A blog on Tumblr claimed to be co-authored by four (current and former) employees of food delivery app Swiggy leveled allegations at the company of cheating restaurant owners and projecting false sales growth to investors and media.
The blog entry also accused ET Startup of the Year Award Winner Swiggy of violating contractual obligations with its partners and mistreating its employees.
Titled Swiggy Sales – A House of Cards, the detailed post accused Swiggy of lying about their market share and ordering volumes to investors and restaurants.
Swiggy has allegedly increased its commission from 5 percent earlier to nearly 25 percent now and is looking to increasing the commission rate to 30 percent in the future, which will bleed small businesses dry, the post said.
You know what’s worse? Instead of growing our restaurant partners’ businesses, we recently took the best business zone in Bangalore and started intentionally routing all the users to order from Bowl Company – our own private label kitchen... This just directly hits at the heart of restaurants we “partnered” with to grow our business in the first place… On top of this, the sales team is asked to tell our restaurant ‘partners’ that Bowl Company doesn’t compete with you.
The post also put up a comparative chart of the actual figures of the order volumes and the numbers that were sent to investors, questioning their credibility.
The growth figures as projected by Swiggy to investors.
(Photo Courtesy: Tubmlr)
We also understand that raising money is important for growing Swiggy. If there wasn’t enough money our order volumes would start declining. There has to be a constant inflow of marketing money into the business for the order volumes to even stay flat. But that does not mean that we will all sell our souls and resort to dishonest means to raise money?
According to the post, promised equities and bonuses were never paid to employees. The company started hiring to cover up the exodus of people from the company, the post alleged.
Refuting all the allegations, Swiggy said the blog post from an anonymous source is an attempt to malign its reputation.
The article carries inaccurate facts regarding business and order numbers. It not only references employee departures from a year and a half back but also presents details on our partners out of context and with mischievous intent. Swiggy has grown over the last few years on the back of strong support from our restaurant partners...
The organisation said that it believes in functioning with complete transparency and integrity.
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