I am really surprised by the bill. The max discount on Uber I have seen is 150. That should put the bill around 420ish. So, curious what coupon was applied.
As for how and why this happening, it is simply gaining market share at the expense of spending money. And yes, you should absolutely try it. Go ahead and waste the VC money.
But, here's something to keep in mind.
Delivery guys are getting tons of incentives to deliver food, some say they make upwards of 30-40k+ a month and maybe more. And given how cabs incident played out, you can see how this is going to end.
On the other side, restaurants are constantly under pressure. I have seen places which used have queues now going empty. They mostly now have swiggy/uber/foodpanda/zomato at the counters collecting food. Sometime ago, maybe last year or last to last year, there was an insider leak from Swiggy. Someone talked about how restaurants are pressured to give more and more per order cut to Swiggy. This has led to restaurants piling on charges in the guise of "packing charges" and sometimes even raised prices. I don't think this has net positive effect on the industry as a whole. Some famous restaurants chains might survive the onslaught but most smaller ones will go under.
And given that Swiggy etc are now constantly increasing delivery charges, I don't see how this party going to continue.
I made a similar claim 3 years ago about Ola/Uber:
https://www.techenclave.com/communi...thread-uber-ola-meru-etc.175124/#post-2040562
And many people weren't happy with that. Though 3 years down the line, I see the trend has reversed. My cabbie constantly asks if I know some offices looking for drivers. Ola/Uber fooled us with money, he says.