Swiggy pilots Toing app in Pune; to offer lower prices than all-in-one app

Food delivery platform Swiggy is piloting Toing, as a standalone app, in Pune, for its value-conscious customers. Users ordering via Toing have to drastically pay a lower price than they would if they ordered on Swiggy app.

Fortune India compared the prices of Toing with the Swiggy superapp, and on both Android and iOS devices. As soon as a user opens the app, the user finds the tagline ‘What you see offline is what you pay online.’

When an order for the same 'Angoori Jamun' was placed on both the apps, Toing charged 13% lower than Swiggy superapp. There is a larger difference felt when using the service in an iOS device over Swiggy, as the latter charges higher to Apple users than Android users.

This was because on Toing, users are not charged a premium over and above the physical store prices. Additionally, as a result, the GST charges applicable on the product are also lower. Further, in its pilot phase, the company is waiving off its other charges including, delivery and restaurant packaging fee. This means, in the long run, this will again lead to a huge negative impact on the food delivery provider’s financial statement.

Swiggy, however, declined to comment on the reason for the lower prices.

In fact, while the same product purchased in an Android device was costing lower compared to a purchase made on the Apple device on Swiggy, for Toing that was not the case. This shows operating system-agnosticism of the app.

Why is Swiggy on an app-launching spree and what does this say about the food delivery platforms?

This Toing app is aimed at growing its base of monthly transacting users, aside from Swiggy’s overall approach to make the competition in the space more difficult. This comes at a time when mobility provider Rapido also launched its food delivery app, Ownly.

In the past six months, the company launched several dedicated apps including Crew for concierge services, Pyng for professional bookings, and Snacc for 10-minute food delivery, alongside its main superapp.

This move of food aggregators to have more than one superapp signals a shift in approach, as companies focus on strengthening brand recall among users, and address specific use cases.

Toing is a separate app, aimed exclusively at price-conscious customers, particularly students. The app is similar in spirit to the ₹99 Store feature and Snacc, both introduced earlier this year, but with a sharper focus. Unlike the ₹99 Store, which will continue to run within the main Swiggy app, Toing offers a wider selection of affordable meals, mostly priced under ₹150, though it also includes premium options above ₹700. Meanwhile, Snacc focuses on canteen-style food delivered within 10 minutes.

Thus, while all three focus on making low-cost meals easily accessible, their approaches and target audiences are different.

Why Pune? What next?

A source told Fortune India that the rationale behind the Pune pilot is to target the student-rich profile of the city that are more likely to choose value-conscious customers. Notably, most apps and features that Swiggy has launched in past were piloted in Bengaluru. This year, the pilot market is different because of the distinct demographics that Pune as a city offers, hinting towards possible inflection that the platform may have seen in that cluster.

While the company has declined to comment, after Pune, the company will launch in the other metro cities including Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai.