🧔♂️ A friendly human may check it before it goes live. More news here
ShopeeFood overtakes Foodpanda in SEA food delivery market
Southeast Asia’s food delivery gross merchandise value (GMV) grew 18% to US$22.7 billion in 2025, according to Momentum Works’ latest report.
Thailand experienced the fastest growth at 22%, supported by government co-payment schemes and increased competition. Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam each grew around 18–19%.
Grab maintained its market leadership, increasing its share from 53.8% to 55%, while ShopeeFood surpassed Foodpanda in 2025.
Food delivery firms are increasingly diversifying into dine-out services, advertising, and content-driven discovery.
Despite regulatory challenges, further consolidation in the sector appears likely, with competition shifting toward scale and efficiency rather than expansion.
🔗 Source: Momentum Works
🧠 Food for thought
Implications, context, and why it matters.
Thailand’s subsidy-linked growth and platform profitability need closer inspection
- The sustainability of Thailand’s 22% year-on-year growth, the highest in the region, is being questioned.
- Part of that rise was tied to the government’s Khon La Khrueng (half-half) co-payment scheme, which was concluded at the end of 2025 1.
- Plans for similar large-scale subsidies in 2026, which previously supported about 19.76 million participants, have not been specified in the provided source material 1.
- Improved “financial discipline” has been reported by food delivery platforms, yet the profit impact of affordability efforts plus new lines like dine-out, ads products, and content- and incentive-led discovery has not been quantified.
- The revenue share from non-delivery services, including Grab’s Dine Out feature in Thailand 2, should be broken out so their value can be judged beyond user growth.
Restaurant-tech startups can unify the fragmented dine-out market
- Restaurant-tech startups plus SaaS (software-as-a-service) investors can benefit from this opening.
- Food delivery platforms are moving into dine-out services and acting as “demand orchestrators,” shaping what people pick and buy rather than only delivering orders.
- Grab is scaling its Dine Out service in Thailand 2, while Foodpanda offers dine-in features across multiple markets 3.
- Restaurants now juggle several separate channels, which adds friction to daily operations.
- Third-party software providers can build connectors that pull menus, deals, and customer records into one place.
- Startups can offer unified point-of-sale (POS) systems, reservations, or loyalty tools that sync across platforms, helping venues widen reach without extra hassle.
