Food delivery major Swiggy has announced that it is piloting EVs in 10 cities across the country, as part of its efforts to be more sustainable and environmentally friendly for the future. Swiggy, which has an active fleet of over 1.7 lakh delivery partners, introduced mechanical bicycles to a sizable percentage of its fleet two years ago.

While electric vehicles are considered the most sustainable form of transportation, Swiggy claims that they also lower the running cost of the vehicles by up to 40%, leading to higher effective pay-outs for Swiggy’s delivery partners who will own the said EVs.

Currently, Swiggy is testing EVs from several logistic providers. This is not the first time the company is using electric vehicles for deliveries. Last year, Swiggy’s delivery partners in cities like Delhi and Lucknow carried out deliveries on e-rickshaws.

Currently, Swiggy claims to be doing over 1.5 million orders every month on mechanical cycles and it claims that the move to mechanical cycles added benefit of enabling more riders in becoming a part of Swiggy’s delivery fleet.

Swiggy currently has a fleet of close to 10,000 partners making over 1.5 million deliveries every month on cycles across 54 + cities with maximum cyclists in Bengaluru, followed by Mumbai. 20% of these delivery partners are present in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities such as Surat, Belgaum, Guwahati and Lucknow.

“A couple of years back, we initiated concerted efforts to make millions of our deliveries more sustainable for the environment. With close to 10,000 delivery partners on cycles each day, we have found that in some of our cities, the average travel time for a delivery partner on cycles is even lesser than bikes or scooters. With the future heading towards more eco-friendly modes of transport, cycle and EV logistics will be the next game changer in food-tech and Swiggy wants to be at the forefront of driving that change,” Srivats TS, VP, Marketing, Swiggy said in a statement.

Interestingly, in February, rival Zomato too, announced that it will be converting 40% of its delivery fleet into bicycles and e-bicycles in the next two years. Zomato said that it started introducing both types of bicycles as part of its fleet. It tied up with Mobycy, e-HIRAN, TNT, Yulu and Zoomcar’s PEDL. At the time, Zomato had 5000 cyclists on its rolls, operating in 12 cities, but largely in Delhi NCR. These cyclists would be assigned deliveries within a 2.5 km radius.