Foodpanda vs. natural selection

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Hello readers,

My first taste of online food delivery was with Foodpanda.

I come from a pretty rural part of Northern Ireland, where getting hot food delivered down our winding country lane was an impossibility. So moving to Hanoi and having a world of noodles, pizza and bubble tea at my fingertips was an eye-opening and stomach-expanding experience.

Of course, Foodpanda exited Vietnam in 2015, when its business was sold to a more successful competitor, Vietnammm, which itself was later swallowed up by Woowa Brothers in 2019.

Foodpanda seemed incredibly convenient to me at the time, but it didn’t have many strong rivals in Vietnam’s food delivery space eight years ago. The competition has gotten considerably fiercer since then, not just in the country but also across Southeast Asia.

Maybe that increased competition played a part in Foodpanda’s decision to slash its workforce across Asia Pacific and enter talks for a supposed sale. Natural selection could be at play for this breed of panda.

Today we look at:

• Job cuts and a potential sale at Foodpanda
• What looming new ecommerce rules in Indonesia might mean for TikTok Shop
• Other newsy highlights such as layoffs at Baemin Vietnam and a potential push to D2C for marketplace sellers in Thailand.

Premium summary

Foodpanda cull

Image credit: Timmy Loen

An unconfirmed number of employees across Foodpanda’s Asia-Pacific operations have been laid off as the company looks set to be sold.

The food delivery firm is owned by Germany’s Delivery Hero, which is in discussions to offload the business.

• Slimming down: Streamlining operations to be leaner and more agile is “critical,” Foodpanda said in a statement to Tech in Asia. In a letter to employees, CEO Jakob Sebastian Angele said the company needed “the right set-up” for operations. The latest job cuts come months after Foodpanda conducted a previous round of layoffs in February.
• Word from above: Parent company Delivery Hero told Tech in Asia that it was in negotiations with several parties to sell chunks of Foodpanda’s business. Grab is one of the potential suitors for a deal which could include operations in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, and the Philippines.
• Markets applaud: After peaking in July, Delivery Hero’s stock price had been taking a tumble recently. However, reports of a potential Foodpanda sale appear to have given its value a boost.

TikTok Shop on the chopping block?

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