Bengaluru, Sep 26 : Leading food delivery start-up Swiggy on Wednesday said it will open delivery-only kitchens in four metros and partner with 300 restaurants to serve customers faster and expand the food delivery market across the country.
"We will soon open our 'access' kitchens in Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Mumbai and tie up with about 300 restaurants in 10 cities within next 6-9 months to serve food faster," said the city-based app provider in a statement.
Through the initiative 'Swiggy Access', the company plans to help about 300 existing restaurants across 10 cities expand their businesses to more locations through kitchens that will only deliver food and involve no heavy real estate investments.
The restaurants will get access to kitchen infrastructure set up by Swiggy with no rents or deposits.
The platform is allowing restaurants to expand across cities through the project. A popular south Indian restaurant chain from Bengaluru, Vasudev Adiga's, will now deliver to consumers in Delhi through the access kitchen.
There is a deficit in restaurant supply in the country despite the mushrooming of new restaurants, according to the company.
"Several parts of a city may not have the restaurants and cuisines that a consumer wants, which these kitchens will make accessible," a company spokesperson told IANS.
By 2020, the company aims to spread the access kitchens across 30-40 cities in the country through tie-ups with hundreds of restaurants.
After raising $210 million in June from multiple investment firms, Swiggy has so far raised over $460 million. /EOM
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Mathura (UP)(PTI): With the recovery of two more bodies on Sunday, the death toll in the boat capsize incident in the Yamuna river in Mathura has climbed to 13, officials said on Sunday.
Search for three more missing persons is underway.
Superintendent of Police (Rural) Suresh Chandra Rawat said renewed search efforts led to the recovery of the body of a college student, identified as Dinki Bansal, near Devraha Baba Ghat and that of a man identified as Rishabh Sharma approximately 3 km away from the accident site.
The incident occurred on Friday afternoon when a boat carrying over two dozen tourists, primarily from Punjab, hit a floating drum of a pontoon bridge and capsized near Kesi Ghat in Vrindavan.
Most of the victims were from Jagraon and Dugri areas of Ludhiana district.
Teams from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) along with the district administration and local police were actively engaged in the search for the missing pilgrims.
However, strong currents of the Yamuna river and the significant depth of the water at the ghats are proving a hindrance.
Circle Officer (Mant) Sandeep Singh said the Yamuna river stretch extending from Keshi Ghat to Gokul Barrage has been divided into seven sectors.
The search for the missing individuals will now be conducted within this specific 20-square-km zone. A Station House Officer (SHO) has been designated as the in-charge for each sector.
Acting on the orders of the DIG (Agra Range), seven SHOs will oversee operations across the seven sectors of river Yamuna.
Giving details about the operation, Additional District Magistrate (Finance and Revenue) Pankaj Kumar Verma, citing NDRF officials, on Saturday had said although the search for the missing persons is currently focused within a 14-km radius from the spot where the boat had capsized, there is a possibility that they may have been swept much further downstream.
SHO of Vrindavan police station Sanjay Pandey said boat operator Pappu was arrested late on Friday night.
He is accused of failing to provide life jackets to passengers before allowing them to board the boat, and operating the boat at high speed. This resulted in the boat losing control and colliding with a pontoon bridge's drum, which led to the accident, officials said.
Police have registered a case and also arrested the contractor, Narayan Sharma, responsible for the repair work on the pontoon bridge.
Rawat said that on Friday evening, police registered a case under section 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) against the boatman Pappu (alias Dauji) and Sharma, and subsequently arrested them.
According to the case details, Pappu's boat did not have any safety equipment or provisions whatsoever.
Moreover, despite repeated pleas from pilgrims, Pappu operated the boat at high speed. By the time he realised the danger upon approaching the pontoons of the bridge, it was already too late.
Consequently, after colliding with a pontoon drum, the boat lost control and capsized. It has also come to light that he is among those operators who have not obtained the requisite license to operate a boat.
Sharma was carrying out the work of dismantling and reassembling the pontoon bridge without providing any prior notification.
