New Delhi: Food delivery platform Swiggy today announced expansion of its Street Food Vendors program to 125 cities under the Prime Minister Street Vendor’s AtmaNibhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) Scheme. This follows a pilot that Swiggy initiated with the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA) in the cities of Ahmedabad, Varanasi, Chennai, Delhi and Indore, through which Swiggy has already onboarded over 300 street vendors on its platform. Swiggy will list street vendors in tier 2&3 cities that are famous for their street food, like Gandhinagar, Vadodara, Rajkot, Jamnagar and others.

Swiggy has created a special destination on the app where consumers can discover their favorite street food vendors. At the time of on boarding, all vendors are registered with FSSAI. Swiggy will then facilitate a Food Safety Training and Certification (FOSTAC) in partnership with FSSAI and their empaneled partners.

The SVANidhi Scheme has received loan applications from a whopping 1.47 lakh street food vendors so far. From these, in the first phase alone, Swiggy will onboard an unprecedented 36,000 vendors to whom the loan has been disbursed in 125 cities, potentially making this initiative by Swiggy and MoHUA the largest of its kind not just in India, but globally.

As a practice, all PM SVANidhi Scheme street food vendors must undergo a three-stage training programme before being onboarded. After the training and registration, all vendors are required to do a self-audit and demonstrate the standards they abide by. These standards are modeled on the lines of FSSAI’s guidelines to ensure that essential hygienic practices are observed.

By updating the Swiggy app, customers in Ahmedabad, Chennai, Delhi, Indore and Varanasi can easily find “Street Vendor” under the restaurant category. The app homepage also has banners that lead users directly to a range of street vendor listings.