Dubai: Indian expats living in the UAE can now surprise their loved ones back home by ordering food and gifts, and even booking restaurant tables through the popular on-demand convenience platform Swiggy, a top company official said.
Rohit Kapoor, CEO of Swiggy Food MarketPlace, underlined that UAE residents can log into the Swiggy app and place orders for delivery to their friends and family in India.
“We deliver to almost 700 cities across India. People from here [in the UAE] can place orders for delivery,” Kapoor told Gulf News on the sidelines of the inaugural UAE-India Founders’ Retreat, which gathered about 60 leading Indian startup founders at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC).
“This service has been live for a month now,” Kapoor revealed.
In addition to the UAE, Swiggy’s new international login feature allows users in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and more to place orders through the app. Residents will be also able to shop on Swiggy’s quick commerce platform Swiggy Instamart, and book restaurant tables via Swiggy Dineout.
How to log in?
Swiggy’s recent offering will benefit 3.9 million Indians, who make up the largest expat community in the UAE and can now surprise their loved ones and ageing parents with food, gifts, or groceries.
“A lot of people in the UAE have families back in India. They can use their local numbers here to place orders and pay using international credit cards for deliveries to their family members in India. That’s the core use case for this service.”
Residents can easily download the official app, log in with their UAE-registered phone number, and place orders without paying any additional charges. Payments can be made via international credit cards or the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), available as a payment option.
“This works just like a regular order, with normal fees,” Kapoor confirmed.
Delivers in ‘Dubai’
When told Swiggy was already delivering to several locations in India named after Dubai, the CEO appeared surprised.
“Is there a city in India called Dubai?” he asked, baffled. When shown facilities such as ‘Dubai Mall’ in Kerala’s Edakkara and ‘Dubai Gate’ in Telangana, which were covered by Swiggy, Kapoor was amazed.
“Is it? I had no idea,” he said.
There were also locations like ‘Sharjah Biriyani House’ in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore, and others named after Abu Dhabi on the list of places covered by Swiggy.
Asked about the possibility of expanding Swiggy's services to Dubai and other parts of the UAE, Kapoor smiled and replied: “No, we have too much to do right now in India. We are still figuring out India.”
