Swiggy’s Mantra: Wellness & Wealth

“MAKING AN ENDURING company was far harder and more important than making a great product,” Steve Jobs, one of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs told his biographer Walter Isaacson. If you want to gauge how successful a company is, you need to look at three things — customer satisfaction, cash flow and employee engagement. The last is the cherry that most leaders forget to place on the cake.

But not Swiggy. In 2014, Sriharsha Majety, Nandan Reddy and Rahul Jaimini joined hands to conceptualise the idea of delivering food at people’s doorsteps. Little did they know that 10 years later they would employ more than 5,000 people in 500 cities. Swiggsters, as they are fondly called within the organisation, are the core of the food delivery platform whose leadership believes their people’s health and happiness is a key indicator of the organisation’s performance.

Innovative Approach

In post-pandemic world, the concept of office has evolved. Swiggy, too, has tweaked its human resources policy in accordance with its employee-first ethos. In November 2021, it introduced a ‘Future of Work Policy,’ which is a flexible model for all employees based on nature of work. The policy is structured under three mandates. Mandate 1 allows employees to work from office two-three days a week. This is mostly for partner-facing or field-based roles. Mandate 2 pertains to employees spending 10-12 days per quarter in office; focus is on corporate team, technology team and business personnel in core operations. Mandate 3 is for employees regularly attending office due to field duties. “We started thinking about future of work. We started talking to people, surveyed more than 1,500 employees to understand their preferences and came back with a work-stream,” says HR Head Girish Menon.

Another programme, Built Around You, focuses on physical, mental, financial and legal wellness. Benefits range from unlimited online consultation sessions with experts (doctors, dieticians, counsellors, psychologists, financial/law experts) to customised digital and onsite wellness programmes for employees and their families.

Another focus is closing the gender gap. Swiggy has a gender-neutral policy that provides substantial paid leave for primary and secondary caregivers when they become parents. The company offers up to ₹20,000 for prenatal care and helps employees celebrate their entry into parenthood with a ‘Child Welcome Gift’ of ₹10,000.

Swiggsters can also create wealth through an ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) programme. “We believe employees should partake in our growth journey,” says Menon.

Interestingly, while the world is debating the pros and cons of moonlighting, Swiggy is supporting employees who want to do projects outside work. “Over last two years, we observed that some of our employees were getting opportunities to render gig services, leveraging their professional skills outside work. Some discovered new hobbies during the lockdown and have been keen to pursue them because they have extra time now due to remote work. So, we came up with an industry-first moonlighting policy,” says Yamini Koganti, AVP, Swiggy. The policy allows employees to pick up interesting projects outside work.

The Setbacks

In the run-up to initial public offer (IPO), the food delivery behemoth, backed by global tech investors Prosus and Softbank, reduced workforce by 6% in January. This was a direct result of pressure to become profitable. Swiggy has largely achieved stability in its food delivery business but continues to burn cash due to rapidly expanding grocery service Instamart. Last May, Swiggy’s co-founder and group chief executive, Majety, announced the company’s core food delivery business had achieved profitability in March. He also acknowledged the company had made inordinate investments in Instamart with “the peak of our investments (into Instamart) behind us.”

Although Swiggy’s approach has been employee-first and Swiggsters are well-supported to put their best foot forward, the pressure of the IPO might get to the business. The real challenge for Swiggy will be talent retention in such a case. Whether the cherry remains on the cake or not is yet to be seen.