Swiggy IPO: Swiggy IPO: Here’s how it stacks up against Zomato

The anchor portion of food and grocery delivery company Swiggy’s initial public offering (IPO) opened on Tuesday with the public issue launching on Wednesday. The Bengaluru-based company, which is going public at a valuation of $11.3 billion, is in fierce rivalry with its Gurugram-based competitor Zomato across segments such as food delivery, quick commerce and dining out.

Here’s how the two rivals stack up against each other:

While Swiggy entered both food delivery and quick commerce spaces before Zomato, the IPO-bound company has been trailing its listed rival across metrics.

For the first quarter of FY25, Swiggy’s operating revenue came in at Rs 3,222 crore vs Zomato’s Rs 4,206 crore.

More importantly, during the quarter, Swiggy reported a net loss of Rs 611 crore against Zomato’s net profit of Rs 253 crore. Zomato has reported profits for every quarter since April-June 2023.

Quick commerce

In the rapidly growing 10-minute grocery delivery segment, Swiggy’s vertical Instamart recorded gross order value (GOV) of Rs 2,724 crore in the April-June period, compared to Zomato-owned Blinkit’s Rs 4,923 crore.

Apart from each other, Instamart and Blinkit also compete with the likes of Nexus Venture Partners-backed Zepto, Walmart-owned Flipkart and Tata Digital-backed Bigbasket’s BB Now in the quick commerce space.

Blinkit’s higher GOV could be attributed to the company’s wider presence in terms of its number of dark stores, or micro warehouses from where 10-minute deliveries are made.

At the end of the June quarter, Swiggy Instamart had 557 dark stores while Blinkit had 639.

Blinkit plans to expand its dark store footprint to 2,000 by the end of 2026, while Instamart will also use Swiggy’s IPO proceeds to open 741 dark stores, it said in its red herring prospectus.

Interestingly, Blinkit also had a higher average order value in the June quarter at Rs 625, compared to Instamart’s Rs 487.

Food delivery

Over the years, the two rivals have slugged it out in the food delivery space coming out on top of several other players that no longer operate in the space.

Even though, for both companies, quick commerce is now the fastest growing, food delivery continues to remain the biggest contributor to their revenues.

While Swiggy’s food delivery business reported a GOV of Rs 6,808 crore in the April-June period, Zomato’s food delivery GOV came in at Rs 9,264 crore.

Swiggy had 14.03 million average monthly transacting customers in Q1FY25 while Zomato had 20.3 million.

The rivalry between the two companies continues in their fundraising plans as well. Close on the heels of Swiggy’s plan to raise Rs 4,499 crore in primary capital through its IPO, Zomato has also announced raising Rs 8,500 crore through a qualified institutional placement.