Swiggy

A Diwali night in an old Mumbai lane. A couple sings a duet on a little stage framed in bulbs, the crowd in front of them in their festival best. Then the stage, the crowd and the plastic chairs scatter, because a tank is coming down the lane. It is strung with fairy lights. Nobody is especially surprised.

Swiggy XL is a 30-second Diwali film for Swiggy's new bulk-order service, directed by Nitin Menon for First December Films and published in October 2024, three weeks after Swiggy launched its XL fleet of electric delivery vehicles. The idea fits in one line of Hindi: at Diwali, everything becomes XL. It is the headline of First December Films' Swiggy work.

At a glance

• Brand: Swiggy Food
• Product: Swiggy XL, bulk orders delivered in one trip
• Production house: First December Films
• Director: Nitin Menon
• Director of Photography: Shivendu
• Launch window: Diwali 2024, published 28 October 2024
• Running time: 30 seconds
• Language: Hindi
• Line: XL deliveries for XL parties

The brief

On 5 October 2024 Swiggy launched Swiggy XL in Gurugram: a fleet of twenty electric vehicles with temperature-controlled compartments, built to carry an entire party's order in a single trip instead of a dozen bikes. Sidharth Bhakoo, National Business Head for Swiggy's food marketplace, said at the launch that the festival season was the best time to introduce it, "when there is gaiety and joy all around."

The service had a launch, a fleet and, by mid-October, a Guinness World Record: 11,000 vada pavs delivered in a single order to Robin Hood Army schools across Mumbai, with the team of Singham Again. What it did not yet have was a film that told an ordinary household what XL meant for them. The brief was to do that in thirty seconds, in the week everyone in India is feeding a crowd.

The idea: at Diwali, everything gets XL

The film's argument is that Diwali already makes everything bigger, the guest list, the sweets, the noise, and that Swiggy has finally built a delivery to match.

• A lane in old Mumbai lit for the festival. A stage in a frame of bulbs, a couple singing a film duet, a keyboard player, rows of plastic chairs.
• The crowd bolts. A battle tank, draped in fairy lights, rolls down the lane and through the stage.
• A policeman watches it pass a shuttered shop. An old man on a balcony puts his glasses on to be sure.
• A family at a dinner table. The son, in a pink kurta, delivers the thought: at Diwali everything becomes XL. We did too. His face as the tank passes the window: this has become double XL.
• No problem. An electric three-wheeler with Swiggy XL panels pulls into the lane and a rider unloads a stack of orange boxes into the party.
• Super: XL Deliveries. XL Parties. Swiggy Food, food you love, on time.

The tank is the joke and the product demonstration. It is the size of a Diwali appetite made literal, and the Swiggy XL vehicle that follows it is the answer. The film never explains the service. It shows a party that got out of hand and a delivery that arrived anyway.

Thirty seconds, one street, one tank. The scale of the festival is the brief, and the film simply drives it down the lane.

Building the lane

Everything in the film happens in one dressed street at night. Production designer Tina Paradkar's lane has the stage, the bulbs, the strings of lights across the road, a sale sign on a shutter, an old wooden balcony and a family dining room with a window onto the action, so that the tank can be seen from every angle without a location move. Location managers Rahul Gaikwad and Sharad Tondwalkar of Meeraky Productions found and secured it.

The tank is a real vehicle on a real street, which is the reason the film works: it has weight, it crushes chairs, its lights swing. Shivendu shot it with a second unit under Manish Usapkar, so the wide of the tank arriving and the close-ups of the crowd, the policeman and the balcony could be covered in the time a night shoot allows.

Casting and performance

Tia Jha cast the film around one deadpan family, and Aasif Ali is credited in the cast. The comedy is in how little anyone reacts. The policeman looks. The old man adjusts his glasses. The son at the table says double XL the way you would remark on rain. A tank in a Diwali lane is treated as a slightly larger than usual party problem, and that restraint is what makes the punchline land when the Swiggy vehicle turns up.

Post and sound

Navneet Pant cut the film, Vineesh Vijayan graded its warm, bulb-lit night, and Rakesh Menon at Splice Studioz handled the online and CG. Dhawal Tandon composed the music, which opens as the stage duet and gives way to the tank, and Tilak mixed it at Boing. Costume stylist Trushala Nayak dressed the lane in festival colour, with hair and make-up by Sneha Rodricks.

Where it sat

• 5 October 2024: Swiggy launches the XL fleet in Gurugram, twenty electric vehicles for bulk orders.
• 14 October 2024: Swiggy and the Singham Again team set a Guinness World Record for the largest single vada pav order, delivered by the XL fleet in Mumbai.
• 24 October 2024: The record film goes up on the Swiggy channel and passes a million views.
• 28 October 2024: First December Films publishes the Swiggy XL Diwali film, three days before Diwali.

What the film proves

This is the reference to reach for when a brief needs any of the following:

• a new service explained by a single visual exaggeration rather than a feature list
• a festive film with a joke in it rather than lights and family alone
• a large practical vehicle staged on a dressed street at night
• deadpan ensemble comedy in thirty seconds
• a fast turnaround film timed to a launch and a festival week

See more of our work, the director's reel and credits, or send us a script and a date.

Credits

• Client: Swiggy
• Production house: First December Films
• Director: Nitin Menon
• Executive Producer: Ganesh Pareek
• Senior Producer: Imran Patel
• Producer: Ankit Singh
• Director of Photography: Shivendu
• Production Designer: Tina Paradkar
• Offline Editor: Navneet Pant
• Grade: Vineesh Vijayan
• Online and CG: Rakesh Menon, Splice Studioz
• Music: Dhawal Tandon
• Sound: Tilak, Boing
• Casting: Tia Jha