The prominent Indian startup specializing in food delivery and instant retail, Swiggy, is shifting gears with one of its lesser-known ventures: Swiggy Minis, originally a Shopify rival for smaller vendors, is transitioning into a link-in-bio utility also serving a broader array of professionals such as nutritionists and personal trainers.
Transforming Swiggy Minis, it will now serve as a dynamic homepage where sellers can direct their social media followers. Swiggy plans to enhance this offering by integrating Google Calendar for easy booking services for these professionals.
Launched as a pilot in 2022, Swiggy Minis offered smaller retailers a simple, no-code platform comparable to Shopify, enabling them to set up online storefronts, manage inventories, and handle orders and payments without incurring any fees. Swiggy further provided a marketplace within its app allowing consumers to discover and shop from these businesses.
With its latest makeover, the platform removes its marketplace feature from Minis. However, users can still access their previously frequented or bookmarked stores.
Swiggy does not charge any commissions, allowing sellers to customize their page with various themes and links to their social media profiles.
The homepage of Minis has been redesigned to emphasize on return business.
“Minis, as a SaaS platform, is primarily aimed at empowering sellers to rapidly deploy functional websites. The decision to focus on discovery through sellers’ social media comes from recognizing the solid engagement these channels provide,” explained a Swiggy representative to TechCrunch.
The expansion of Swiggy Minis now encompasses not just physical goods but also digital services, with plans to integrate Google Reviews to allow customer feedback for these services.
Swiggy has informed its merchants about the phasing out of the discovery feature on its platform, encouraging them to seek alternative promotional avenues for their storefronts.
Despite the shift, less than 10% of customer traffic to these stores came directly through Minis, as per a recent communication from Swiggy to its sellers. Swiggy affirms that Minis continues to offer superior conversion rates and potentially higher repeat business, given its support for showcasing previous orders and favorite stores.
Competing link-in-bio services like Linktree provide similar functionalities, including appointment bookings and digital storefronts. Patreon is another platform enriching its offering to support creators diversely.
Swiggy is embarking on raising $1.25 billion via an initial public offering (IPO) in India, focusing on enhancing its faster commerce operation, Instamart. It stands in competition with Zomato’s BlinkIt and the Lightspeed-supported unicorn Zepto in the instant retail market.
Unlike BlinkIt and Zepto, which collaborate with brands for product sales and promotions, they don’t offer a tailored SaaS solution for small businesses and creators.
Compiled by Techarena.au.
Fanpage: TechArena.au
Watch more about AI – Artificial Intelligence
