Swiggy to expand cloud kitchens to 12 cities by 2020

 Food ordering platform Swiggy on Wednesday said it has set up over 1,000 cloud kitchens for its restaurant partners and plans to have more such facilities in 12 new cities by March next year.

In a span of just two years, the company has invested in over a million square feet of real estate space across 14 cities to help large, medium and small restaurant partners expand to more locations both within their city and across new cities through cloud kitchens, Swiggy said in a statement.

"Swiggy has always maintained that cloud kitchens will be the future of food delivery. Very soon, India will have the second-highest number of cloud kitchens in the world, only next to China," Swiggy New Supply CEO Vishal Bhatia said.

The milestone of Swiggy successfully creating over 1,000 partner kitchens shows the faith the restaurant partners have in the concept and bolsters company's pioneering efforts in enabling more success stories in the restaurant ecosystem, he added.

In a cloud kitchen concept, operators prepare, package and deliver food without providing any dine-in facility to end-consumers.

"Over the last two years, Swiggy has invested over Rs 175 crore towards setting up and running these kitchens. This success has encouraged us to invest an additional Rs 75 crore to bring more partner cloud kitchens in 12 new cities by March 2020," Bhatia said.

Swiggy Access has helped grow restaurant businesses, deliver unmatched customer experience and created employment opportunities in metros as well as tier-II and -III cities, he added.

Swiggy's cloud kitchen operations across partner restaurants and its own brands so far have generated more than 8,000 direct and indirect jobs in the restaurant industry while reducing overheads, the company said.

The company is set to add another 7,000 direct and indirect jobs in the restaurant industry in the next six months, it added.

Swiggy Access was launched in 2017, an initiative to bring quality food closer to consumers while enabling business expansion for its restaurant partners.