Rohit Kapoor on Swiggy's food delivery slowdown; Group life insurance gains traction

Economic Times

03-06-2025

Happy Tuesday! As the food delivery market cools, aggregators are scrambling to find growth avenues. This and more in today's ETtech Morning Dispatch.
Also in the letter:
■ Krutrim AI's uptake struggles ■ ETtech Done Deals■ Tata Electronics' Malaysia foray
Pushing value meals and 10-min food delivery to revive growth: Swiggy's Rohit Kapoor
Rohit Kapoor, CEO (food marketplace), Swiggy
As the food delivery market cools, Swiggy is turning to quick meals, affordable combos, and deeper city penetration to stoke demand.
What's happening: In an exclusive interview with ET, Swiggy's food marketplace CEO Rohit Kapoor said growth will now come from low-frequency users and category innovation, not merely from city expansion. He also called for a more open dialogue between platforms and restaurants on commissions. Swiggy is focusing on three key growth drivers in food delivery: Expanding delivery-friendly categories
Drawing low-frequency users into the fold with value bundles
Scaling 10-minute deliveries via its Bolt platform
By the numbers:
Swiggy's food delivery GOV grew 17.6% YoY in Q4
Bolt now accounts for 12% of Swiggy's delivery volumes
Food delivery covers around 700 cities; density, not geography, is now the focus
Also Read: How Swiggy and Zomato are dealing with the slowdown in food delivery
Why it matters: With quick commerce eating into food delivery profits, Swiggy and Zomato are under pressure to revive their core businesses. Kapoor says there's latent demand to tap — but unlocking it depends on restaurant supply, better aggregator-partner dynamics, and faster fulfilment.
On restaurant partners: Aggregators' ties with restaurant partners have been strained in recent years over the commissions rates. Kapoor acknowledged the need for more conversation, but argued the current narrative often overlooks the larger economic shift aggregators have enabled.
Also Read: Swiggy Food CEO Rohit Kapoor sees Bolt as core future offering
New-age life insurance firms tap group products to boost business
Acko, Go Digit and CreditAccess, three new-age life insurance players licensed in 2023, have completed their first full financial year in FY25. Industry data shows that in their initial phase, all three have leaned heavily on group insurance policies to drive early growth.
Driving the news: Data sourced from the Life Insurance Council reveals sharp contrasts in their premium collections. Acko has written life insurance premiums worth Rs 63 crore.
Go Digit has crossed Rs 1,000 crore.
CreditAccess has processed close to Rs 200 crore in life insurance premiums.
Different paths: Go Digit continues to scale rapidly in general insurance, while Acko is betting on a digital-first, direct-to-consumer model to disrupt traditional distribution.
Beyond the numbers: Early trends suggest that the trio have focused on employer-employee group life products and credit-linked insurance policies. Why this strategy? It allows for quick ramp-up in premium volumes
It helps test systems and processes for corporate sales, ahead of a retail push.
It ensures a smoother claims settlement experience for customers.
Challenges remain: While these players made waves in general insurance, industry insiders say life insurance will be a tougher battleground. Why is that? Trust takes longer to build in life insurance
Higher ticket size products need more persuasion and often, physical intermediation.
Claims settlement is complex and often requires last-mile human support
Also Read: Go Digit General Insurance doubles net profit in Q4 FY25; posts third straight profitable year
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Krutrim finds few takers for its LLMs and cloud products
Bhavish Aggarwal, founder, Krutrim
In a setback to Bhavish Aggarwal and the broader Indian AI ambitions, several founders and investors told ET that Krutrim large language models (LLMs) and cloud offerings have received a lukewarm response from the market.
Driving the news: Krutrim, the AI venture backed by the Ola group, became India's first AI unicorn in 2024, after raising $50 million at a $1 billion valuation. But the company has since faced product roadblocks and leadership churn. Founders cited poor documentation as a key issue with Krutrim's products.
They also flagged a lack of technical maturity.
Many startups continue to prefer established hyperscalers like Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services.
More than 20 employees have exited the company since 2024.
Tell me more: Krutrim offers a chatbot and cloud services, but usability issues persist. Two founders reported difficulties simply logging into the chatbot. Similar issues surfaced with Krutrim cloud.The AI model also suffers from high latency, which refers to response time, deterring potential users. In tests reviewed by ET, Krutrim's AI chatbot took 41 seconds to generate a response to a single prompt. In contrast, ChatGPT-4o and DeepSeek responded in under 10 seconds.
Also Read: Social media abuzz about toxic work culture at Ola Krutrim after employee's 'suicide'
ETtech Done Deals
Vaibhav Gupta, CEO, Udaan
Udaan closes latest funding round at $114 million: B2B ecommerce platform Udaan has raised $114 million in a fresh funding round led by existing investors, M&G Prudential (UK) and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Round details: The round closed at a flat valuation of $1.8 billion and includes the previously disclosed $75 million investment from the same two investors, which founder and CEO Vaibhav Gupta announced at a town hall earlier this year.
Furniture retailer Pepperfry raises Rs 43 crore: Omnichannel furniture and home goods company Pepperfry has raised Rs 43.3 crore from existing investors Norwest Venture Partners, Goldman Sachs, General Electric Pension Trust, Growth Equity Opportunity Fund, and Panthera Growth Partners, among others.
Wealthtech startup Stable Money raises $20 million: Wealthtech startup Stable Money, which provides digital fixed-return investment products, has raised $20 million (Rs 173 crore) in a funding round led by Infosys cofounder Nandan Nilekani's Fundamentum Partnership.
Other Top Stories By Our Reporters
Tata Electronics eyes Malaysia foray via chip fab acquisition: Tata Electronics is in talks with several global semiconductor companies including X-Fab, DNeX and Globetronics to acquire a fabrication or outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) plant in Malaysia.
Infosys paid CEO Salil Parekh Rs 80.62 crore as salary in FY25: Indian IT major Infosys chief executive officer (CEO) Salil Parekh received a 22% rise in his annual compensation to Rs 80.6 crore for the fiscal year 2024-25 ending March, the company's annual report showed.
Nykaa shares drop over 5% despite strong Q4 performance: Shares of Nykaa parent FSN E-commerce declined as much as 5.11% to 192.85 a piece during Monday's trade. The scrip closed 4.33% lower at Rs 194.45 per share, compared to a 0.09% decline in the benchmark Sensex. The counter opened 1.1% lower at Rs 201, against the previous closing of Rs 203.25 on the BSE.
Tesla unlikely to make in India: All you need to know | Electric vehicle maker Tesla, helmed by Elon Musk, is not keen on manufacturing in India despite the government wooing it aggressively through policy incentives.
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Updated On Jun 03, 2025, 07:21 AM IST