How to run ads on swiggy instamart

How to Run Ads On Swiggy Instamart

  • Introduction
  • Eligibility, Compliance & Product Fit That Instamart Approves 
  • Who can sell on Swiggy Instamart?
  • The Non-Negotiables for Selling Safely on Swiggy Instamart
  • Setting Up a High-Performing Swiggy Instamart Storefront
  • How to Structure Your Swiggy Instamart Catalogue for Maximum Sales Velocity?
  • Swiggy Instamart Supply-Ready Setup
  • Advanced Swiggy Instamart Ads Strategy | Formats, Targeting & Campaign Setup
  • Swiggy Campaign Structure
  • How to run ads on Swiggy Instamart?
  • Grow on Instamart with Better Listings, Smarter Ads & Right Pricing
  • When to Consider an Agency
  • Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Imagine cracking into a marketplace where decisions are made in under six seconds. That’s the reality of Swiggy Instamart: a shelf-less supermarket where your product sits next to hundreds of near-identical options, and visibility isn’t earned—it’s engineered.

In a country where time is precious and convenience is king, quick-commerce is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s the new normal. And right at the heart of this shift is Swiggy Instamart. As of 2025, Instamart serves over 100 cities across India, with rapid-delivery dark-store networks stretching from metros to Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns.

Numbers show the potential clearly: the parent company Swiggy claims a user base of about 24.7 million weekly active users (According to Swiggy's Annual Report), and Instamart alone reportedly attracted around 8.2 million weekly users, soon after its standalone-app launch in 2025.

From a market-share lens, Swiggy Instamart is a heavyweight: it currently holds about 25% of India’s quick-commerce market (by net merchandise value — NMV), placing it firmly among the top players.

Demand is rising rapidly, too. In its most recent results, Swiggy Instamart’s Gross Order Value (GOV) grew by 108% year-on-year, reflecting both growing orders and increasing basket size, a clear signal that more users are trusting the platform for groceries and essentials.

What this means for you as a seller: there’s a massive, active, and growing audience, from big cities to smaller towns, ready to click and buy. If you build your presence carefully, you’re not competing for scraps: you’re entering a market with real velocity, scale, and room to grow.

swiggy instamart ads agency

Eligibility, Compliance & Product Fit That Instamart Approves

Who can sell on Swiggy Instamart?

To become a seller on Swiggy Instamart, you need more than just a product; you need proper paperwork and infrastructure. Required legal and business credentials typically include:

  • A legally-registered business entity (proprietorship, partnership, LLP, or company) as proof of legitimacy.
  • A valid GST certificate (GSTIN), especially important if you’re selling taxable goods or servicing multiple states.
  • A PAN card (of the business or proprietor) for tax compliance and banking. 
  • Bank account details (often via a cancelled cheque or bank statement) for settlement & payouts.
  • Proof of a warehouse, store, or dark-store address, since quick commerce depends on fast fulfilment.

If you tick all boxes, you become “platform-ready”, meaning you can onboard onto Swiggy Instamart, list products, and start selling.

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Because these categories match consumer behaviour, frequent need, small-value purchases, and recurring orders, they scale better on quick-commerce platforms than bulky or one-off products. This aligns with how Swiggy Instamart positions itself: groceries, essentials, and FMCG are prime. 

The Non-Negotiables for Selling Safely on Swiggy Instamart

If you’re selling food, groceries, or consumables, compliance isn’t optional; it’s mandatory. For sellers on Instamart:

  • If you’re offering food or edible items, you need a valid licence/registration under FSSAI. Without this, you risk rejection from the platform or legal penalties.
  • Food business operators (including sellers, resellers, distributors) must ensure proper hygiene, safe storage, and handling — for both packaged & processed foods.
  • Listings must carry accurate product data, clear images of the product (front/back), correct MRP, batch number/manufacturing or expiry date (for perishables), pack size, etc. This creates transparency & consumer trust.
  • For branded goods/ personal-care/ sensitive items, valid trademarks or certification (where required) help avoid legal or marketplace-compliance issues. Many platforms ask for such documentation during onboarding.

Setting Up a High-Performing Swiggy Instamart Storefront

Account Registration & Verification

To list your products on Swiggy Instamart, you first need to complete the onboarding process. This usually follows a clear flow via the seller/partner portal:

  • Visit the Swiggy Instamart partner portal and fill in the seller-registration form. Provide business details, contact info, warehouse/dark-store address (if applicable), GSTIN/PAN, and bank details.

