores saw massive traffic during morning grocery runs and right before the evening dinner rush. But between the slum hours of 10.30 a.m. and 4.30 p.m., the stores and staff were sitting idle. To capitalize on the peak delivery times at Swiggy and Somato, even Zepto's riders were finding parallel gigs there. So, Zepto built cafe, a quick service food vertical using the same real estate, the same staff, and a small 150 square kitchen to serve beverages and food items through the slow hours. In dense neighborhoods like Indranagar and Kora Mangla, it worked really well because the customers were hardly a kilometer away. Their coffee stayed hot and the smoothie stayed cold. Zepto even saw great traction over the weekends. At its peak, Zepto ran 600 cafes across 32 cities.

But in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, order density just wasn't where it needed to be. Zepto ended up shutting nearly 200 outlets in November 2025. Adid Palichs, Zepto's co-founder, wrote online that it's not been easy to get this business of the ground. He also said that the execution is highly complex and there were multiple do-or-die challenges. along the way. The thing is, the company is also now fine-tuning its model ahead of its IPO, aiming to improve its financials before it files its RHP for an 11,000-crow-ru-ru-pies listing. To put it simply, all three giants hit the same wall. Without enough orders, the unit economics simply wasn't working. Swish, meanwhile, is bringing what seems to be a fresh

approach. Stay tuned. Axel is one of Swish's main investors holding over 20,7,000, percent in the company. It was also an early backer of Swiggy and reportedly made 35 times returns when Swiggy went public. So Swish is the investor's second bet on the food cycle. On paper, Swish has none of the advantages the giants do. It doesn't have a dark store network or an army of riders that's already on its payroll. Swish was founded in August 24 by Aniket Shah, Suresh Kumar Saran and Ujwal Sukeja. Right now, the company offers, hyper-local delivery across select pin codes in Bangalore. It had planned to expand to around 150 neighbourhood kitchens by early 2025,

though multiple people close to the company told the ken that that's the target it hasn't hit yet. But what separates swish from Swiggy and Zomato is the control it has on its operations. It owns all its kitchens, it decides the menu, standardizes the recipes and manages the supply chain end to end. A VC investor who backed Swiggy told Suprit that whether it was Swiki access or Zomato every day, which was a service designed to deliver affordable home-style food, they all had profitability issues tied to managing external restaurant partners. Profitability was always years away.

But with Swish being in direct control of all variables, the business is simpler, which he says makes profitability achievable at the store level so that there's no need to wait for scale. Now, in a 40-minute delivery, it's common for both Swiggy and Zomato to club multiple orders under the standard delivery option going in the same direction. That keeps the cost of delivery low. But a 10-minute window breaks that logic entirely. You can't batch orders. You need a dedicated rider for each one. This is a structural cost. Swish's average order value reportedly ranges between 250 rupees and 300 rupees. So how does that you? the company solve for the structural cost.

The investor quoted earlier explained that it's all in the order frequency. If a customer orders three times a week from a kitchen that's five minutes away, the weekly order value starts to rival or even beat a traditional platform. That said, Swish, of course, has its own challenges. In the year to March 2025, it spent 1.5 times its revenue on salaries alone, and that's before you even count the delivery staff. headcount jumped nearly 7-fold to over 690 in the nine months to August 2025. Aniket Shah, the co-founder of Swish, said that one of the biggest learnings has been that speed alone does not build retention.

He said that this is more than logistics. It's a fresh food production and kitchen operations heavy business. The thing is, the penetration of out-of-home food consumption in India is still quite nascent. An analyst who tracks the food and beverage market told us that out of every, 90 meals today, only about 5 or 6 are ordered from outside. He explained that in Nivald markets, it's around 50%. Even if companies can double the 5 to 6 number to 11, that's massive headroom for growth. And that's exactly where the price is.

But how exactly does one even make biryani or idlies in 10 minutes? The answer to that for most quick service players is centralized preparation. Food is partially cooked, blast chilled and shipped to the nearest cloud kitchen. When an order comes in, it's zapped in a microwave or a high heat oven, which even goes as high as 200 degrees Celsius to save time, packed and then sent out. Though for Swish, Aniket Shah, the co-founder, maintains that it does not use a microwave at its cloud kitchens. So, is there a compromise on quality? Aniket Besant from the consultancy I mentioned earlier believes that that must definitely be the case. Though, of course, in many cases, even 40-minute deliveries face that same compromises.

But the larger challenge for quick food delivery in general might actually be that there remains a large chunk of Indians who genuinely believe that good cooking takes time. Restaurant runners like Anurag Katriar, who leads Indigo hospitality, argue that there is no such thing as good food in 10 minutes. And Swish's challenge now is to build its business profitably even with that limitation in mind. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber focus, 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 Vargis and edited by Rajiv Sien.