In an era of rapid digital transformation, food delivery and Q-commerce platforms have become deeply woven into urban lifestyles, and in India this space is largely dominated by Swiggy and Zomato/Blinkit. As competition intensified and customer acquisition costs rose, Swiggy realized that simply discounting orders was no longer sustainable. The company was grappling with high churn among infrequent users and margin pressures from deep discounting. In response, Swiggy conceptualized Swiggy One, a unified subscription-based loyalty program that promised unlimited free deliveries, exclusive discounts across food, groceries and quick-commerce, and priority customer support. Internal reports already showed that users in the earlier Swiggy Super program were spending nearly three times more than regular users with more stable churn, so there was a strong data-driven rationale to invest in a more ambitious, unified membership product. At MYRA School of Business, this real-world context is used in the classroom to help students understand how digital businesses convert strategic challenges into structured projects.
From a project management perspective, the launch of Swiggy One involved a wide and complex stakeholder ecosystem. Internally, executive leadership set the strategic direction and approved investment, product and UX teams designed the value proposition and user journeys, technology teams handled platform integration, analytics teams mined data on churn and lifetime value, and marketing and operations coordinated communication and on-ground execution. Externally, Swiggy had to align restaurants and vendor partners around discount structures and participation, ensure delivery partners could sustain higher order volumes under the “free delivery” promise, and manage investor expectations about near-term losses versus long-term retention gains. Stakeholder buy-in was achieved through data-backed business cases using the success of Swiggy Super, pilot rollouts that demonstrated feasibility, clear revenue-sharing and incentive models for partners, and internal cross-functional workshops that created shared ownership of the project. In MYRA’s pedagogy, students are encouraged to map these stakeholders, examine their interests, and discuss how alignment can be built in such complex platform ecosystems.
Clarity of scope and objectives was a critical success factor. Swiggy One was not just about cheaper deliveries; the primary goals included increasing customer lifetime value, lowering monthly churn, deepening engagement across multiple service lines, and strengthening overall brand equity as a “one-stop convenience platform.” Objectives were set using metrics such as order frequency, retention and reactivation rates, contribution margin per active user, uptake of cross-category services (for example, customers using both Food and Instamart), and customer satisfaction indicators like NPS. Benchmarking against competitors such as Zomato Gold and learning from the performance of Swiggy Super helped refine these targets. MYRA students learn to see this as a classic example of how objectives in a digital project are tied directly to measurable KPIs rather than vague notions of “loyalty.”
The planning phase required careful coordination across operations, technology, analytics and marketing. Operationally, Swiggy had to ensure adequate fleet capacity and efficient routing to handle increased order volumes from members expecting fast, free deliveries. Technology teams had to build subscription management into the backend, integrate membership logic into checkout flows across food delivery, groceries and courier services, and ensure real-time eligibility checks and billing. Data analytics teams designed dashboards and cohort analyses to track how Swiggy One affected user behaviour, while marketing teams developed go-to-market plans that included launch campaigns, introductory pricing, city-wise phased rollout, and partnerships with premium restaurants and brands that would enhance perceived value. Resources were therefore allocated across tech (platform and data infrastructure), marketing (launch and awareness campaigns), operations (fleet and service levels) and analytics (measurement and optimisation), illustrating to MYRA students how planning in such initiatives is intrinsically cross-functional and data-driven.
Execution brought its own set of challenges. Integrating multiple service lines—food delivery, Instamart and Genie—under a single membership was complex because each vertical had different cost structures, SLAs and customer expectations. Swiggy needed to standardize how “benefits” like free delivery thresholds or discounts manifested across categories without confusing users. Aligning restaurant partners on discount-sharing, ensuring delivery partners were fairly compensated despite free deliveries for customers, and guaranteeing stable app performance under higher load were all non-trivial tasks. Swiggy responded by setting up cross-functional “war room” teams, rolling out the program in phases to identify and fix issues early, fine-tuning terms such as minimum order values for free delivery, and continuously iterating on the product based on live data. In MYRA classrooms, these execution complexities are used to discuss agile project management, sprint-based iteration, and the importance of cross-team coordination in digital product launches.
Risk management was central to Swiggy One’s design and evolution. The company faced competitive risks such as Zomato’s subscription products potentially undercutting or confusing similar offerings; financial risks in the form of initial losses from aggressive benefits; customer confusion between old programs like Swiggy Super and the new Swiggy One; and the risk of partner dissatisfaction if margins were squeezed too much. Mitigation strategies included consolidating loyalty offerings under a single, clearer brand; adjusting membership pricing based on city tiers and behaviour; using minimum order conditions and caps to protect unit economics; and shifting portions of the discount burden to partner-funded offers. Monitoring and evaluation mechanisms were equally robust: Swiggy tracked KPIs such as order frequency per member, retention and churn among subscribers vs non-subscribers, cross-category usage, cost-to-serve, and satisfaction scores. Feedback came through in-app ratings, surveys, customer support interactions, and controlled experiments like A/B testing. MYRA uses this to help students appreciate that risk management in modern digital projects is not only about prediction but also about fast feedback and rapid course correction.
Six months after launch, Swiggy One reportedly saw strong adoption driven by attractive introductory pricing and clearly articulated benefits, with noticeable lifts in order frequency and higher usage of Instamart and other services among members. Over a twelve-month period, after rounds of optimisation, Swiggy was able to stabilize churn among valuable urban segments, gradually refine the economic model to improve profitability, and strengthen its position as a multi-service daily-use platform rather than a pure food-delivery app. Key lessons included the power and complexity of cross-service integration, the need for continuous evolution of loyalty programs in response to competition and customer feedback, and the importance of embedding analytics and experimentation deeply into the project lifecycle.
For MYRA School of Business, Swiggy One is not just a case about a delivery app; it is a rich teaching tool that brings together strategy, project management, marketing, operations, technology and analytics into a single, coherent narrative. Faculty use this case to simulate boardroom-style discussions, have students role-play as different stakeholders (product head, operations lead, investor, restaurant partner), and ask them to redesign elements of the program under different market scenarios. Through this, MYRA’s students build an applied understanding of how modern digital enterprises plan, execute, monitor and refine complex retention strategies—preparing them to handle similar multi-dimensional projects in their future careers.
— Authored by Deepak Agarwal