  • Upload required documents: business registration certificate, GST certificate (if needed), PAN, address proof, bank-account proof (often a cancelled cheque or bank statement), and any relevant licences (like FSSAI for consumables).

  • Once submitted, Swiggy Instamart reviews your documents and verifies compliance. After verification, you get access to the seller dashboard, and then you can proceed to catalogue setup.

A clean, complete registration avoids delays; missing or invalid documents are among the biggest causes for rejection or slow onboarding.

How to Structure Your Swiggy Instamart Catalogue for Maximum Sales Velocity?

Once your account is live, the way you structure your catalogue plays a huge role in whether products get noticed and sold. High-conversion catalogue practices generally include:

  • Use SKU-level detail: each unique variant (size, weight, flavour, pack-size) should have its own SKU. This helps with inventory, fulfilment, and avoids confusion.

  • Write clean, clear product titles: name + variant + main attribute (e.g., “Atta – 5 kg”, “Toothpaste 100 g – Mint Fresh”). Avoid vague or overly long titles.

  • Add descriptive attributes like size, weight, variant, pack-size, flavour, whatever matters for the product. These details help users make buying decisions and help Swiggy Instamart’s search/filter logic.

  • Use high-quality images: clear, well-lit photos (front/back if needed), showing packaging, variant details, expiry/ manufacturing dates (if visible), and size reference. Good images build trust and reduce returns.

  • Price competitively, keeping in mind that many buyers on quick-commerce are value-sensitive. Competitive pricing + convenience often beats premium price + slow delivery.

  • Maintain accurate stock levels, especially across different warehouses or dark stores. Overselling a product that’s out of stock, or stocking only in one warehouse when you scale, leads to cancellations, bad reviews, and a lower seller ranking.

A well-structured catalogue reduces friction: customers find what they want, trust what they see, and buy, rather than hesitate or bounce.

Swiggy Instamart Supply-Ready Setup

Having a good catalogue is only half the battle. To scale effectively, especially across multiple cities, you need robust inventory and supply-chain planning. Key practices:

  • Plan for frequent replenishment: quick-commerce customers expect rapid delivery, so stock turnover needs to be high and continuous. Don’t treat inventory like traditional e-commerce.

  • Ensure inventory is spread across your dark stores/warehouses, especially if you operate in multiple cities, as this reduces delivery times and avoids stockouts.

  • Monitor stock levels in real time, and have buffer stock for fast-moving SKUs (essentials, FMCG, staples) to handle surges or bulk orders.

  • Minimise stock outs and overselling: both damage seller reputation, harm fulfilment reliability, and make scaling harder.

  • Build efficient restocking cycles, weekly or bi-weekly replenishment, depending on demand, to ensure steady availability.

If you combine onboarding compliance + well-built catalogue + supply-chain readiness, you build a foundation ready for growth and scaling, with minimal friction and maximum potential for conversion and retention.

Advanced Swiggy Instamart Ads Strategy | Formats, Targeting & Campaign Setup

Swiggy Instamart ads are built to do one thing—push visibility at the exact moment a shopper is ready to buy. Unlike traditional marketplaces, where discovery is slow, Swiggy Instamart placements sit directly inside high-intent zones such as search, category pages, and “last-minute add-on” slots.
The goal is simple: appear where demand already exists.

Swiggy Instamart Ad Campaign Structure

This framework outlines how brands can structure their advertising on Swiggy Instamart to maximise visibility, capture buyer intent at different stages, and drive conversions across key product categories.

1. Campaign Strategy

Swiggy Instamart offers four major ad pillars. Each plays a different role in the buyer journey, from discovery to conversion.

swiggy instamart ads

● Item Ads

These are performance-driven placements that push individual SKUs directly into high-intent zones—search, browse pages, and add-on slots.

How to sell products on swiggy instamart

● Banner Ads

High-impact visual placements used for brand visibility, new product launches, festival promotions, and category-wide pushes.

swiggy instamart ads agency

● Guaranteed Top Slot Ads

Premium positions that guarantee your SKU stays in top search/category results for selected keywords or categories.

Swiggy instamart ads campaign strategy

● Speciality Collection

Curated, theme-based collections highlighted on homepage and premium placements to drive contextual product discovery.

2. Item Ads Split 

Item Ads are the backbone of performance marketing on Swiggy Instamart. They target high-intent areas and push SKUs where users are actively deciding.

