Multi-app vs Single App Strategy – Swiggy & Zomato
The success of digital products directly relies on how strong of a recall they can build in user’s minds. It’s also one of the most difficult parts to get right – ‘How can we be the app that the user opens whenever this specific need arises?’ This critical decision happens at the phone’s operating system level, where users mentally associate specific needs with specific apps. This bifurcation of intent at the OS level is a fundamental aspect of how humans interact with their digital tools.
Think about it: when you need to order dinner, you search for a food delivery app. When you need groceries, you search for a grocery app. This mental mapping of distinct needs to distinct solutions is deeply ingrained in human problem-solving behavior.
Contrasting approaches of Swiggy & Zomato
This psychological pattern makes Swiggy and Zomato’s contrasting strategies particularly interesting. Zomato operates separate apps for different services (Zomato for food, Blinkit for groceries), while Swiggy combines multiple services (food delivery, Instamart for groceries, Genie for package delivery) within a single app.
The key challenge for Swiggy’s approach isn’t about app quality - it’s about fighting against the natural bifurcation of intent. Once users have launched the same app for three different needs, they must then make a secondary choice within a non-system UI to select their actual intent. This creates an additional cognitive load that doesn’t exist when the bifurcation happens at the OS level – as in the case of Zomato where you naturally search for a different app for food delivery, groceries or, now the newly launched District app for entertainment.
The user’s mental model
This insight suggests we’re likely to see more users in the [Zomato + Blinkit] or [Zomato + Zepto] buckets than exclusively in the [Swiggy] bucket. Not because of any inherent issues with Swiggy’s app, but because humans naturally prefer to map distinct problems to distinct solutions.
The cognitive process is cleaner when:
- User needs food → Searches for Zomato
- User needs groceries → Searches for Blinkit
Rather than:
- User needs something → Opens Swiggy → Decides between food/groceries/delivery
While a super-app strategy offers clear business benefits like reduced customer acquisition costs and cross-selling opportunities, it faces the fundamental challenge of working against users’ natural problem-solving patterns. The bifurcation of intent at the OS level is not just a UI preference - it’s a reflection of how humans naturally categorize and solve different types of problems. This is why it’s important to make products connect with a very clear JTBD (user need) and build out the product’s brand messaging around that one need. Swiggy leadership in recent times has spoken about how they are in the business of delivering small conveniences to their users. Not specifically food delivery or grocery delivery.
While this is a great brand mission, users in the moment of a sharp need don’t quite function that way. Products are at the behest of extremely sharp recalls. And great recalls are built on specificity.
Looking forward
This understanding of intent bifurcation suggests that the success of digital services might increasingly depend on how well they align with users’ natural mental models for problem-solving. While integration and convenience matter, the fundamental human preference for matching distinct problems with distinct solutions remains a powerful force in shaping user behavior.