ShopeeFood to be officially launched in Vietnam on August 18

ShopeeFood will officially be launching in Vietnam this month via a rebranding of NowFood – a food delivery platform run by local tech firm Foody Corporation that Sea Group acquired for US$64 million in 2017. The move reflects Sea Group’s coordinated efforts to make ShopeeFood a real contender in the region’s already crowded food delivery segment.

ShopeeFood signage in Indonesia / Photo credit: Tech in Asia

ShopeeFood began operations in Indonesia and Malaysia earlier this year. Its debut in Vietnam will likely be relatively more straightforward, as NowFood is already part of Sea Group’s ecosystem in the country.

For the past several years, NowFood has been going toe to toe with GrabFood, capturing 42% of the market share of the country’s food delivery gross merchandise value in 2020, as estimated by this Momentum Works study.

According to an announcement, users will only need to update their Now app to access the revamped services while retaining all existing benefits. NowShip, the company’s logistics service, will also be rebranded as ShopeeExpress Instant.

See also: Will ShopeeFood bulldoze its way into Indonesia’s food delivery scene?

NowFood, previously known as DeliveryNow, is one of the earliest food delivery players in Vietnam. Its parent firm, Foody, was founded in 2012 and was modeled after Yelp, starting out as a food recommendation and restaurant listing site. In 2015, it morphed into a transactional platform for food delivery and restaurant reservations.

Previously, Foody had reportedly made a foray into Indonesia, but things didn’t work out, with media reports suggesting that the company “failed to monetize” its opportunity in the country.

With Sea Group’s backing, however, ShopeeFood can leverage e-wallet ShopeePay and ecommerce platform Shopee, which has already attained a leading position in the region.

In Vietnam, however, besides GrabFood and GoFood, ShopeeFood will also have to compete against Baemin, which entered Vietnam in May 2019 and promptly snapped up another food ordering platform called Vietnammm.

Baemin is a part of Woowa Brothers, a South Korean tech unicorn that was bought out by DeliveryHero in a US$4 billion deal announced in December 2020.