Planning to order your next meal from Swiggy? Before you hit that order button, make sure to read this latest development. The food tech giant has announced that it will now charge an extra two rupees on each order, regardless of the cart value. This additional fee, called the platform fee, will be applied only to food orders, while Instamart remains exempted for now. The new charge has already been implemented in two major markets, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, but Mumbai and Delhi are yet to be affected. As per several media reports, Swiggy has defended the move, stating that the nominal charge will help them to run the platform and app smoothly.
The news did not go well with several Swiggy users. They took to social media to voice their complaints against the extra platform fee.
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"Hey @Swiggy, why am I being charged a platform fee to use your app when I've already paid a membership fee?" wrote a user.
Another person tweeted, "Swiggy starts charging customers 'platform fee' on food orders in monetization push. It begins at Rs.2, but with over 1.5 million order/day, the corpus collected will be a huge ++ into the revenue bucket."
A third post read, "Looks like @Swiggy started adding platform fees now to its customers. Already the food prices are jacked up by restaurants due to platform fee they pay, now swiggy wants to collect from its users too..."
Another tweet read, "Now #Swiggy has started charging people platform fee of Rs. 2. Although it seems insignificant for a user, imagine a new year-like day saw 1 million orders in a day and Rs.2 from each user becomes huge."
Another comment read, "@Swiggy what is this platform fee? This is a new way of collection".
This news came after Swiggy cited a slowdown in the company's growth, followed by sacking 380 employees. In another development, after adding extra charge on food orders, the company also closed its premium grocery delivery pilot program, 'Handpicked'.