Swiggy suspends 'Genie' service temporarily, shuts down Supr Daily across 5 Cities

Swiggy's subscription-based morning delivery service SuprDaily is being scaled out, according to cofounder Phani Kishan in a blog post on Tuesday. Swiggy bought Supr Daily, milk, bread, and other grocery delivery app, in 2018. As chief executive officer of Supr Daily, Kishan, who was named cofounder last year, has been in charge.

Swiggy also discontinued its pick-and-drop service Genie in numerous cities on the same day as the announcement. To be clear, unlike Supr Daily, which is being scaled back for financial reasons, Genie will not be accessible in a few places for the time being due to a rise in demand and a lack of delivery partners.

Highlights

• Supr Daily will suspend operations in Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, and Chennai.

• It plans to continue its services in Bengaluru and further its efforts in the city.

• Food delivery platform Swiggy has announced that it will scale down operations of Supr Daily to attain "business-market fit goals".

• Swiggy has halted the pick-and-drop service, Genie, in multiple cities due to a surge in demand.

Due to a shortage of delivery staff, food delivery giant Swiggy has temporarily suspended its "Genie" service in three cities: Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Mumbai. This is owing to an increase in demand for Swiggy's many services, such as Instamart, an immediate grocery delivery service, and 'Genie,' among others, in major metropolitan areas.

“The restructuring has an impact on employees operating in these five cities and some corporate employees as we right-size the organization to be in line with our scale and stage. I’m glad to inform you that we’ve identified relevant roles for a significant majority of the employees within the open requisitions across the broader organization and expect to place the rest over the next few weeks,” Kishan said in the email, which was published as a blogpost on Supr Daily’s website.

According to a press statement, the firm has been compelled to rethink its goals and focus its resources on its most profitable offerings. Swiggy claimed in an internal email that the 'Genie' door-to-door delivery service will be temporarily unavailable in three of the 68 locations where it operates.

Swiggy's main competitor Zomato has also been under fire in the last year. While its stock peaked at Rs 169.10 on the BSE on November 16, 2021, it has since plummeted by more than 70%, causing investors to lose approximately Rs 1 trillion in market value.

The food delivery service is currently trading at a disadvantage to its previous private valuation of $5.4 billion in early 2021. Swiggy was valued at $10.7 billion last year.

“We will treat hiring as a privilege and be deliberate about when and where we add headcount. We will be even more hardcore about costs across the board. We have to make sure our unit economics work before we go big. The least efficient marketing and incentive spend will be pulled back and some initiatives that require substantial capital will be slowed,” he said.

This comes at a time when some tech stocks have taken a significant hit from their recent highs because of pandemic-driven growth. Many computer businesses that have had rapid growth in recent years are cutting expenses and conserving resources, including laying off people.

To address a "seismic change" in investor attitude, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced the company will delay recruiting and decrease marketing and incentive expenditure.