A Tumblr blog post by some of the current and ex-employees of online food ordering startup Swiggy alleged that the startup has arm twisted small restaurant owners to pay more commission and have lied about the growth numbers to its investors.
However, the company has denied any such allegations stating that the blog post from an anonymous source is targeted at maligning the reputation of Swiggy as an organization.
The post also alleged that the founders have built the business to eventually sell it off to make quick buck.
According to the blog post, Swiggy has allegedly increased its commission from 5% to 25% within a span of just 3 years. Also, the management is planning to hike this up to 30% in the future.
“We are made to lie about our market share, as well as our 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. Some restaurants are paying us more than their net margins because Swiggy, in some areas in Hyderabad and Bangalore, has been able to become a significant portion of their revenues,” the post says.
Not on the business owners, the blog posts also alleged that Swiggy has paid for the positive review on play store and its Facebook page.
“Also, 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,” the post claims.
The blog post also claims that the higher management manipulated the data in the investor presentation.
“We know for a fact that our management has lied to investors about our order volumes during the latest fundraise. Our January 2017 order volumes were less than December 2016 volumes. Yes, we had a decline of order volumes in January. But we have seen the investor presentations, and they have shaved off the December numbers in the slides in order to show a linear growth curve across all months of our existence,” the post said.
The employees have accused Swiggy of unethical policies wherein promises of delivering equity and bonuses to employees wasn’t kept. Apart from that many employees have been sacked due to the unreal performance expectations from the higher management.
Though the company has declined any such allegations, it has yet to come up with an investigation report about the blog post.
Read the full blog post here.
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