“The impact was the biggest surprise“: Swiggy’s transition to native pays off

2 weeks ago 1
Three iPhone screens showcase a eating  and transportation  exertion  interface. The near  surface  shows a eating  find  leafage   with edifice  spotlights, the mediate  surface  features a merchandise  item  leafage   for a reddish  powerhouse foodstuff  with a statement  successful  Hindi, and the close    surface  displays a Chinese nutrient  paper   with chickenhearted  dishes highlighted successful  yellow.

Swiggy began arsenic a humble nutrient transportation service. Today, it’s India’s starring on-demand convenience platform, 1 that offers everything from groceries via Instamart to edifice bookings via Dineout. And since 2024, it’s been powered by autochthonal tools that make seamless mobile experiences for an assemblage that numbers successful the millions.

We caught up with Swiggy’s iOS improvement squad to sermon show metrics, proactive exertion adoption, and the astonishing ways transitioning to autochthonal tools impacted design.

When did you statesman the process of transitioning to autochthonal apps?

Agam Mahajan, elder engineering manager: We’ve ever built Swiggy Food natively, but Instamart and Dineout started arsenic hybrid experiences. As these businesses scaled rapidly, we began to spot wide limitations successful show and stability. That's when, successful aboriginal 2024, we made the determination to modulation them to autochthonal apps, utilizing a combination of Swift and SwiftUI.

What was the archetypal measurement to going native?

Mahajan: The archetypal measurement was identifying high-impact journeys alternatively than attempting a afloat rewrite. We started with the Instamart and Dineout location and hunt experiences, wherever astir lawsuit interactions happen, and rebuilt them arsenic autochthonal experiences implemented successful Swift and SwiftUI. We past followed a phased approach: we shipped our archetypal autochthonal experiences wrong weeks and completed the broader transition.

Why was it important to your squad to determination to autochthonal platforms?

Tushar Tayal, adjunct vice president: As Instamart scaled, we started seeing issues similar precocious leafage load times, app hangs connected ample SKU lists, representation pressure, and inconsistent animations. On Dineout, we recovered that affluent edifice contented — high-quality images and videos — was besides constrained successful a hybrid setup. We were besides constricted successful leveraging the latest autochthonal capabilities, similar precocious animations done Core Animation and newer level innovations specified arsenic Apple Intelligence.

At an organizational level, we besides wanted to bring each our experiences — Swiggy Food, Instamart, and Dineout — nether a unified plan system. In speedy commerce and discovery, each 2nd counts and each enactment matters. We needed tighter power implicit performance, reliability, and rendering. Moving to autochthonal allowed america to present faster, smoother, and much immersive experiences astatine scale.

Three iPhone screens show  a nutrient  transportation  exertion  interface. The near  surface  shows the homepage with promotional banners and edifice  listings, the mediate  surface  features a merchandise  leafage   for cold-pressed orangish  foodstuff  with a statement  successful  Hindi, and the close    surface  displays a paper   hunt  for chickenhearted  with highlighted crockery   and dim sum options.

“Moving to autochthonal allowed america to present faster, smoother, and much immersive experiences astatine scale,” says Swiggy Assistant Vice President Tushar Tayal.

What aboriginal benefits did you notice?

Priyam Dutta, engineer: People instantly experienced noticeably faster load times, smoother scrolling, and much fluid animations. The app felt much responsive and reliable, particularly connected older devices, wherever the quality was astir pronounced.

At the aforesaid time, moving to autochthonal helped america bring greater plan consistency crossed Swiggy Food, Instamart, and Dineout, and made it easier to reuse components, delivering a much cohesive acquisition crossed concern lines. It besides unlocked caller usage cases by leveraging autochthonal iOS capabilities. We introduced features similar OCR for Dineout paper search, which improved conversions, and market database scanning for Instamart. With Apple Intelligence, we were capable to physique experiences similar point summarization and comparison, making find faster and much intuitive.

What person you heard from your community?

Dutta: Response has been precise positive. We observed improvements successful engagement, completion rates, and app ratings — wide signals that radical could consciousness the show gains. We besides saw radical organically calling retired the improved acquisition connected societal media, which reinforced that the changes were some noticeable and meaningful.

What's been the astir astonishing happening to travel retired of this process?

Shashwat KN, engineer: Honestly, the interaction was the biggest surprise. We expected improvements successful latency, performance, and clang rates. What stood retired was the downstream effect connected concern metrics. We saw a meaningful uptick successful conversion and a simplification successful bounce rates, showing that show improvements translated straight into amended outcomes.

Another unexpected result was however it unlocked creativity crossed teams. Designers started pushing much engaging and analyzable experiences, knowing they could trust connected autochthonal capabilities.

Three iPhone screens show  a market  transportation  exertion  interface highlighting Apple Intelligence integration. The near  surface  shows the store   homepage with curated offers, the mediate  surface  displays an AI-generated merchandise  summary for cacao works  protein, and the close    surface  shows a side-by-side examination  of 2  macromolecule  bars.

The Swiggy squad brought apps similar Instamart nether a unified plan system. ”In speedy commerce and discovery, each 2nd counts and each enactment matters,” says Tayal.

What challenges did you encounter?

Aviral Garg, engineer: One of the cardinal challenges was balancing velocity with semipermanent architectural decisions. Early on, we leaned toward perfect implementations, which slowed execution. We corrected people by prioritizing iterative delivery, gathering scalable systems portion inactive moving fast.

Ensuring diagnostic parity during the modulation was different challenge. We had to proceed shipping caller features successful parallel portion migrating, which required wide ownership and cautious coordination betwixt hybrid and autochthonal systems.

Design was besides interesting. We initially replicated the existing UI successful native, but aboriginal pivoted to adopting autochthonal plan patterns with insignificant adjustments, improving reusability, accelerating development, and inactive preserving halfway functionality.


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