How Swiggy is Transforming Delivery Service With the Help of AI

Swiggy was founded in the year 2014. It is currently India’s largest delivery and online food ordering platform. It is operating in 100 different cities in the country. Swiggy has been using AI to improve its orders and delivery. Let’s look at the steps taken by the company to use AI for the smooth delivery of its products.

AI usage for smooth deliveries
Customers
Delivery Executives
Restaurants
Time and Space
AI Strategy
FAQ

Swiggy Using AI for Smooth Deliveries

Swiggy has used AI to grow its order value by over 200%. The company said that the real challenge they faced was real-time decisions or optimizing their products. They said that, when the customers are deciding what to order, the delivery executives keep moving around and restaurants get busy with their customers and orders. Finding a balance between these three was the real challenge faced by them.

Customer Sattisfaction

The company stated that first promise they would maintain is that they will deliver the products within the given time period. They have built an AI system, where the customers will be able to see what they would prefer, at what time, etc. in the company’s platform. It is designed using AI which makes it easier for the customers to choose their order.

The platform is built in a way where it would understand the language used to refer to the same item in different names. For example- In India chicken is addressed using different names in different languages and AI helps in making the platform understand that all these different names means the same dish.

Swiggy's Delivery Executives

The location of the delivery executives is tracked by the company on a real-time basis. They get to know whether the delivery executive is available to fulfill the order or not using the AI system. This will help the company in confirming the order given by the customers.

The company also needs to understand, whether the executive is a new person or an experienced person which is done through an automation Process.

The delivery executives will have to mark arrived, when they reach a restaurant for picking up the order. The company uses live GPS tracking so that they don’t click arrived even before reaching the restaurant. This helps the company to know that they are physically present in the restaurant.

Swiggy's AI Solution for Restaurants

In the same way, restaurants will also face similar challenges. It would take different time periods to prepare different dishes. Some may take 20 minutes while others may take up to 30 minutes to prepare. The company has built systems to take into account how much time would it require to prepare the dishes ordered by the customers.

Another area where the company concentrates is on food quality. Sometimes the customer would receive a different dish from the one they would have ordered. The company has built a box that has a camera in it, which will take pictures of the food to ensure that it is the right food. The company informed that it is a computer vision model based on deep learning.

Time and Space

The other prime factor the company takes into consideration is the time and space input. The uniqueness of on-demand services is that the customers need would change according to the time and location. The platform understands, whether it's morning or afternoon and shows the restaurants and dishes accordingly.

AI Strategy

Swiggy has hired an AI team from across the globe. They have hired individuals who hold multiple PHDs from international universities, and people who work as senior scientists in places like GE research and IBM.

They have built a separate team dedicated only to applied research. This team is different from the data science team. This team will concentrate on solving the problems of the next 100 customers, while there is a team that looks at immediate problems.

The company receives terabytes of data weekly and around 40 billion messages per day. Swiggy has worked on putting this data to develop and build Machine Learning models. The company has said that they have also partnered to get third-party data.

Swiggy is also working on Artificial Intelligence on computer vision where for example a picture of a menu is automatically taken and converted into a file.

They are looking forward to building long-term capability by partnering with other research institutions and industries which are external. Swiggy has also partnered with various universities and institutions where they would fund the research programme and innovative ideas.

This is a step where the university students and Swiggy scientists would be able to work together in developing innovative models. They have also partnered with Amazon Web Services and a lot of startups.

FAQ

Who is the Founder of Swiggy?

Swiggy was founded by Nandan Reddy, Sriharsha Majety, and Rahul Jaimini.

What is the valuation of Swiggy?

Swiggy has a total valuation of $1 billion.

How many orders a day does Swiggy have?

Swiggy has a high number of orders with 1.4 million orders a day.

Conclusion

Swiggy has also made efforts to introduce Artificial Intelligence across the organization. This would help everyone build models around it. They have launched a training programme for their teams, analysts and even business leaders which is “AI for All”.

The vision of the company is to make AI part of their culture which has led them to build the capability and knowledge in the organization said Swiggy’s technological head.