New Delhi, Jan 23 (IANS): Online food delivery platform Swiggy is expected to double the platform fee on food orders from Rs 5 to Rs 10 in the coming month, a media report said on Tuesday.

With this move, the company looks to reduce losses ahead of the launch of its IPO (initial public offering), which will take later this year, reports Moneycontrol.

Swiggy has begun indicating a possible increase in platform fees on its app by targeting a "small group" of users.

This comes after a similar action taken in April last year when the company introduced a nominal fee of Rs 2 for a few customers, which was later extended to all customers. Presently, the platform fee is set at Rs 5.

The company said the platform fee of Rs 10 is one of the many experiments it continues to perform, the report noted.

"Swiggy has not changed its platform fee, and has no plans for a significant increase in the near term. We're always running small experiments to better understand the consumer’s choices," a company spokesperson was quoted as saying.

"This was one such experiment, and we may or may not scale it up in the future if it doesn't meet our goal of serving our users in the best way possible," it added.

Meanwhile, Swiggy's co-founder and CEO Sriharsha Majety has said that all preparations are underway for its mega Initial Public Offering (IPO), via which it is likely to raise $1 billion later this year.

"We've been preparing for our IPO. We've added independent directors to the board and there are all kinds of preparations that are on," Majety told Moneycontrol.

For its IPO process, the company is likely to have picked seven investment banks, including Kotak Mahindra Capital, Citi and JPMorgan, Bofa Securities, and Jefferies, among others.