Jumping onto the bandwagon, Swiggy has taken a proactive approach to stay ahead of the curve. In a recent interview, Rohit Kapoor, the chief executive officer of Swiggy’s food marketplace, shared an exciting development within the company. Recognizing the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI), Swiggy has formed a dedicated team consisting of around five talented individuals. Their sole responsibility is to explore, discover, and implement innovative AI applications throughout the organization. By embracing this strategic move, Swiggy aims to revolutionize its services and solidify its position in the competitive market.
The food and grocery delivery startup has been leveraging AI to generate images of food items and provide descriptions in certain cases as part of its ongoing technological experimentation. Zomato, a major competitor based in Gurugram, has also embraced AI to enhance the customer experience and streamline their operations.
“AI is not a not an area of curiosity anymore, it is an area of active workstream. AI is also a space where we don’t know what we don’t know. So we are not taking a deterministic approach there at all saying it will be only implemented in a certain area, it’s across the business,” Kapoor said.
Although reducing operational costs through the use of AI was an achievement for Swiggy, it was not the sole objective for the startup.
“Until and unless we are boundaryless in our thinking on this one right now we’ll be making a mistake… cost is only one side of it,” Kapoor added.
In a more recent development, the company introduced WhatToEat, an innovative feature designed to enhance the experience of discovering food. This functionality enables users to explore a carefully curated selection of options tailored to their mood and cravings, revolutionizing the way they find and enjoy their meals.
Read More: Swiggy introduces industry-first ‘WhatToEat’ feature, offering personalized food recommendations
Swiggy has implemented AI technology, primarily in the form of bots, to assist with addressing customer queries.
“Every company has to automate customer complaints at some point and we do it where it makes sense…Can we do better refunds? Yes, we should do much better with refunds,” Kapoor said.
However, he emphasized that customer refunds constitute an inconsequential figure in the company’s profit and loss (P&L) statement, and they will not have a significant impact beyond a certain threshold.
“…refunds are a careful thing to do. Because 99 percent of the refunds are genuine but that one percent will try to misuse the system at times and we must not lose money where nothing was due. We can of course optimise refunds and improve our profitability. But is this a big swing on our P&L? The answer is no,” Kapoor, who spends four hours every weekend – on websites like Midjourney and the like – learning about AI, concluded.