Swiggy sells cloud kitchen biz; Feb sees marginal rise in e-scooter sales

Also in this letter:
■ ChatGPT API now available for developers
■ Infographic Insight: India ranks 69th in internet speed
■ upGrad leases commercial property in Mumbai

Swiggy sells cloud kitchen business to Kitchens@

Almost six years after entering the cloud kitchen business in 2017, food and grocery delivery platform Swiggy has sold that business — Access Kitchen — to a cloud kitchen company Kitchens@. The acquisition brings Swiggy on board as a stakeholder in Kitchens@.

Following the acquisition, the combined gross merchandise value for Kitchens@ would be about $65 million, which it plans to increase to $100 million.

CEO speak: “The addition of Swiggy’s Access kitchens will bolster the reach and operations of Kitchens@’s in four cities across 52 locations and 700+ kitchens, providing customers with more convenient and efficient food delivery options,” said Junaiz Kizhakkayil, chief executive officer of Kitchens@.

Cutting costs? The development comes on the back of cost-cutting efforts at Swiggy. On January 20, the company said it was laying off employees and will be shutting down its meat business as its core food delivery business has slowed down, in addition to the adverse macroeconomic headwinds affecting tech companies as a whole.

Also read | ETtech Explainer: What are cloud kitchens?

Jargon buster: Cloud kitchens, also called ghost kitchens, are cooking facilities dedicated to food delivery. They don’t offer dining services, unlike traditional brick-and-mortar restaurants, and can thus be set up at a minimal cost.

Other players: The number of cloud kitchens in India has shot up since the pandemic. A Redseer report estimated the size of the market would touch $3 billion by 2024, from just $400 million in 2019.

Rebel Foods, which started in 2011, is India’s oldest cloud kitchen brand. It operates over 11 brands, including Faasos, Behrouz Biryani, and Oven Story, across 10 countries and turned a unicorn in 2021. Curefoods, founded by ex-Flipkart executive Ankit Nagori is another major player in the space, running popular brands such as House of Biryani, Masala Box, and EatFit.

Also read | Faasos parent Rebel Foods to run US fast-food chain Wendy’s in India

Marginal rise in e-scooter sales in Feb, Ola retains top spot

Sales of high-speed electric scooters saw a marginal surge month-on-month in February, even as overall two-wheeler registrations remained flat.

Numbers game: As many as 65,263 high-speed electric scooters were registered last month, an increase of 1.6% on a sequential basis, data available on the VAHAN portal of the Ministry of Road, Transport & Highways (MoRTH) showed.

With this, penetration of electric two-wheelers in overall sales of motorcycles and scooters inched up to 5.2% last month, from 5.1% in January.

The sales figures were unimpressive amid weak consumer sentiment at the price-sensitive entry level.

Numero uno spot: Ola Electric topped the list with the highest registrations at 17,616 units in February. The company held 26.8% of the market share in the high-speed electric scooter market in the period, while Chennai-based TVS Motor took the second spot for the third consecutive month with a share of 19.2% in the segment.

At number three, Ather Energy had a market share of 15.2% in February. Okinawa and Hero Electric’s market share stood at 5.9% and 8.9%, respectively, in February.

Tweet of the day

OpenAI releases ChatGPT API for developers

OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has allowed third-party developers to integrate its AI chatbot and Whisper into their apps and services with an application programming interface (API).

Details: For the ChatGPT API, OpenAI is offering 1,000 tokens for $0.002 and said that is “10x cheaper than our existing GPT-3.5 models.”

The Microsoft-backed firm also said that ChatGPT API users can expect continuous model improvements and the option to choose dedicated capacity for deeper control over the models.

OpenAI revealed that it has been working with a few companies, including Snapchat and Instacart, to integrate ChatGPT into apps.

Early users: Snapchat has introduced the MyAI tab powered by ChatGPT. Available initially to subscribers, MyAI allows users to interact with a chatbot, which provides personalised recommendations for users, such as gift ideas or recipe suggestions.

Grocery delivery startup Instacart is using ChatGPT alongside its own AI and product data from its retail partner store locations to help customers discover ideas for open-ended shopping goals, such as “How do I make great fish tacos?” or “What’s a healthy lunch for my kids?”

Infographic Insight: Getting up to speed on 5G

India jumped 49 places to the 69th position on Ookla’s Speedtest Global Index from 118th in September 2022 on the back of the 5G services rollout, according to a report by the network intelligence and connectivity insights provider.

After initial hiccups, the networks have now started stabilising and Indian consumers can experience up to 500 Mbps in download speeds.

upGrad leases commercial tower in Mumbai’s BKC for 29 years

Edtech unicorn upGrad has leased a commercial tower from Sunteck Realty in Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) for 29 years with a cumulative rental payout of Rs 2,000 crore through the total term.

Deal details: The company, started by Ronnie Screwvala, Mayank Kumar and Phalgun Kompalli, will be paying a monthly rental of Rs 3.5 crore for a carpet area of over 121,000 sq ft.

upGrad will be paying starting rentals of close to Rs 300 per sq ft. per month on a carpet area basis. The tower is adjacent to Brookfield Group’s Equinox complex on BKC junction and will be configured now for student housing and upGrad’s offline experience centre.

upGrad fundraising: The higher education firm raised $210 million from marquee investors in a funding round in August last year taking its valuation to $2.25 billion. Existing investors Temasek, IFC, and IIFL invested in the round on a pro-rata basis.

Also read | Pay hike on the cards for edtech employees after an edgy 2022

Today’s ETtech Top 5 newsletter was curated by Megha Mishra in Mumbai and Gaurab Dasgupta in New Delhi. Graphics and illustrations by Rahul Awasthi.