Swiggy’s Innovation: Drone-Based Deliveries in Grocery Services

Swiggy, an online food delivery startup, stated in May that it will begin experimenting with drones for its Instamart rapid shopping service. Drones will be utilized to replace products between dark storefronts, from the seller’s location to the common point nearest to the customer’s delivery address, completing the middle-delivery layer, as the company calls it. The dark shop is a small fulfillment company that focuses on fast shipping.

The goal of the pilot is to see if drones might be used in the middle mile, namely for Swiggy’s Instamart food delivery service. Drones will be utilized to replenish merchandise between shops and vendors’ underground businesses.

Swiggy has picked Garuda Aerospace, Skyeair Mobility, a joint venture between ANRA Technologies and TechEagle, and Marut Dronetech for the pilots.

Garuda Aerospace in Bengaluru and Skyeair Mobility in Delhi and NCR will begin the pilots right away.

Following the first tranche’s learnings, the ANRA and TechEagle consortias, as well as Marut Dronetech, will begin work on the plots in the second tranche. ETtech reported on June 16, 2021, that a collaboration led by ANRA Technologies, of which Swiggy is a member, has received government authorization to commence drone testing in India for BVLOS.

Garuda Aerospace and Skyeair Mobility will launch the pilot in Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR. Growth will occur in the region and overseas, depending on the state of development.

Swiggy said, “We look forward to working with our partners and leveraging the data from these trials as a stepping stone in uncovering opportunities for drone-assisted delivery in the e-commerce market.”

As part of the process, Swiggy claimed it received 345 registrations for its request for proposal (RFP) for a drone delivery service.