Founded in 2012, Germany’s Berlin-based Foodpanda is a global food delivery company present across 190 cities in 12 countries including Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, HongKong, Taiwan among others. Its India business was acquired by Ola in December last year for $200 million. Foodpanda has been in the news for a long time for its extraneous relation with the wheel of fortune.
Foodpanda, one of the early movers in India’s food-ordering space, is yet to establish itself in a significant way. It faces tough competition from Indian rival Zomato, Bengaluru-based Swiggy and Mumbai’s TinyOwl.
As it struggled to scale up its business and grappled with several internal issues, Foodpanda was reported to have been in talks with Zomato and Swiggy for a potential sale.
With lots of fraud claims and a sudden decline in the market process, foodpanda suffered a huge decline in its acquired customers. To retain its loyal customers they turned up front with the explanation and are currently improving a value-delivery process.
Foodpanda, which has been integrated into the Ola app, will help in leveraging local insights around cities and customer preferences and is also trying to expand its services in eastern and southern parts of the country.
With its improvement in an online marketplace, Foodpanda also launched its “the state of the art” tech center at Bengaluru, which will aim to strengthen the technology infrastructure, product capabilities and end-user experience for the company.
Several steps towards a strong food tech ecosystem, Foodpanda is revisiting its India strategy by outsourcing delivery and is also looking to start its own kitchen, a comparatively higher-margin business, as it seeks to bolster its local business.
Among other things, Foodpanda has become more selective about which restaurant it partners with, the company has also started offering customers curate dishes produced in joint kitchen facilities in partnership
with select restaurants.
Foodpanda is committed to creating over 500,000 opportunities for delivery partners over the next couple of years. It has also been integrated into the cab-hailing platform Ola to enable a seamless food ordering experience for Ola users.
Foodpanda’s skyscraper as well as survival journey has been consequential and now is pulling up their socks for a better customer service and relatable discount offerings. The secret behind the survival of several food tech companies is by flipping the company or turning profitable. So Foodpanda’s major focus is on operational profit.
