CHENNAI: Troubles in the food delivery startup Swiggy have come to the fore with a group of employees making a number of allegations against the company on a new Tumblr blog, which the startup's CEO hastened to deny and refute.
The blog titled Swiggy, a House of Cards, authored “by four people (ex and current employees) from the sales team in Swiggy” alleged that the company was cheating restaurants by lying about their market share.
“(Sales staff) are made to lie about our market share, as well as order volumes to restaurant owners. Instead of helping these restaurants grow their business, we are trained to arm-twist them to increase our commissions every couple of months.”
According to the blog, Swiggy has been steadily increasing the commission it extracts from restaurants. “At first it was 5 per cent, then 10 per cent and now nearly 25 per cent. The management wants us to take this to an average of 30 per cent in the future.”
The blog said the reviews on Swiggy's app were tampered with to delete the bad ones.
The thrust of the blog was Swiggy's numbers such as order volumes were misrepresented to investors. “Our January 2017 order volumes were less than December 2016 volumes. But in the investor presentations they have shaved off the December numbers in the slides in order to show a linear growth curve across all months of our existence,” said the blog.
The allegations stung the CEO of Swiggy, Sriharsha Majety, into publishing an official response on the company's own blog, titled “Swiggy Response: A note from the CEO”.
The CEO posted screenshots of the company's orders and said the numbers have been verified by "external, neutral auditors as a part of our standard due diligence."
Majety said the company did indeed clock up 4 million orders, and dismissed the bloggers' contention as a fabrication.