▪ Item Ads – Keyword Ads (Branded & Generic)

  • Appears when customers search for specific branded or generic category terms

  • Helps capture both brand recall traffic and category shoppers

  • Two formats:

    • Branded Keywords → e.g., “Tata Salt”, “Colgate Toothpaste”

    • Generic Keywords → e.g., “atta”, “snacks”, “shampoo”, “tea”

Best For:
FMCG staples, daily essentials, snacks, personal care, baby essentials.

▪ Item Ads – Browse Boost

  • Pushes a SKU to the top of category or browse pages
  • Helps win visibility even if organic rank is low
  • Useful for fast-moving items or when entering competitive categories

Ideal For:
Oil, rice, noodles, masalas, packaged foods, cleaning supplies.

▪ Item Ads – Your Go-To Items

  • Targets users during reorder or habitual purchase cycles
  • Instamart places frequently bought items in recommended zones
  • Strong for SKUs with high repeat purchase behaviour

Best For:
Milk powder, bread, eggs, toothpaste, detergents, FMCG staples.

▪ Item Ads – Last-Minute Add-On

  • Appears during final checkout or cart completio
  • Designed to encourage incremental purchases
  • High conversion because users are actively finalising their carts

Ideal For:
Wipes, chocolates, spices, tissues, small household consumables.

3. Banner Ads Split

Banner ads are visual, high-visibility formats for brand storytelling and top-of-funnel awareness.

▪ Banner Ads – L2 Category Page

  • Displayed on major category sections like Snacks, Beverages, Essentials, Baby Care
  • Ensures visibility to shoppers browsing specific product groups
  • Effective during category pushes or seasonal demand peaks

Use Cases:
New product launch, category takeover, festival-specific promotions, bundle highlight.

▪ Banner Ads – Search Inline Banner

  • Appears within search result listings
  • Ideal when targeting specific high-volume category search terms
  • Helps brands stand out even before organic or sponsored product rankings

Use Cases:
Seasonal flavours, discounted SKUs, combo packs, brand campaigns.

4. Guaranteed Top Slot Ads 

A premium placement offering “first position lock-in.”

How it works:

  • Your SKU is pinned at the top under chosen keywords or category segments
  • Ideal for defending brand keywords or dominating competitive product categories
  • Ensures your product appears before both paid and organic listings by others

Best For:
Chips, chocolates, soaps, face wash, packaged breads, ready mixes.

Strategic Benefit:
Maximum visibility + highest click-through rate (CTR) due to prime placement.

5. Speciality Collection

Curated collections that help users discover themed or seasonally relevant products.

How it works:

  • Instamart highlights a curated list at premium homepage slots
  • Brands can position their SKUs inside themed sections
  • Highly effective for showcasing contextual relevance

Examples of Collections:

  • Festive Packs: Diwali sweets, gift boxes, premium snacks
  • New Arrivals: Newly launched SKUs
  • Premium / Better-for-You: Organic, sugar-free, gluten-free
  • Baby-Safe Products: Diapers, wipes, baby food
  • Occasion-based bundles: Breakfast essentials, party snacks, monsoon picks

Impact:
Increases discovery among shoppers who are exploring rather than searching.

How to run ads on Swiggy Instamart?

If you’re a leading D2C brand looking to start running ads on Swiggy Instamart, here are the steps you should follow:

Step 1: Log in to the Swiggy Instamart Ads Portal

Create or access your seller/brand account. Ensure your SKUs, inventory, pricing, and compliance documents are already approved on Instamart — ads only work when your catalog is fully live.

Step 2: Choose Your Market Coverage

Select the cities or regions where you want your ads to run. Instamart operates on dark-store availability, so choosing the right locations ensures your ads only run where stock is consistently available.

Step 3: Select the SKUs You Want to Promote

Pick products that are suited for paid visibility. Prioritise SKUs with:
• Good margins
• High repeat demand
• Stable stock levels
• Strong category velocity

These products generate better ROAS and scale faster on Instamart.

Step 4: Choose Your Ad Placements

Match the ad placement with your SKU goal:

New launch → Banner Ads + Keyword Ads
High-demand or repeat-use items → Item Boost (Browse Boost, Your Go-To Items, Last-Minute Add-on)
Competitive categories → Guaranteed Top Slot Ads
Seasonal or curated products → Speciality Collections on homepage

This ensures your money is spent where the category logic actually works.

