Swiggy Announces Dineout Acquisition, Marking Its Foray Into Dining Out Category

Swiggy has acquired Dineout, a dining out and restaurant tech platform. The food delivery app announced that post acquisition, Dineout will continue to operate as an independent app. This move will allow Swiggy to offer dining out table reservations and events as well as strengthen its business. It will enable restaurant partners to reach more customers in order to grow their business. As per Swiggy, the acquisition will allow it “to explore synergies and offer new experiences in a high-use category.”

As per the announcement by Swiggy, the acquisition of Dineout will enable Swiggy to cater to every food occasion. Dineout has a network of over 50,000 restaurant partners, and the platform founders Ankit Mehrotra, Nikhil Bakshi, Sahil Jain and Vivek Kapoor will join Swiggy when the acquisition is completed. The financial details about the acquisition are not known yet. Swiggy, along with its Instamart service, offers food delivery in 28 cities. Its Genie pick-up and drop service is available in 68 cities.

Swiggy also offers a comprehensive membership program ‘Swiggy One' giving its customers benefits across its on-demand services. Probably, one thing that was missing from the app was an option to allow its customers book tables, and get discounts on dining out options.

“The acquisition will allow Swiggy to explore synergies and offer new experiences in a high-use category,” said Sriharsha Majety, CEO, Swiggy. For Ankit Mehrotra, Co-founder & CEO of Dineout, the joint forces of the two companies “will help provide a holistic platform in this industry.”

The move can be seen as Swiggy's take on Zomato, which offers both food delivery and dining out services. Both the companies have been trying various models to pip the other. In March, Zomato announced a 10-minute food delivery plan. It faced outrage, and the company later clarified that the service will be for specific nearby locations, popular and standardised items only which can be dispatched within 2 minutes.

Swiggy, on the other hand, recently partnered with Garuda Aerospace to begin trial runs using drones to deliver groceries in Delhi-NCR (National Capital Region) and Bengaluru, Karnataka. The pilot project will assess the viability of using drones in Swiggy's grocery delivery service Instamart.