How Swiggy is Using AI for making deliveries smoother
When buying food from outside, our first thought always is to order food online. Online food ordering and delivery platforms are thriving in the country. A food delivery giant like Swiggy is now operating in more than 500 cities in India. According to a report from August 2021, Swiggy had a 20 million active user base.
India’s online food delivery market has observed a rise of 16% and is expected to be worth USD 17.02 billion by 2023. Now to improve the order and delivery of its products, Swiggy has used AI extensively.
Swiggy has also started its new segments, like on-demand groceries and package delivery under Instamart and Genie respectively. A substantial increase in service and user base has forced Swiggy to adopt artificial intelligence (AI).
In simple terms, AI is a human-like machine that performs human functions by using data. AI has been used in almost every field where individual interaction is needed.
To understand better, we need to know the components of the Swiggy marketplace where AI has been applied. These include customers, restaurants, and delivery executives.
Customer satisfaction
For this section, Swiggy has built AI on search features, recommendations, and targeted ads and discounts. Through the search feature, Swiggy focuses on the intention of the customer.
Once customer intention is clear based on the data, AI handles the mistype of the name of an item. For instance, the spelling of “Biryani” can be written as “Beeryani” or “Biryanee” by different customers.
And what if Biryani is not available? Then AI suggests a sub-category for the same item based on the ranking of search results in that particular area and time. AI ranks another item based on relevance, popularity, and distance of the restaurant. It also uses a customer’s order history to understand more specific available options.
Customer support and fraud detection
Now to understand complaints better, AI uses something called image to recipe model to solve customers’ queries smoothly. Whereas for fraud detection, they embed information based on the conditions of a particular place. By doing this, AI precisely calculates how much money will be refunded or not.
AI for restaurant
In contrast, restaurants have their problems and challenges. The two major challenges are food waste and increasing food sales. To tackle both issues, Swiggy came up with something called “Demand forecasting”. In real-time, information is shared with restaurant owners based on weather and demand for products so that they can cut costs on their end. Swiggy’s AI also came up with Combos that depended on the customer’s order history and pattern.
Helping delivery executives
Last but not least, the delivery comes into the picture. To figure out the delivery executive shortage in any area either due to high demand or even distribution of executives in the field. Swiggy started an incentive-based call for delivery executives.
For example, there is the possibility that in any one particular area, demand can rise extensively at any time compared to its periphery; then Swiggy offers incentives to other zone executives so that they can serve better in high demand.
AI also does “batch orders” so that the delivery guy can deliver maximum orders in the shortest time possible. For that, they have defined a system where Swiggy’s AI knows whether the executive is a new person or an experienced person.
Conclusion
To the growing food delivery business, it pertained to solving problems that are critical in nature, and that is where AI came to rescue any flourishing business and Swiggy is no exception. Swiggy is using AI to meet its company’s vision in every aspect of its operations. AI is automating their business but also helping them with acquiring more customers. All they need is to dive more deeply into areas where AI has made its impact on the food delivery industry. They say AI is the way.
