India’s leading and most popular food delivery startup, Swiggy landed in a soup on Wednesday, after four people claiming to be current and former employees allegedly revealed fraudulent and unethical means practiced at the company, in a blog post.
In an anonymous blog post on Tumblr, titled “Swiggy, a House of Cards”, which went viral, the employees allege how Swiggy dupes unsuspecting customers and manipulates business data in a presentation to its investors.
”We are made to lie about our market share, as well as order volumes to restaurant owners. The worst part is that instead of helping these restaurants grow their business, we are trained to arm-twist them to increase our commissions every couple of months. At first it was 5%, then 10% and now nearly 25%. The management wants us to take this to an average of 30% in the future”, reads the blog.
The blog then claims that most of the good reviews for the app were planted and paid for
“On social media, genuine reviews (which are usually bad) get immediately removed and buried since they are mostly negative. Instead of working on customer support, we hide customer reviews on social media. Instead of offering customers redressal, we hide behind TnCs and clauses to protect ourselves”
..And how company had lied to the investors about order volumes to ensure funding
The post put up a comparative chart of the actual figures of the order volumes and the numbers that were sent to investors, questioning their credibility.
The news shaked the Indian startup ecosystem with people raising questions about the company’s values and ethics
After the allegations, the company of course, refuted all claims, calling them an act to malign the company. The firm rubbished the claims in a post on Facebook
CEO Sriharsha Majety, hinting at foul play, further shot back at the detractors in a detailed point-by-point rebuttal to the blog post sharing internal data to support his claims.
He also claimed that the daily number of orders are continuing to grow, and the company is seeing about four million orders per month.
After the clarification, many came in support of Swiggy and lauded their work
People don’t realise it’s incredibly hard to build
Thanks to @swiggy_in Foodtech isn’t a bad word nowThey’d hv their struggles, who doesn’t https://t.co/bIllLwIyqR— Amit Singh (@goodnotenough) July 27, 2017
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