Swiggy Pushes to set up 1,000 Cloud Kitchens in India, Invests Rs 175 Crores

Food delivery major Swiggy on Wednesday said it has invested Rs 175 crore over a period of two years to set up over 1,000 cloud kitchens across 14 cities for its restaurant partners through its "Swiggy Access" initiative. Swiggy said it will invest an additional Rs 75 crore to bring more partner cloud kitchens in 12 new cities by March 2020.

The Swiggy Access initiative enables restaurant partners to expand to more locations both within their city and across new cities through cloud kitchens. Swiggy said it has invested in over a million square feet of real estate space across 14 cities to help large, medium and small restaurant partners expand to more locations.

"With the massive growth in online food ordering over the last 2-3 years, India has leapfrogged the widespread in-restaurant dining culture that was prevalent in many international markets. Swiggy has always maintained that cloud kitchens will be the future of food delivery," Vishal Bhatia, CEO, New Supply, Swiggy, said in a statement. "Very soon, India will have the second-highest number of cloud kitchens in the world, only next to China," Bhatia said. This announcement comes a few days after Swiggy CEO, Sriharsha Majety spoke about the company making significant investments in "pods" to solve for the supply gaps in the country.

Pods house the cloud kitchens of restaurant partners on Swiggy Access. Majety also spoke about how Swiggy will scale up these pods to be within a 10-minute reach of 99 per cent of its consumers. "Swiggy Access has helped grow restaurant businesses, deliver unmatched customer experience and created employment opportunities in metros as well as tier 2 and 3 cities," Bhatia said. "Over the last two years, Swiggy has invested over Rs 175 crores towards setting up and running these kitchens. This success has encouraged us to invest an additional Rs 75 crore to bring more partner cloud kitchens in 12 new cities by March 2020," he added.

Swiggy has created over 8,000 direct and indirect jobs in the restaurant industry through its cloud kitchen initiatives over the last two years. After achieving this milestone of setting up 1000 partner cloud kitchens, Swiggy said it is set to add another 7,000 direct and indirect jobs in the restaurant industry in the next six months.