Swiggy, a leading food delivery and quick commerce company, is focusing on improving operational efficiency and profitability in fiscal year 2026, moving away from aggressive expansion. The company reduced its EBITDA loss by 30% and increased revenue by 46% in FY25, driven by strong performance in core food delivery and quick commerce, particularly Instamart. Swiggy plans to optimize operations through initiatives like Megapods to boost profitability, while maintaining steady margins in food delivery and focusing on automation and dark store productivity.

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Swiggy’s Strategic Shift: From Rapid Expansion to Profitability in FY26

Leading food delivery and quick commerce platform Swiggy is pivoting its growth strategy after years of aggressive expansion. Entering fiscal year 2026, the company aims to improve operational efficiency and move its newer business verticals towards profitability. This significant change marks departure from the large-scale infrastructure investments that dominated Swiggy’s approach over the past two years.

Robust Growth Despite Profitability Focus

In the financial year ending March 2025, Swiggy reported a 30% reduction in its consolidated adjusted EBITDA loss, narrowing it to ₹1,911 crore from ₹2,760 crore the previous year. The company’s adjusted revenue surged 46%, reaching ₹9,028 crore. This growth was propelled by strong performance in both core food delivery and its quick commerce arm, Instamart.

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Overall, Swiggy’s gross order value (GOV) across all businesses rose 47% year-over-year to ₹31,031 crore, illustrating healthy demand and consumer adoption despite the strategic shift in expenditure and growth tactics.

Quick Commerce: Instamart’s Expanding Footprint

Instamart stood out as one of Swiggy’s fastest-growing verticals. Its gross order value climbed an impressive 82% to ₹14,683 crore, while adjusted revenue more than doubled to ₹3,811 crore. Order volumes hit 285 million with an average order value of ₹514, reflecting increasing customer engagement.

Although Instamart posted an adjusted EBITDA loss of ₹547 crore, it successfully narrowed its margin loss from 27.9% to 14.3%. Swiggy attributed this ongoing loss largely to store immaturity, pointing out that over half of its 1,021 dark stores across 124 cities are less than a year old and have yet to reach breakeven.

Optimizing Quick Commerce Operations

To accelerate profitability, Swiggy plans to reduce new dark store openings in FY26 and shift its focus to improving throughput, order density, and contribution margins in existing urban clusters. The company expects several dense urban markets to hit breakeven within the next year, helped by cost optimizations, and a greater revenue share from high-margin purchases like monthly grocery top-ups and festive bundles.

A key innovation in this strategy involves Megapods — large-format dark stores that carry up to 50,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs) and leverage automation extensively. Although Megapods require higher upfront investment, they already account for 20% of Instamart’s orders despite representing only 10% of its store count. Swiggy is further focusing on SKU rationalization and deploying automated picking and inventory forecasting tools to boost profitability.

Food Delivery: Turning Profitable and Growing

Swiggy’s core food delivery segment has shown marked improvement. It reported an adjusted EBITDA margin of 2% in FY25, a sharp turnaround enabled by enhanced monetization, tightened operations, and increased order frequency among consumers.

The segment’s gross order value grew 24% to ₹15,367 crore, while adjusted revenue rose 31% to ₹4,926 crore. A significant contributor to margin enhancement was advertising, with 65% of Swiggy’s restaurant partners now using self-serve ad tools, boosting average revenue per order.

Enhancing User Engagement Through Loyalty and Services

Swiggy also leveraged loyalty programs like Swiggy One BLCK, targeting premium users with bundled benefits. Additionally, new category-focused services such as Bolt for fast food and group ordering options encouraged repeat use while keeping delivery costs manageable, ensuring steady cash flow from the food delivery business.

Streamlining Innovation and Future Growth Outlook

Despite core growth, Swiggy’s innovation vertical — which includes offerings like Pyng home services) and SNACC (quick delivery) — remains a financial drag, with ₹75 crore revenue matched by ₹75 crore EBITDA losses in FY25.

To address this, Swiggy announced a stringent three-tier evaluation for all future product launches, assessing product-market fit, commercial viability, and scalability before allocating capital. Ventures that failed these criteria, such as Genie and Minis, have already been discontinued.

Focused Investment Strategy Going Forward

Swiggy stated that its capital expenditure cycle has peaked and future investments will prioritise automation, dark store productivity, and targeted marketing aimed at boosting customer retention versus physical expansion. The company forecasts a phased path toward profitability: maintaining steady margins in food delivery, achieving breakeven in key Instamart zones, and rationalizing experimental product spending.

Competitive Landscape and Industry Trends

Rival platforms appear to be on similar trajectories toward sustainable growth. For instance, Zomato’s Blinkit has attained contribution-margin positivity and pursues measured expansion, while Zepto bets on its own large-format fulfillment strategy aiming for profitability in FY26.

Conclusion: Building a Sustainable Logistics Infrastructure

Swiggy’s new strategy emphasizes financial sustainability over rapid scaling. Future gains will depend less on expanding to new cities and more on optimizing operations and profitability in existing markets. With limitations on aggressive expansion and a renewed focus on operational efficiency, Swiggy aims to solidify its leadership in India’s food delivery and quick commerce sectors, delivering value to customers while steering toward profitability.

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