Swiggy, the food and grocery delivery platform, on Monday appointed TAFE’s managing director Mallika Srinivasan, chartered accountant Shailesh Haribhakti and Delhivery’s CEO and MD Sahil Barua as independent directors to its board. The three are the first set of independent directors for the startup and join current members like Swiggy’s co-founders Sriharsha Majety and Nandan Reddy along with Larry Illg, CEO, Prosus Edtech and Food; Ashutosh Sharma, head of investments (India), Prosus Ventures; Sumer Juneja, managing partner, India and EMEA, SoftBank Investment Advisors and Anand Daniel, partner at Accel.
With an over 31% stake, Prosus is the single largest investor in Swiggy. SoftBank is next with around 8% ownership in the food tech giant. Accel and the founders hold about 6.3% and 6.7% respectively in Swiggy. While ESOPs (5.1%) and other investors account for the remaining, data from Tracxn showed.
Co-founder and CEO Sriharsha Majety said, “Getting these new and powerful perspectives and strengthening our governance will immensely benefit us as we march ahead in our mission to bring unparalleled convenience to consumers.” The appointments come at a time when Swiggy has been gearing up for a public listing, joining Zomato, its biggest rival, which, according to analysts, was the leader with an about 55% market share in the six months to June.
Swiggy had a more sedate 40% market share, analysts at Jefferies said even as the company’s losses mounted, thanks to its loyalty programme — Swiggy One. Prosus data put Swiggy’s losses at over $315 million, meaningfully higher than Zomato’s stand-alone losses of $50 million and combined (with Blinkit) loss of around $170 million.
In H1CY22, Swiggy’s food delivery gross merchandise value (GMV) stood at $1.3 billion or roughly `10,500 crore which compared with $1.6 billion or around `13,000 crore for Zomato during the same period. While both players are slugging it out for a bigger pie of the food and grocery delivery space, Zomato is gradually gaining higher market share. A good delivery so far, but the space is dynamic and the order might change,” analysts at Nuvama wrote recently.
Swiggy has, however, been trying to lower its losses. The company fired 380 employees, or just over 6% of its total workforce, last month and even shut its meat division as “…the growth rate for food delivery has slowed down versus our projections, along with many peer companies globally…,” CEO Majety had told employees in an email earlier.