Swiggy’s affordability play is rapidly turning into a mainstream food-delivery proposition, with its 99 Store now accounting for one in every seven food orders on the platform, a year after its launch.
Introduced in July 2025, 99 Store has grown into a network spanning more than 1.8 lakh restaurant partners across 500 cities, as Swiggy seeks to tap India’s large and growing base of value-conscious consumers.
The bigger takeaway for Swiggy is not merely the volume of low-priced meals. The company’s data suggests that affordability is helping it convert occasional online food customers into more frequent users, potentially increasing customer retention and order frequency.
Monthly orders through 99 Store have grown 2.4 times over the past year, according to Swiggy.
Affordability becomes a habit
99 Store was built around a simple proposition: meals and food items priced at ₹49, ₹79 and ₹99, with free delivery on orders above ₹49.
The dedicated section within the Swiggy Food app brings together affordable offerings from participating restaurants, allowing customers to discover lower-priced meals without having to search individually across the platform.
But the strategic significance lies in what happens after the first order.
Swiggy says users acquired through 99 Store are showing higher retention than the platform’s broader first-order customer base, while occasional users are increasingly being converted into habitual customers.
“The 99 Store was purpose-built for these affordability-first users, successfully converting users who previously only ordered food online for special occasions into regular customers,” said Swiggy Food Marketplace Chief Business Officer Sidharth Bhakoo, That suggests the initiative is functioning as more than a discounting programme. It is being used as a customer acquisition and habit-formation engine.
The Tier-2 and Tier-3 opportunity
The expansion across 500 cities is particularly significant.
India’s food-delivery opportunity is no longer confined to metros and affluent urban consumers. For Swiggy, the affordability proposition potentially opens up a much larger addressable customer base across Tier-1, Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities.
Students, young professionals and price-sensitive households are natural targets for the ₹49-₹99 price architecture.
At the same time, affordable ordering can make online food delivery more competitive with offline alternatives, particularly for everyday meals rather than occasional indulgence.
The most popular categories on 99 Store include bowls and thalis, South Indian breakfast, burgers and American food, pizzas, beverages, chaats and snacks.
This mix is revealing. It combines national QSR brands with highly local food preferences, suggesting that the value proposition is not restricted to a particular cuisine or consumer segment.
Global QSRs meet local favourites
Swiggy has brought major chains such as Burger King, McDonald’s, KFC, Domino’s Pizza and Taco Bell onto the platform, alongside regional and homegrown brands.
That combination could be one of 99 Store’s biggest strengths.
A customer looking for a ₹99 meal does not necessarily have to compromise on brand familiarity. At the same time, local brands can use the platform to reach consumers looking for familiar regional food at attractive price points.
The experience of A2B – Adyar Ananda Bhavan illustrates this opportunity.
“A2B’s year on 99 Store is worth noting, it’s a homegrown Chennai institution competing with global QSR chains on the same platform, and holding its own,” said Adyar Ananda Bhavan (A2B), Director, Vishnu Shankar.
According to A2B, item sales grew 61% between the first and second halves of the year, while its customer base increased 42%. Over 12 months, the brand sold lakhs of items across 45 outlets and attracted more than 221,000 unique customers.
For local brands, therefore, the proposition is not simply about selling cheaper meals. It can provide access to a much larger digital customer pool.
Why restaurants are signing up
The economics of 99 Store also appear to work from the restaurant partner’s perspective.
Swiggy says participating restaurants are seeing incremental orders from customers who might otherwise not have ordered online.
That matters because restaurants increasingly need to balance two competing requirements: attracting customers without permanently training them to wait for deep discounts.
The 99 Store model attempts to create a more structured affordability proposition, with a dedicated destination where value-conscious customers actively seek suitable meals.
Improved discoverability can consequently translate into higher engagement and repeat ordering.
Bhakoo said Swiggy would continue expanding the partner network and widening the assortment available to 99 Store customers.
The bigger bet: frequency over discounts
The most important number in Swiggy’s 99 Store story may therefore not be ₹99.
It is frequency.
If a consumer who previously ordered food online only for occasions begins ordering several times a month because affordable options are readily available, the economics of the platform can change materially.
For Swiggy, greater frequency can strengthen customer engagement and retention. For restaurants, it can create incremental demand. For consumers, it lowers the psychological and financial barrier to ordering online.
That creates a three-way value proposition.
The challenge, however, will be maintaining affordability while ensuring restaurant economics and delivery efficiency remain sustainable.
For now, the early numbers indicate that Swiggy’s bet is gaining traction. With 99 Store contributing one in seven food orders, 2.4x growth in monthly orders and a footprint of more than 1.8 lakh restaurant partners across 500 cities, the initiative has moved well beyond an experimental discount proposition.
Swiggy’s larger ambition appears to be clear: make online food ordering an everyday habit for India’s value-conscious consumer, not just an occasional convenience.