On May 5, 2025, Swiggy paused its hyperlocal delivery service Genie across several cities for “operational constraints.” Genie allows customers in the same city to send parcels and schedule shop pickups, was present in almost 70 cities previously. Genie is no longer an option on the Swiggy app in major hubs such as Bengaluru, Delhi NCR, Mumbai, and Pune. In some cities where Genie is still on the app, they have a message that Genie is “temporarily unavailable.” The company has not made an official release yet, though Swiggy has stated on social media in response to customer inquiries that Genie was “currently taking a little break” and that the company is moving quickly with the team to restore Genie as soon as possible.
This is not the first time Genie operations have been paused by Swiggy. In 2022, the service was paused in cities including Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad for high demand for their food delivery and quick commerce businesses. The latest suspension comes days after Swiggy announced the expansion of its 10-minute delivery offering Bolt across 500 cities.
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As per multiple reports, the saga of Genie is likely to be over after Swiggy’s decision to shut down the service due to the lack of expected returns and issues with scaling and bringing in revenue. Launcher in April 2020, Genie grew to a presence in about 60 cities but was not a meaningful revenue contributor for Swiggy. The closure signifies the end of a vertical that did not perform where expectations were placed. But Swiggy’s decision to eliminate Genie does coincide with a re-alignment towards quick commerce and the company doing selected professional services. Currently, the company is focused squarely on higher-margin platforms Instamart and Bolt. In fact, Bolt is reportedly now contributing to 10% of total food orders for Swiggy.
The hyperlocal delivery segment market is super competitive as a handful of players Uber, Borzo, Porter, Rapido Parcel are also competing on gaining some market share. Swiggy choosing to shut Genie is indicating a shift in how to redeploy resources towards segments with better unit economics. Analysts are noting that quick commerce has better margins and therefore does have priority over low-performing services like Genie.
Swiggy is scheduled to announce its March quarter financials on May 9. During the December quarter Swiggy’s reported revenue year-on-year growth rate was 31% to Rs 3,993 crore, but its consolidated losses widened to Rs 799 crore against Rs 594 crore in the same period the previous year.
