Swiggy to onboard 36,000 street vendors under PM SVANidhi scheme: Details here

New Delhi: Food delivery platform Swiggy on Thursday announced the expansion of its Street Food Vendors program to 125 cities under the Prime Minister Street Vendor’s AtmaNibhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) Scheme. 

Swiggy had previously initiated a pilot with the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA) in the cities of Ahmedabad, Varanasi, Chennai, Delhi and Indore, through which Swiggy has already onboarded over 300 street vendors on its platform.

Swiggy has created a special destination on the app where consumers can discover their favourite street food vendors. At the time of onboarding, all vendors are registered with FSSAI. Swiggy will then facilitate a Food Safety Training and Certification (FOSTAC) in partnership with FSSAI and their empanelled partners.

The PM SVANidhi Scheme has received loan applications from a whopping 1.47 lakh street food vendors so far. From these, in the first phase alone, Swiggy will onboard an unprecedented 36,000 vendors to whom the loan has been disbursed in 125 cities, potentially making this initiative by Swiggy and MoHUA the largest of its kind not just in India, but globally.

“Even as we go through more stages of Unlock, there has been a long-term change in consumer behaviour regarding continued social distancing and heightened demand for online services like food delivery. As a platform committed to bringing the widest choice of food to the doorsteps of consumers safely and hygienically, we’re delighted to bring them their favourite street food which they have been missing for many months now,” said Vivek Sunder, COO, Swiggy.

Swiggy has created a dedicated team to continuously explore and identify iconic, popular, and proven-safe street vendors on the platform. As a practice, all PM SVANidhi Scheme street food vendors must undergo a three-stage training programme before being onboarded. After the training and registration, all vendors are required to do a self-audit and demonstrate the standards they abide by. These standards are modelled on the lines of FSSAI’s guidelines to ensure that essential hygienic practices are observed.

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By updating the Swiggy app, customers in Ahmedabad, Chennai, Delhi, Indore and Varanasi can easily find “Street Vendor” under the restaurant category. The app homepage also has banners that lead users directly to a range of street vendor listings.