How Swiggy is building India’s AI-native commerce infrastructure

In July 2026, for nearly two decades, digital commerce has revolved around a familiar ritual: opening an app, browsing options, adding items to a cart, completing payment, and waiting for delivery. Madhusudhan Rao, Chief Technology Officer at Swiggy, has stated that instead of navigating apps, consumers will increasingly be interacting with AI assistants that are capable of understanding intent, making decisions, and completing entire transactions autonomously. Ordering dinner, restocking groceries, booking a restaurant, or planning an evening will start to happen through a simple conversation with an AI agent without ever opening the Swiggy app. For Swiggy, this represents far more than another technology upgrade. This signals a strategic transformation from operating one of India’s largest consumer platforms to becoming the underlying commerce infrastructure powering AI-native experiences across multiple digital ecosystems.

This vision also explained the strategic significance of Swiggy Builders Club, which is the company’s recently launched developer initiative. Builders Club opens Swiggy’s commerce capabilities to developers and enterprises through the Model Context Protocol (MCP), thus allowing AI-native applications to integrate food ordering, grocery shopping, and dining reservations directly into intelligent workflows. In effect, Swiggy has repositioned itself from a consumer-facing application into the transaction layer powering an emerging ecosystem of AI-driven commerce.

Over the past two years, the company has increasingly focused on building reusable technology primitives, shared infrastructure, and common developer platforms capable of supporting multiple businesses simultaneously. Rather than developing every new service independently, Swiggy has treated technology as a collection of modular capabilities that can be recombined rapidly to launch entirely new consumer experiences.

This architectural shift has enabled products such as Toing and Crew to move from concept to market within weeks using relatively small engineering teams while maintaining the scale and reliability expected from a platform serving millions of customers. The result is not merely faster software development. It is an organization capable of experimenting, iterating, and launching new businesses at a pace that would have been difficult under traditional product development models.

Impact on the AI Market 

Much of today’s AI remains conversational, as users ask questions and systems generate responses. Rao believes the next generation of AI will advance significantly. Instead of just answering questions, intelligent agents will carry out entire workflows independently. A simple command like “Reorder my usual from last Tuesday” could help to prompt an AI agent to find previous purchases, suggest alternatives if items are out of stock, complete the checkout process, handle payment, and track delivery, all without further need for user input. Traditional digital experiences required users to navigate complicated interfaces. Agentic commerce shifts the workload to software, enabling intelligent systems to manage multiple services behind the scenes while offering customers a seamless, one-touch interaction. For businesses, this signifies a fundamental shift in customer engagement, not just an addition of another AI feature.

One of the most powerful uses of this technology goes beyond convenience, and that is the aspect of accessibility. Many AI agents designed for accessibility already work with Swiggy through voice and conversational interfaces built on its MCP platform. For older adults, people with visual impairments, or users who are uncomfortable with traditional digital interfaces, this greatly reduces barriers to digital commerce. In a country with varying levels of digital literacy, conversational AI can help make technology more inclusive by adapting to users instead of forcing them to adapt to technology.

Impact on the Online Food Delivery Services Market

The global online food delivery services market size was valued at USD 83.41 billion in 2024, accounted for USD 98.5 billion in 2025, and is expected to reach around USD 405.81 billion by 2034, expanding at a CAGR of 17.14% from 2025 to 2035.

According to Precedence Research, the market's growth trajectory has been further catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic, as many individuals have embraced online food delivery as a safer and more convenient dining alternative. To tackle food waste, delivery companies are leveraging AI to forecast demand and optimize kitchen operations. Cloud kitchen operators and partner restaurants are using data analytics to reduce overproduction. Some platforms are also collaborating with food redistribution networks or apps like Too Good To Go, which resell unsold meals at discounted prices, thus cutting food waste and improving accessibility.

Moreover, leveraging data analytics and artificial intelligence for personalized recommendations and efficient logistics can enhance competitiveness. As consumers seek sustainability, integrating eco-friendly practices and packaging can tap into a growing market segment. Overall, the industry's future growth hinges on adaptability, innovation, and effectively addressing evolving consumer demands.

Impact on the Online Food Delivery Market

The global online food delivery market size was USD 257.43 billion in 2025 and is expected to reach around USD 694.65 billion by 2035, growing at a CAGR of 10.44% from 2026 to 2035.

According to Precedence Research, the widespread availability and adoption of smartphones is anticipated to augment the growth of the online food delivery market during the forecast period. Mobile applications provided by food delivery platforms make it extremely easy for users to browse menus, place orders, track deliveries, and make payments, all from the convenience of their smartphones. Furthermore, online food delivery platforms have made significant investments in expanding their delivery infrastructure.

The rollout of delivery management software is likely to offer growth opportunities for the online food delivery market in the years to come. Delivery management software is utilized by various businesses to effectively track deliveries at every stage.

Expert Opinion

While it may appear to be another developer ecosystem on the surface, Rao believes its role is far more fundamental. “The real question in the AI era isn’t which app wins,” he says. “It’s the infrastructure layer AI agents choose to transact on.

“The bigger shift is that commerce is moving beyond apps into every interface that people already use,” says Rao. “A user can ask an AI, ‘Order dinner for tonight, groceries for tomorrow, and book a table for Friday,’ and the entire flow can happen without opening the Swiggy app. That’s where convenience is headed, which is ambient, conversational, invisible.