Food delivery platform Swiggy, on Friday said that ‘Bolt‘, its 15-minute food delivery service, is now operational in over 500 cities across the country.
Launched in October last year, ‘Bolt’ currently accounts for 10% of all the food orders on the platform, a statement from the firm said. In its quarterly results for October-December, the firm’s management had informed that this stood at 9%.
Interestingly, Swiggy said that the customers acquired through Bolt show a 4-6% higher retention rate when compared to the platform’s average.
Currently, Swiggy has over 45,000 restaurant partners including popular QSR chains like McDonald’s, KFC, Subway and Burger King.
Notably, in order to bring down the delivery time, Bolt delivers dishes with minimal preparation time from restaurants located within a radius of 2 kms. The service is available under the Food section of the Swiggy app.
Rohit Kapoor, CEO of Swiggy Food Marketplaces said, “Seeing it scale to 500-plus cities in just a few months has been incredible. And this is just the beginning.”
For Swiggy, an increased adoption of Bolt could lead to a fall in delivery costs as the delivery distance is shorter than normal orders.
The development comes just a day after Swiggy’s rival Eternal announced that it is shutting down its Zomato Quick offering as it is not witnessing profitability without compromising on customer experience.
In a letter to shareholders, Eternal Founder Deepinder Goyal said that the current restaurant density and kitchen infrastructure is not set up for delivering orders in 10 minutes. This, he said, led to inconsistent customer experience.
In an analyst call after the announcement of results, Akshant Goyal, the firm’s CFO said that they are working on reducing the average delivery time of 30 minutes on Zomato but do not see much traction, should the delivery time be reduced to 10-15 minutes.
Deepinder, however, acknowledged that their main food business has been impacted by the emergence of quick food delivery platforms.