Hi Yeshwanth, The idea is that these larger businesses have solid, long-standing partnerships with companies nationwide for sourcing, logistics, and sales channels (say supermarket chains) and sometimes for export. As volumes and time of doing business with these partners have increased for these large businesses, it also leads to pricing and service benefits. These capabilities are hard to build for smaller businesses, especially when the cost to do business is increasing with the current market conditions.

Aayush Agarwal The Ken, Staff Writer

Hi Hardik, Thank you for reading. The 30-50% is across the whole chain, from manufacturer to end customer, for non-branded products. For branded products (which end customers are more confident of buying online than non-branded products), this would be anywhere near about 15%, which gets down to 10-12% if the product is purchased from the super stockist. While I am not sure of the 4-5% final margin for eCommerce platforms (which make up 20% of the sales in the industry), I assume this would be after discounts, logistics and other blended costs.

Aayush Agarwal The Ken, Staff Writer

Hi Soumyadeep, There is no fee for buyers or sellers. Monetisation would be through advertisements by larger brands, commissions from 3P logistic players and certain value-added-services if a seller opts for them.

Aayush Agarwal The Ken, Staff Writer

They do. But, two sellers said they are agnostic to where the sale comes from between the website and Minis. They only bother about zero commission.

Aayush Agarwal The Ken, Staff Writer

I assume this would be applicable to select merchants who could fund a 10% discount (like they have with restaurants) and/or use Genie for delivery. But, will have to wait and see.

Aayush Agarwal The Ken, Staff Writer

Thank you Gokul! Based on my conversations with Swiggy employees, Minis seems to be all about smaller brands which cannot offer discounts like the ones on Cred. Cred user base is also niche and likely to be a subset of Swiggy's. Logistics is definitely something Cred has done well with and Minis is yet to solve. Minis is (and has to) go and build its own with 3PL, which is a factor of order volumes. One seller indicated that his ratecard with Bluedart for a Rs 500gm product is Rs 50 (vs Rs 80 on Minis). If Swiggy is able to build such and more volumes, they could do bring down the cost by half and charge, like Meesho manages to right now. But, you're right, it's a big challenge to get smaller cities to shop and pay.

Aayush Agarwal The Ken, Staff Writer

Hi Vansh, You're right, its not intuitive to go to Swiggy to shop, and building this association will be Swiggy's biggest challenge. I do see a lot of these smaller sellers (with or without websites) putting up the link to their Minis on Instagram (the discovery) as it doesn't cost the seller. For the customer, I guess its lesser cognitive load for a customer, a cleaner and faster experience. It'll be interesting to see if they eventually do bring Minis under the loyalty program Swiggy One and if that makes a difference.

Aayush Agarwal The Ken, Staff Writer

Hi Vishal, It's not very clear yet as Minis is still in pilot. However, if they do integrate this product into the network the infrastructure support will need to come through Swiggy (for free) and additional distribution facilitated through ONDC. This would solve Minis logistics problem as more partners will be available but it will hurts their ad revenues as the customer could complete the purchase through ONDC.

Aayush Agarwal The Ken, Staff Writer

Hi Niket, Interesting observation. I think acquiring new users is the bigger challenge for Swiggy, Minis can do that and monetise as well, provided it's executed well. I do not think the idea is to be a super-app given its focus is largely around only certain aspects of convenience.

Aayush Agarwal The Ken, Staff Writer

Thanks Samridh. Interesting set of questions. My top-of-the-mind thought is that like India's East vs West or Chinese vs others pushback is different (be it people-led or regulator), Indonesia too would have a lack of uniformity in its biases. But, will try and explore these questions in a follow up story.

Aayush Agarwal The Ken, Staff Writer