The Echo-nomist

Did you receive an email/message from Swiggy addressed to Suryakant? It might not have been a technical mistake at all. Obviously, twitter was full of tweets by confused people as to who Suryakant is. Everyone thought Swiggy’s copywriter would get fired. What had he done?

Turns out it wasn’t a mistake at all. It was a marketing strategy! It was a ruse to introduce their new membership plans to everyone. This is what they tweeted:

Dear Preeti, Nancy, Farhan, Arjun, Naushad, Rasika, Simran, Vaishali, Anushka, Akash, Imran, Naina, and everyone else who is not Suryakant. We’re sorry. Here’s what happened: https://t.co/c3r2f0wQbf

— Swiggy Food (@Swiggy) March 10, 2021

And also posted on their blog: “Earlier today… referring to all of you by one name- Suryakant. This wasn’t much an error as an attempt at correcting an error. You see, in the past we’ve made the mistake of treating out customers exactly the same- we had just one Super plan for everyone. But over the last few years, we’ve noticed that no two foodies are exactly the same. Which is why we’ve made some big changes to our membership programme.”

Earlier, Swiggy had just one plan worth ₹ 149 per month that offered unlimited free deliveries. But now, they have three different plans worth ₹ 89, ₹ 169 and ₹ 329 per month. The prices differ due to the number of free deliveries you get.

On the surface, this may seem more affordable and accommodating. Because why does someone who orders 4 times a month need to buy a plan with unlimited deliveries. Here’s the catch though, there are restrictions. The cheapest plan (₹89/ month) has 5 free deliveries under 3 km. The second plan (₹169/ month) has 10 free deliveries under 5 km. The most expensive plan (₹329/ month) is the same as the only plan they offered earlier.

So now they want you to pay ₹329 for the same plan you used to pay ₹149 for earlier. As mentioned in The Ken, “The new Super, with its new variants and hikes, is only Swiggy further capitalising on the boost provided to it by the pandemic.”

In my opinion, it was a really smart marketing strategy and they got people talking about Swiggy. But we’ll only figure out how effective it is in the future.