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CASE STUDY I Swiggy

How Instamart grew their business with in-app retargeting

Instamart, Swiggy’s instant grocery delivery service, operates in a fast expanding industry. To drive more first-time purchases and reduce user churn, they partnered with Remerge to implement a comprehensive retargeting strategy.

Boosting the on-demand delivery business

The Challenge

The on-demand delivery space is experiencing rapid growth with millions of users turning to it every month. Swiggy’s primary goal was to gain more traction among users as it expanded to more cities. A key challenge they encountered was the time it took new users to complete their first order after installing the app. This delay posed a risk of user churn, as customers would explore the app but fail to make a purchase, leading to lost opportunities. So Swiggy Instamart recognized the need for a more robust retargeting strategy to bring users back into the app and prompt them to make a purchase.

Finding the right solution

Identifying high-intent users

Remerge identified key user events that indicated high purchase intent, such as users who added items to their cart but did not complete the checkout process, or those who viewed items without purchasing. By segmenting these users based on the recency of these actions, Remerge was able to tailor campaigns to target users who were more likely to convert.

Testing and delivering the most engaging creatives

Initially, campaigns were run using only image creatives. However, Remerge recommended incorporating video creatives to increase click-through rates (CTR) and scale the campaigns. The creatives were updated weekly and monthly to align with seasonal events and Indian festivals, such as Swiggy's anniversary and Diwali. The additional use of limited-time discounts, such as "Free delivery on your first order," created a sense of urgency, driving higher engagement and conversions. Through Remerge's multi-armed ad bandit, we dynamically allocated traffic to high-performing variations in real-time, without the need of long-running A/B tests.

Optimized bidding through machine learning

By leveraging Remerge’s proprietary bid-multiplier and its deep neural networks, the spend was adjusted during peak user activity hours (such as 11am - 2pm and 7pm-9pm) while ad supply was optimized by identifying the top-performing sources. Remerge also adjusted bids manually for seasonal creatives to further capitalize on high-intent periods.

With Remerge’s industry-leading scale, processing twice as many ad opportunities as the industry average, spend was automatically scaled up to maximize budget efficiency and campaign impact.

« Our partnership with Remerge has been instrumental in driving efficient user acquisition and retention for Swiggy Instamart. Their strategic approach and execution have helped us scale significantly while maintaining strong performance. »

Rahul Doss, General Manager Growth, Swiggy Instamart

Increasing traffic and purchases

The Results

The retargeting strategy developed and executed by Remerge led to significant improvements in Instmart’s campaign performance:

  • Budget growth: Within a year, Instmart's retargeting budget grew by more than 4 times from 2023 to 2024, demonstrating the success of the strategy and the increased confidence in its effectiveness.
  • 100% achievement of CPA Goals: Even with increasing spends month over month, we managed to consistently meet the clients ambitious CPA goals.
  • Competitive advantage: In head-to-head tests, Remerge consistently outperformed other DSP competitors, prompting Instamart to prioritize their partnership with Remerge.

Company profile

About Swiggy

Swiggy is an Indian online food ordering and delivery platform. Founded in 2014, Swiggy is headquartered in Bangalore and operates in more than 580 cities. Besides food delivery, the platform also provides an instant grocery delivery service under the name Instamart, which launched in 2020.

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