Summary

Nandan Reddy is the co-founder, whole-time-director and head of innovation at Swiggy, India’s leading food delivery and quick commerce platform. Reddy was born and raised in Hyderabad. Nandan holds an MSc degree in physics from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani. Before Swiggy, he gained experience in business consulting at Intellecap and launched several entrepreneurial ventures, including Zurna, a restaurant in Hyderabad and Galla, a cloud-based point-of-sale system for restaurants. His early entrepreneurial journey also included leading India’s first rural BPO providing services to national and international clients in the social media vertical.

Personal Information

Key Achievements & Major Timelines

• In 2010, Nandan graduated from BITS, Pilani with an MSc in Physics.
• In 2013, With Shriharsha Majety, Nandan launched Bundl, a logistics startup to facilitate courier services for e-commerce.
• In 2014, Nandan, along with Sriharsha Majety and Rahul Jamini, founded Swiggy, a full-stack food ordering and delivery platform that not only partnered with restaurants but also built its own fleet of delivery personnel to ensure fast, reliable service
• In 2015, Swiggy expanded its food delivery operations from Bengaluru to eight Tier-1 cities across India and received funding of $2mn from Accel and SAIF Partners. By then, the startup already had over 100 restaurants on board and was delivering over 70,000 orders on a monthly basis.
• In 2017, Swiggy raised its biggest investment of $80mn in Series E funding, led by Naspers.
• In 2019, Swiggy expanded into general product deliveries under the name Swiggy Stores, sourcing items from local stores. Swiggy launched the instant pickup/dropoff service Swiggy Go (later known as Swiggy Genie), allowing customers to send document or parcel deliveries.
• In 2024, Swiggy converted itself into a public company and filed for IPO. The IPO was launched in November 2024 at ₹ 390 per share, valuing the company at $11.3bn.

Challenges & Controversies

Swiggy reported a loss of ₹ 205 cr in FY 2017, which was up from ₹ 133cr, in the previous year. The total expenditure of Swiggy surged from ₹ 157cr to ₹345cr in 2017.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Swiggy laid off 1,100 employees. The pandemic also resulted in the shut down of more than three-fourth of its cloud kitchens.

Swiggy laid off 350-400 employees, or 6% across teams like technology, call centre and corporate roles. This move came as a part of the company’s efforts to streamline operations, reduce costs and achieve profitability in anticipation of its impending IPO.