Step 5: Set Your Daily Bid & Budget

Define daily budgets, CPC bids, and pacing. Keep it dynamic — Instamart sees different demand cycles across the week, with higher spikes for snacks, beverages, ready-to-eat and easy-to-cook items during weekends.

Step 6: Schedule Your Campaign & Pick Peak Windows

Choose when your ads should run. Instamart has clear high-purchase windows:
9–11 AM → morning essentials & breakfast items
4–9 PM → snacks, beverages, dinner basics
Month-start → higher basket sizes across categories

Scheduling around these windows ensures better conversions.

Step 7: Launch & Optimise Continuously

Once live, monitor KPIs like impressions, ATC, ROAS, stock-out rate, and conversion percentage. Adjust bids, budgets, and placements based on performance.

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For large-scale businesses, managing Swiggy Instamart ads can get overwhelming fast. Multiple SKUs, constant stock checks, city-level availability, and daily bid adjustments demand dedicated attention. If you’d rather focus on scaling your brand than juggling dashboards, partner with Unbundl — a leading swiggy instamart ads agency, we handle optimisation, creative strategy, and performance tracking end-to-end, so your campaigns deliver consistent ROI.

Pro tip:
A sudden drop in ROAS often correlates with stock outs → pause ads → refill stock → restart.

Advanced Swiggy Instamart ads work only when the right SKU meets the right moment:

swiggy instamart ads format

Once aligned with consistent stock, clear pricing, and repeat-worthy SKUs, Instamart ads don’t just drive views… they move units at speed.

Grow on Instamart with Better Listings, Smarter Ads & Right Pricing

Imagine cracking into a marketplace where decisions are made in under six seconds. That’s the reality of Swiggy Instamart: a shelf-less supermarket where your product sits next to hundreds of near-identical options, and visibility isn’t earned, it’s engineered.

Selling here is not just about uploading a SKU and waiting for orders to roll in. It’s an experiment running in real time, where titles influence search ranking, reviews shape visibility algorithms, and pricing quietly decides whether your growth becomes compounding or crippling. The smartest brands aren’t simply advertising; they’re orchestrating a three-lever system.

  • Start with your organic foundation. Swiggy Instamart’s search isn’t as sophisticated as Google's, but it behaves on the same principles: relevance, performance, and clarity.

    swiggy instamart ads campaign
  • Then layer ads intelligently, not emotionally. Don’t bid high because your competitor is loud; bid high where your SKU is already converting. That’s where paid pushes create compounding effects: high conversion rate leads to algorithmic love, algorithmic love leads to organic visibility, and organic visibility reduces ad spend dependency.

  • Now, pricing: this is where many sellers leak success. Swiggy Instamart fees subtract silently. Delivery costs, discounted slots, returns, everything eats into your margin if you price blindly. 

Strong brands reverse-engineer the margin and then introduce value optics: combo packs, multipliers, family bundles, flavor assortments. What looks attractive to the buyer becomes financially efficient for you.

When to Consider an Agency?

When your Swiggy Instamart operations move beyond a handful of SKUs, the complexity grows fast. Suddenly, it’s not just about listing products — it’s about building a system. Every SKU needs proper optimisation, every pack size needs fresh creatives, inventory must be aligned across multiple cities, and your Swiggy Instamart ads need daily tuning. At this point, relying solely on an internal team can slow growth, not because they lack skill, but because Swiggy Instamart demands fast, structured, platform-specific execution.

This is where partnering with a specialised Swiggy Instamart ad agency becomes strategically important. A leading Swiggy Instamart marketing company already understands the platform’s listing formats, category behaviours, compliance norms, bidding mechanics, and the way performance shifts across different dark-store zones. Instead of learning through trial-and-error, your brand plugs into proven systems built specifically for quick-commerce growth.

A dedicated Swiggy Instamart agency handles everything:
• SKU-wise listing optimisation
• Creative production for every pack size
• Data-backed Swiggy Instamart marketing strategy
• Campaign setup on the Swiggy Instamart ads portal
• Smart bid logic and pacing
• Full Swiggy Instamart account management services
• Ongoing performance monitoring and optimisation

The result? Faster launches, cleaner execution, fewer mistakes, and campaigns that scale smoothly across cities, categories, and consumption moments.

If your goal is rapid growth across multiple SKUs, regions, or high-velocity campaigns, the right Swiggy Instamart marketing agency can handle the heavy lifting so you stay focused on expansion, while they drive your Swiggy Instamart advertisement performance end-to-end.

