In most of the 39 countries in which it operates, Foodpanda is a pure marketplace, letting the restaurants on its app or website handle their own deliveries. Not any more in India, where it has added on a delivery service.
“Our plunge into the food delivery segment is going to benefit both customers and restaurants, especially those who do not provide delivery services,” says Saurabh Kochhar, CEO of Foodpanda India.
The new service has been launched in five cities – Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, and Hyderabad – and already involves 20 percent of Foodpanda orders. Once the service is extended to 12 cities in the next 3-6 months, Foodpanda expects to handle delivery for two-thirds of its orders. Even restaurants who currently handle their own delivery may find it more efficient and cost-effective to let Foodpanda do it for a fee.
A Rocket Internet-backed clone of food ordering platform GrubHub in the US, Foodpanda also handles delivery for restaurants in Singapore, Vietnam, and Bangladesh. But in India, the scale is huge, with over 12,000 restaurants from 200 cities on its platform. Food delivery is estimated to be a US$15 billion market in India currently, and it’s growing fast with a take-off in online orders.
Foodpanda raised US$110 million last month, and it appears that a part of the funds will go into augmenting its services. Earlier, it had consolidated its position in India with the acquisition of JustEat and TastyKhana.
Restaurant discovery and review platform Zomato recently diversified into the food ordering space to go head-on with Foodpanda.
Editing by Charlie Custer, image from Wikimedia
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