Swiggy and Zomato to venture into the Buy Now, Pay Later market in India

Data and analytics company GlobalData has said that Swiggy and Zomato are set to benefit by venturing into the growing Indian BNPL space.

BNPL has been gaining prominence in India with increasing number of payment and fintech companies vying to get a piece of this fast-growing market, according to GlobalData. Swiggy’s announcement comes within few days of its rival Zomato’s plans to offer BNPL services.

While the concept of BNPL is currently more prominent in categories like travel and accommodation, electronics, clothing and footwear, it is set to penetrate food delivery. Swiggy has a network of around 128,000 restaurants across 500 Indian towns and cities with around 20 million monthly active users, while Zomato has a network of nearly 390,000 restaurants and 32 million monthly active users.

Despite reopening of restaurants, growing number of consumers continue to order food online. This reflects in GlobalData’s 2021 Financial Services Consumer Survey conducted during Q1 and Q2 of 2021, where 55% of respondents in India stated that they used BNPL service for online payments in the past six months.