Below is a simple framework to help you decide when working with managed swiggy instamart ads services or a quick commerce ad agency is the smart move:

Situation or Challenge

Why External Support Helps

What WE do as a leading Swiggy Instamart ads agency  

Multiple SKUs or variants

Consistency needed in titles, images, and attributes

Listing optimisation: SEO-friendly titles/descriptions, accurate attributes, high-quality images

Launching across multiple cities/regions

Manages city-wise compliance, stock allocation, and availability, syncing with Instamart dark stores

End-to-end account management services: listing, creatives, ad campaigns, supply flow

Limited internal bandwidth/resources

Optimized listings + ads + strategic bidding improves visibility, conversion, and organic ranking

Running Swiggy Instamart ads & campaigns, creative ad-assets, ongoing optimisation

Running or planning frequent ad campaigns

Ad formats and ad-campaign management require expertise; wrong bids waste budget

Ad campaign management (search ads, display/banner ads, sponsored listings, push-notifications)

Bundles, multipacks or high AOV SKUs

Needs good UX-oriented listing + correct pricing + ad push to highlight value to buyers

Create and promote bundle/multipack SKUs, ensure pricing & margin logic works

Slow creative pipeline

Each SKU needs compliant creatives

High-quality packshot editing and ad creatives

Want to scale quickly without building a full in-house team

Launch fast, iterate fast, grow fast — without hiring and training multiple teams

Full-stack quick commerce marketing services: listing, ads, account management, analytics, scaling


As a rule of scale, once your business moves from “launching” to “expanding,” external support speeds up everything that matters: visibility, structured execution, profitability, and city-wise rollout.

If internal quick commerce ads agency are stretched, creative cycles are slow, or campaigns are running without a clear strategy, it’s often the right moment to bring in a structured partner. And if you’re looking for a partner that manages these functions end-to-end, Unbundl already drives this ecosystem for brands, so growth doesn’t rely on bandwidth, but on execution.

Also read: How to run ads on blinkit

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Which advertising channels in the D2C space are currently most effective?
For D2C brands targeting fast-moving consumer goods, on-demand delivery platforms like Swiggy Instamart are highly effective. In-app banners, sponsored listings, and push notifications within the app tend to drive both high visibility and purchase intent.
2. How do you identify and target high-converting audience segments?
We leverage Swiggy’s first-party user data, including purchase history, browsing patterns, and geographic location. Segments are created based on factors like repeat buyers, category affinity, and frequency of Instamart orders.
3. What ad formats tend to drive the best engagement and conversions for D2C products?
Sponsored listings in the search and category pages, in-app banners, and personalized push notifications consistently perform well. Formats that highlight discounts or bundles often see higher CTR and conversions.
4. How do you measure campaign performance and ROI?
We track metrics like impressions, CTR, add-to-cart rates, completed orders, and overall ROAS. Conversions are directly attributed to Instamart ads via tracking pixels and order-level reporting provided by the platform.
5. What is your process for A/B testing creatives, copy, and messaging?
We run parallel variations of ad creatives, copy, and call-to-actions targeting similar audience segments. Performance is measured over short test cycles (usually 3–5 days), and top performers are scaled while underperforming variants are paused or revised.
6. How do you allocate budgets across campaigns and platforms?
Budget allocation is data-driven: higher-performing categories, geographies, or audience segments receive more spend. We also reserve a portion for experimental campaigns to test new creatives or segments.
7. How often do you optimize campaigns based on performance data?
Campaigns are monitored daily, with optimizations applied weekly. This includes bid adjustments, pausing underperforming creatives, reallocating budget, and updating audience targeting based on fresh data.
8. How do you benchmark campaigns against industry standards or competitors?
We use Swiggy’s internal benchmarks for category-level performance and combine that with competitive insights on promotions, ad placements, and creatives. This helps identify gaps and opportunities for better CTR and conversion rates.
9. What reporting structure do you use, and which metrics are most critical for D2C brands?
We provide weekly performance dashboards highlighting impressions, CTR, add-to-cart, completed orders, and ROAS. Key insights focus on what drives actual purchases and how campaigns can be scaled efficiently.
10. How do you manage campaigns that underperform to improve results quickly?
Underperforming campaigns are paused or revised immediately. We analyze creative effectiveness, audience targeting, and timing. Based on findings, we either refresh creatives, tweak messaging, adjust bids, or test new audience segments to recover performance.
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