In Restaurant Footprint Push, Swiggy Rolls Out ‘Project Next’ To Help Delivery Partners On Career Growth

Continuing its expansion spree, foodtech major Swiggy has announced roll out of Project Next, an initiative aimed at providing career growth opportunities for its delivery partners while speeding up restaurant onboarding.

This move is part of Swiggy’s Skills programme, which focuses on skilling, training, internships, and employment opportunities across its value chain.

Under Project Next, qualified delivery partners will transition into sales executive roles, playing a key part in expanding Swiggy’s restaurant network across over 150 emerging markets.

This initiative will primarily target Tier II and III cities, where the newly promoted sales executives will manage and onboard restaurants, providing them with essential platform support.

Swiggy aims to enhance its restaurant footprint through this programme, while also offering its delivery partners an avenue for meaningful career advancement.

“Swiggy works with nearly 4 Lakh delivery partners across India. While many value the platform for flexible earning opportunities, some aspire for more. To empower this group, we launched Project Next under our Swiggy Skills initiative. This unique programme helps delivery partners transition from “blue collar” to “white collar” workers.”, said Rohit Kapoor, CEO, Swiggy Food Marketplace.

Swiggy claims that in the past five weeks, Project Next has transitioned the company’s 100 delivery partners into sales executive roles, enabling them to onboard nearly 360 restaurants.

Looking ahead, it plans to scale this initiative by transitioning hundreds of delivery partners across 150+ growing markets, including cities like Vadodara, Amritsar, Nashik, Agra, and Dharwad.

Earlier this month, Swiggy joined hands with the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) to launch Swiggy Skills, to offer a range of skilling and employment opportunities within its food delivery and quick commerce network.

An MoU was signed between the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, and Swiggy aimed towards creating employment, internship, and training opportunities for people in restaurant operations, and various aspects of retail management.

This comes at a time when Swiggy is is now reportedly gearing up to file its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with the capital markets regulator SEBI as early as this week.

According to the ongoing buzz, the Bengaluru-based Swiggy is likely to raise $1.04 Bn (INR 8,387 Cr) from its IPO. The diversified food biz startup is waiting to get approval from the markets regulator to proceed with the IPO filing.

Swiggy filed for an IPO via a confidential pre-filing route with the SEBI in April, aiming for a fresh issue of equity shares worth INR 3,750 Cr ($450 Mn) and an offer-for-sale (OFS) component worth INR 6,664 Cr.