Foodtech platform Swiggy is looking to enter the social commerce and community group buying business with its latest experiment Swiggy Bazaar.
The company is in early stages of launching the social commerce vertical and is in the process of putting together a team, individuals aware of the discussion confirmed on condition of anonymity. It is looking at internal employees and external hires to bring the initial team together.
The foodtech major, which was last valued at $5.5 billion, has also put across a hiring alert on jobs and professional networking platform, LinkedIn to hire for its Swiggy Bazaar vertical.
“Swiggy Bazaar is our latest foray in the trillion-dollar grocery market and will be a community group buying destination. Over the last year in lockdown, consumers have discovered new ways to access better foods and some of these behaviours have proved to be resilient - creating tailwinds that Bazaar will aim to ride. Swiggy Bazaar will operate like a startup within Swiggy and promises to be yet another big bet for us in the fast growing online grocery market,” the Bengaluru-based foodtech startup said as a part of its LinkedIn post on Tuesday. Entrackr first reported this.
Being a social commerce business, Swiggy Bazaar will experiment with novel community-based marketing strategies, Swiggy added in the post. The company also said that the Bazaar’s core team will be organised around three pillars of product and engineering, community and marketing as well as business operations.
Under the new vertical, the foodtech is expected to test community-buying for groceries and other household perishable items, the above-cited persons said.
Swiggy declined to comment on Mint's queries on the matter.
Social commerce has been on the rise as individuals turn to online modes to order essentials, clothing, and household items among others. There is two-year old CityMall backed by the likes of Accel Partners, Elevation Capital, Jungle Ventures, which currently sells lifestyle, grocery, and curated products via peer-to-peer referrals on WhatsApp.
Other social commerce startups include Dealshare and Meesho, which have witnessed high investor interest over the past months. Recently, YouTube also marked its foray into India’s fast growing social commerce space, by signing a definitive agreement to acquire simsim.
Multiple media reports have highlighted that Swiggy is in talks with new and existing investors including SoftBank and Prosus to raise up to $600 million as a part of a fresh funding round, which will value the startup at $10 billion.
