Daybreak - Why Swiggy wants to stay out of the Flipkart-Amazon spending war

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

Swiggy CEO Sriharsha Majety told Bloomberg in an interview last week that his company would stay out of the spending war being waged by Amazon, Flipkart, and Reliance in India's quick commerce market. He invoked the Airtel-Jio price war as a precedent, argued that chasing market share through discounts only postpones the problem, and said Swiggy has Rs 15,000 crore in the bank to play the long game.But Swiggy invented this category. And Blinkit, which came years later, now has twice the dark stores, twice the users, and losses that are narrowing. So is this a strategy or a rationalisation?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.

We're okay to lose customers on purpose is a bold statement to make, and it's even bolder when your stock has fallen nearly 60% from its peak. Last week, Swiggy CEO Sri Harshab Majeti sat down with Bloomberg and made exactly this case. You see, Flipcott and Reliance are currently in a full-scale spending war to deliver groceries to you under 10 minutes, using discounts after discounts and opening one dark store after another. But Majeti said that Swiggy would sit this one out. Instead, he said that the company is willing to shed some users in the short run to hold on to the ones who are loyal and make the company profitable.

To explain why, he cited the example that a senior Airtel executive had recently shared with Swiggy's own leadership. When Gio triggered a price warrant telecom, Airtel chose economics over subscribe account. Many competitors disappeared or consolidated, but Airtel held its position. It is a clean analogy and honestly it does sound like a vision. But he also said something else that didn't get as much attention. Majeti told Bloomberg, if we lose, capital will not be the reason to lose. I say that also because I have 15,000 crore rupees in the bank. So, this is not a company pulling back because it's running.

out of road. Majeti is basically arguing that this is a deliberate choice. But Swigy invented this category. Instamart launched in 2020, a good two years before Zumato even acquired Blinket. In the financial year 2022 and 23, Swiggy's revenue was nearly 1,000 crore rupees higher than Eternals, which is Zomato's parent company. So the head start and the advantage were very real. But, Today, Blinket has twice as many dark stores and more than twice as many monthly users. Its net order value has grown seven times since early 2024. Instamarts, on the other hand, has grown less than four times. Losses at Swiggy widened by a third to over $4,000 crore rupees in the financial year, 2026.

In fact, GM Financial, a brokerage and a financial services firm, valued Instamart as, precisely zero in April this year. So here's the thing. You see, when Airtel chose restraint, it was an incumbent that was making a calculated bet from a position of strength. So the question that Majeti's interview leaves hanging and the one that we will try to answer in this episode is whether Swiggy is making a strategy or is it actually just making peace with a position that it has already found itself in. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host, Nidha Sharma, and I don't chase the news cycle.

Instead, every day of the week, my colleague, Rachel Vargis and I, will come to you with one business story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Tuesday, the 2nd of June. Conventional wisdom says that when a company goes public, the pressure to perform sharpens. In November 2024, Swiggy listed on the Indian stock exchanges. The IPO was a landmark moment. Over 500 Swiggy employees saw their wealth transform in a single day. By comparison, when Zumato, Eternal, went public in 2021, it made around 20 people dollar

millionaires. Senior Swiggy executives, speaking to my colleague, the Ken reporter Supri Tanupam, described what had happened in the month after the IPO. Many employees, newly wealthy, settled into their comfort zones, and many, were elevated to the VP level. But their performance kind of stayed flat. The company had reshaped its leadership just before the IPO, bringing in Amityesh Jha, a Flipkot veteran as the CEO of Instamot,

and Saarang Krishnamurti as the COO, though Krishamurthi left in 2025. Madhusudan Rao had taken over as the chief technology officer, and Rohit Kapoor took the charge of food delivery and dine out. In fact, Majeti himself had previously overseen food delivery. Co-founder Fanny Krishna Adipali had run Instamot. So all this restructuring was basically meant to signal focus. One executive, though, told the Ken quite bluntly.

The IPO delayed our product launches and slowed down our growth curve. Many product approvals were delayed citing the IPO. Eternal founder, Dipinder Goil, had faced a version of this after his own IPO in 2021. He described it openly at an event. Competent people making money for the first time and then losing their drive. Guell's response to this was clear the house. He removed everyone who had grown complacent.

Swiggy's version of the same story landed harder. More millionaires and more comfort and less urgency. The results are visible everywhere you look. Instamart spending per order has actually gone up but the number of users it's adding each quarter, barely a trickle. Blinket, on the other hand, added as many new users in one quarter as Instamart managed to add over 15 months. And when you look at how much money is actually flowing through each platform, Blinket has grown roughly seven times over since early 2024. Instamart has grown less than four.

Then there is also the problem of the app. Swiggy built an all-in-one app, food delivery, quick commerce together. But it records fewer downloads than Zomato and Blinkets standalone apps individually. A Deloitte consultant put it quite plainly. They said there is a gap between how Swiggy communicates with existing users and how it reaches new ones. The super app has never been marketed as a super app. Actually, all of this ultimately boils down to a pattern that runs through. Swiggy's history. More on that in the next segment. So here's the pattern. Swiggy spots an opportunity

quite early, earlier than its rivals, and then it enters that space. But when the moment comes, when it matters the most, Swiggy hesitates. Quick Commerce is actually the clearest example of this. Blinket was struggling when Eternal acquired it in 2022. So Goel decided to pour in money into dark stores without even thinking twice, adding more stores in a single quarter than Instamot had added all year. Today, Blinket has roughly twice as many dog stores as Instamort and stocks nearly 60% more product categories in Tier 1 cities.

The same pattern shows up in the out-of-home segment. Swiggy has dine out for restaurant reservations and scenes its events platform. Together, they are epita positive. But their combined revenue, in FY 2026 was 375 crore rupees. Eternals District, its competing platform on the other hand, has hit almost 1,000 crore rupees. Even in the quick food delivery, Swiggy launched SNAP, which is a rapid food delivery service,

but it shut it down within a couple of quarters. But competitors like Zepto Cafe, Eternals Bistro, and the startup Swish, which just raised a new funding round are still running. Another example is Swiggy's latest attempt called Toing, a budget delivery service with the tagline lowest guaranteed price. But its budget positioning aimed at metro consumers is a little bit confusing. Eternal CFO, Akshanth Goel, said publicly that he could not understand what problem toying was solving for customers or even restaurants.

Satish Mina of market research firm Datum Intelligence put the strategic gap blingly. Blinket, he says, has identified its consumers, which is urban households that prioritize convenience and will pay for it. Amazon now is targeting Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. FlipCart Minutes wants smaller cities. But Instamart's target customer remains undefined. GM Financial, the brokerage, valued Instamart at precise. precisely zero in April.

And it went further suggesting that the company would be better off acquired by a larger rival. Now, most analysts that the Ken spoke to pushed back on this. But the underlying concern still holds. Swiggy still has the brand and the reach. Analysts say that the company's current focus on contribution margins, which is trying to get Instamart to break even on each order, is wrong priority at the wrong time. The quick commerce market is still expanding.

Product market fit is still evolving and as one analyst said directly, growth and more growth is the only way forward. Now, Swiggy's earnings call last month was meant to project more clarity on this. But most people walked away with something else entirely. 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 a subscriber-only offerings and 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 website. Today's episode was hosted and produced by my colleague Snitha Sharma and edited by Rajiv Sien.