Swiggy Minis, an Indian food delivery and quick commerce startup, is restructuring one of its lesser businesses
Swiggy Minis, a Shopify alternative for small businesses, is being transformed into a link-in-bio service that will accommodate service providers such as nutritionists and fitness trainers.
Swiggy Minis will function as a landing page in its new incarnation, allowing sellers to direct their target consumers to it from their social media profiles. The organization has announced that it will shortly implement integrations with Google Calendar to enable service providers to utilize a booking module.
In 2022, Swiggy initiated Minis as an experiment to offer small merchants a no-code Shopify alternative. It enabled merchants to establish websites, submit their catalogs, and oversee orders, shipping, and transactions without incurring any commissions. Swiggy also provided a discoverable marketplace on its app, allowing users to search for these establishments.
The startup is eliminating the discovery layer on Minis with this redesign. Customers will continue to be able to view their saved stores or the stores from which they have previously placed orders.
The organization does not charge sellers any commissions, and they are permitted to establish their pages with the assistance of numerous social media connections and themes.
Swiggy stated that Mini’s homepage had been updated to emphasize recurrent purchases.
“Minis’ primary objective as a SaaS platform is to facilitate the rapid development of operational websites for sellers.” A Swiggy spokesperson informed TechCrunch, “We have observed significant traction on sellers’ social media pages and have subsequently chosen to prioritize this channel for discovery.”
The company stated that it is broadening its service to include digital offerings from various providers and physical products. In addition to the Google Calendar integration, Google Reviews is incorporated as a rating system for these service providers.
Swiggy has informed sellers that the discovery layer for stores is being discontinued. Merchants dependent on Swiggy’s Mini’s discovery mechanism must advertise their establishment in alternative venues to attract consumers.
Nevertheless, in an email newsletter sent to sellers, the company asserted that TechCrunch viewed that only 5%-10% of consumers accessed merchants’ store pages directly through Swiggy Mini.
The company asserts that Swiggy Minis has superior conversion rates to other platforms, even without the discovery layer. Additionally, Swiggy anticipates that the Minis section will attract additional recurrent customers because customers can view their previous orders and preferred retailers.
Linktree and other link-in-bio services provide storefronts and appointment registration capabilities. Patreon has also been incorporating tools enabling fans to support their preferred creators in various ways.
In the past few years, Swiggy has prioritized the expansion of its rapid commerce platform, Instamart, to raise $1.25 billion through an initial public offering in India. The company competes with Zomato, a food delivery rival that owns BlinkIt, and Zepto, a unicorn financed by Lightspeed.
BlinkIt and Zepto partner with brands to sell and promote their products on their platforms. However, they do not offer a SaaS product for small vendors and creators.