Swiggy to start drone delivery trials for Instamart

Food delivery platform, Swiggy will begin pilot of drone delivery with four startups from the first week of May. To be executed in two tranches, the startups are:

Tranche 1: Garuda Aerospace and Skye Air Mobility. The pilot will start with immediate effect.

Tranche 2: ANRA + TechEagle Consortia and Marut Dronetech. The pilot will commence after collating the learnings from the first tranche.

The pilot will assess drone delivery feasibility for Swiggy's grocery delivery service, Instamart. The blog post mentions, "Drones will be used to replenish stocks between seller-run dark stores and from a store to a common customer point. A delivery partner will then pick up orders from the common point and deliver them to the customer’s doorstep."

The pilot will begin in Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR. This comes on the heels of and as a response to a Request for Proposal made by Swiggy for Drones as a Service. Swiggy received over 345 registrations and the four startups were awarded after a legal, financial, and technical evaluation process.