After Eternal's 'Quick' shutdown, Swiggy's Genie takes 'little break' amid quick commerce push

Days after food-tech major Eternal (earlier known as Zomato ) announced the shutdown of its 'Quick' services, Swiggy's hyperlocal parcel delivery service Genie, which was launched in 2020, has stopped its operations temporarily, according to information shared by the company's customer care service on X. The listed food-tech major has not officially come up with a statement yet, though Swiggy Care's response on X says Genie is "currently taking a little break".

"@Zeda96 Ah, the Genie’s currently taking a little break from granting wishes, Suhas! But worry not, we do hear your wishes loud and clear. While there’s no concrete timeline for Genie’s return just yet, our team is working hard behind the scenes to bring it back as soon as possible. We’ll be sure to keep you posted the moment it’s back in action!," Swiggy Cares (@SwiggyCares) said via a tweet.

The service was earlier available across 70 cities in India, but does not show on the Swiggy app across most locations now. The company had earlier stopped Genie operations in some areas of Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad in 2022, citing high demand across quick commerce and food delivery verticals. Like its rival Zomato, Swiggy is also doubling down on its quick commerce service, with its recent announcement claiming the expansion of 10-minute delivery service Bolt to over 500 cities. To fulfil the rising demand, companies are facing competition for delivery partners, forcing them to cut down efforts on verticals with less demand.

Swiggy Genie competes with delivery companies like Borzo, Porter, and Rapido Parcel.

Just last week, Eternal also announced the removal of its 15-minute food delivery service called "Quick" from its main app in just four months after rolling it out, citing the lack of visibility on the path to profitability. Along with Quick, the company also shut down Everyday -- a home-cooked meal service.

"We are not seeing the path to profitability in these without compromising on customer experience. The current restaurant density & kitchen infrastructure is not set up for delivering orders in 10 minutes, which leads to inconsistent customer experience," Goyal said in a shareholders' meeting.

He said the company does not see any incrementality in demand, while adding that Quick was run as an experiment for a few months. "With Everyday, we realised that the need for home meals is a limited use case, largely for office locations in metros. We did not see enough ROI by keeping it running at a small scale."

Eternal founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said there has been a shortage (temporary) of delivery partners due to the high demand for delivery partners in quick commerce, given the rapid expansion of the industry in the last few months. He also cited competition from the quick delivery of packaged food from quick commerce, leading to a drop in demand for food delivery from restaurants.