Earlier on Wednesday, there was a blogpost put up on Tumblr by those claiming to be Swiggy’s current and former employees calling out the company for lying to and cheating its restaurant partners, delivery guys, investors, customers and employees.
In a detailed response, Sriharsha Majety, CEO of Swiggy has refuted all claims with a point by point explanation on every allegation made.
Swiggy too, has hinted that it does not believe that it is was written by current and former employees.
Starting off with allegations on numbers being inflated and incorrect numbers being shown, he says that ‘actual numbers have been verified by external, neutral auditors (a part of the big four) as a part of our standard due diligence that is done before every fund raise’.
He pointed out to a mismatch in the numbers in the anonymous blog.
“Check out the November’ 16 orders as per the investor deck: at 63804 per day, and compare that with the excel sheet at 78010 per day. If the 78010 orders per day was right, why would the investor deck report lower numbers? The excel sheet screenshot is a complete fabrication as is a lot more in the post,” he says in the post.
He says that the number of four million orders per month run rate is true.
To the point on Swiggy cheating restaurant owners, Sriharsha says, Business commercials with restaurants are a part and parcel of the business. It is mutually agreed with gives and takes on both sides. There is no cheating, no deceit. We have fuelled the growth of many restaurants by exposing them to a large base of consumers on our platform – and many restaurants have grown because of us.”
To allegations on the commission rates increasing and eventually reaching 30%, he says that Swiggy’s revenue per order (the 30% that is being talked about) is a blend of three parts, the commission from the restaurants, delivery fee charged from the consumers and discretionary advertising revenues.
He also adds that there is absolutely no violation of contractual obligations.
The anonymous blog calls out Swiggy for intentionally routing all the users to order from its own private label kitchen, the Bowl Company.
To this, the CEO says, “we do not intend to create properties that compete with existing restaurants but will only solve long-term gaps and we will always continue growing the restaurants’ business very strongly as we’ve demonstrated over the last few quarters.”
He also says that Swiggy is working closely with restaurants to set up kitchens. The first one, he says, will house three brands coming up soon in Marathahalli, Bengaluru.
To the point of it lying to investors and Swiggy’s bad unit economics, he claims that monthly transactions have grown from 42,480 in June 2016 to 78,417 in January 2017.
Sriharsha also refutes allegations made on company culture and employees being lied to.
“No false promises are made to any employees. Bonuses are paid fairly and transparently, as in any organization with core values and processes intact. We have hired to support the strong growth we’ve seen. Our compensation structure is transparent, fair and consistent,” he says.
Swiggy’s VP of Sales, Gunjan Shah, he claims left the organization on great terms to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions.
Allegations were made on how it treats it delivery boys as well. To that, Sriharsha says that delivery executives are provided with a high earning capability, the right training and development (personality, behavioural and communication skills), due rewards and recognition, and financial assistance.
Every Swiggy Delivery Executive undergoes a background verification before they are on-boarded, he adds.
Read the entire blogpost here