Hindustan Unilever To Deliver Ice Cream Through Pushcarts On Swiggy

Looking to tap into the rush for ice cream and other chilled dairy products during scorching Indian summers, Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) has decided to list popular ice cream pushcarts on food delivery platform Swiggy. The company’s brands such as Magnum, Cornetto and Kwality Wall’s will be listed on Swiggy in 20 cities.

Hindustan Unilever has been conducting a pilot to test several fulfilment models since last year. Now, HUL has identified over 300 locations across the top 20 cities for the operation. An HUL spokesperson said that users will be able to see stores for Kwality Wall’s on Swiggy, but the orders will be fulfilled by the company’s pushcarts, which are already pretty commonplace in most Indian cities.

HUL will also be working on setting up the necessary IT infrastructure, which will prompt the vendors to fulfil the order placed. Besides this, the HUL will also provide cold gel pack packaging to prevent the ice cream from melting.

“As soon as we picked up a change in consumer habits with the emergence of food delivery apps, we devised a plan to deliver our products to the consumer at their desired time and place,” Himanshu Kanwar, general manager (ice creams) at HUL, told Mint.

Last week, Swiggy announced that it is allowing some restaurant partners to launch exclusive delivery-only food brands on the mobile platform. The company clarified that the new food brands will be available on the Swiggy BrandWorks platform.

Swiggy BrandWorks is the company’s asset-light and low investment model for restaurants which have the capability to cook additional meals. So far, Swiggy has selected restaurants such as Berco’s Restaurant, The Story of a Chinese Chef, Baba Yega Burgers, Burger it Up and others for BrandWorks platform. Swiggy will also share user data with the restaurants to help them understand customer needs in a better manner.

Swiggy claims that its restaurant base has grown 4x times to have over 160K restaurant partners on board. Swiggy also claims to add over 10K new restaurants every month. The company currently operates in over 520 cities and has over 250K delivery partners on board.

Recently, the company has raised $113 Mn in Series I funding round led by Naspers. Swiggy’s existing investors Hadley Harbour Master Investments, Meituan has also participated in the round. The company is planning to use the funding to develop new lines of business and invest in growth areas such as Swiggy Stores, Swiggy Go and SuprDaily.