Launched amid the Covid-19 pandemic, GoCar is one of two big products Gojek planned to introduce this year to complete its golden triangle in Vietnam, including transportation, food delivery and payment.
Phung Tuan Duc, Gojek Vietnam GM shared stories behind the launch of car service during the Nguy – Co talk show hosted by Thai Van Linh.
Uber CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, delivered food to people’s doorstep in San Francisco for those ordering from Uber Eats. He completed 10 trips and managed to rake in $98.91. He tweeted about this from his personal handle saying “Spent a few hours delivering for @UberEats. 1. SF is an absolutely beautiful town. 2. Restaurant workers were incredibly nice, every time. 3. It was busy!! – 3:24 delivering out of 3:30 online. 4. I’m hungry – time to order some”
While it was great to see the CEO of the company getting into the groove and making deliveries, Twitter absolutely erupted calling this a ‘PR stunt’
User Dan Skelley who has been the most vociferous of the lot in calling it a PR stunt questioned the stats presented. He said “Let’s discuss ur BOGUS stat page. U did 10 orders ON A BIKE in 3 hrs 24 min. First, U can’t get 45pts for 10 trips. Max is 30. U imply 1ride/18 min incl travel time to the pickup with no waiting. Short travel time EVERY time to perfect dropoff EVERY time + only 6 min of downtime”$
Twitterati Brice Sopher too spoke out about the experience saying “Wow what a surprising conclusion that you, the ceo of Uber, had a great experience working this job. Now try doing it as your only source of income.
There were many such replies questioning this exercise by the Uber CEO, suffice to say, that though it was all well-intentioned, there’s no wondering how social media will react to it.
Uber Technologies Inc on Wednesday posted a narrower loss as its ride-hail and delivery businesses rebounded slightly from pandemic lows, and the company said it was well on track to reach its goal of achieving an adjusted profit by year-end.
Uber said customers in cities’ outer boroughs and suburbs had returned to its rides platform during the quarter.
Nearly complete recoveries in markets including Brazil and Australia point to leisure travel to restaurants and cultural events bouncing back quickly once the pandemic ends, with business travel returning more slowly, as many employees continue to work from home.
Shares fell 3% in after-hours trading after gaining around 6% during the day. Shares had risen after smaller ride-hail rival Lyft Inc said on Tuesday it might become profitable during the third quarter, three months ahead of a previous goal, thanks to a rebound and cost cuts.
Uber reported a loss on an adjusted basis before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $454 million, significantly less than analysts’ average expectations for a $514 million loss, according to Refinitiv data.
Uber cut costs throughout 2020, including reducing staff by nearly 30% from the beginning of the year. A focus on its core rides and food delivery business and divestments of ancillary units will allow Uber to emerge from the pandemic a slimmer company.
Adjusted EBITDA, which excludes the cost of the company’s extensive stock-based compensation and other potentially significant items, is the profitability metric Uber uses.
Uber reported $3.17 billion in total revenue in the months from October through December.
Fourth-quarter mobility revenue, largely comprised of rides, declined by 52% from last year, but at $1.47 billion was up 8% on a quarterly basis despite new lockdown measures in the United States, Europe and the Middle East.
The company said it could not predict the quarter in which ride-hail volumes might return to pre-pandemic levels. Airport travel, which made up 15% of gross bookings before the pandemic, will take longer to return than leisure and business trips, Uber said.
It expected first-quarter adjusted EBITDA to be flat or down compared with the fourth quarter.
Orders at Uber’s food delivery platform, Uber Eats, further grew during the fourth quarter, as many countries and U.S. states issued new lockdown orders, closing restaurants and prompting many people to order in.
Delivery revenue more than tripled from last year and at around $1.36 billion, grew 19% compared with the third quarter.
Uber has expanded its footprint in the competitive space and acquired smaller food-delivery rival Postmates for $2.65 billion and alcoholic beverage delivery service Drizly for $1.1 billion.
Both deals were largely stock-based, with the Drizly deal expected to close later this year.
Uber also said it had further lowered costs in the fourth quarter, with total costs and expenses dropping 14% in that period.
Following a directive by Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi to focus on the company’s core businesses, Uber has sold two cash-burning units.
The company in December sold its self-driving Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) in a $4 billion equity deal at a steep drop in valuation. Khosrowshahi at the time said the deal would accelerate Uber’s profitability goal.
The same month, Uber also handed over the keys to its air taxi business Elevate, without disclosing the terms of the deal.
Joining the market later than competitors, Baemin, a food delivery application of South Korean unicorn Woowa Brothers, concentrates on rider training and supporting food stores.
Tuan, 28, from HCMC, is on his way to the headquarter of Baemin in District 3 to take part in a training course. He said, by the end of the course, he would have had to take an entrance exam before being granted an account as a Baemin rider. Before that, during the online application process, Tuan also had to undergo a pre-qualification exam before attending the intensive training.
Most riders joining the Baemin network have to pass two entrance exams, a paradox compared to other food delivery businesses today.
“We want to leave a good first impression on our customers with Baemin’s well-mannered and polite rider team,” said Nguyen Trung Thanh, COO of Baemin Vietnam, Woowa Brothers’ leading online food delivery service.
Right after taking the lead in South Korea, Woowa Brothers expanded its market to Vietnam, where more than 40 percent of the population is of working age, loves technology and is quite familiar with Korean culture. However, Baemin still joined the Vietnamese market later than many other competitors.
The boom in delivery applications has resulted in a shortage of riders and problems with service quality. Therefore, Baemin chose its own path by starting with careful training of its rider team in each market then gradually expanding within the city where the demand for food delivery is up to 90 percent (according to market research company GComm).
Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi are two typical examples of Baemin’s approach. “In Vietnam, FoodTech is still a very new market, so companies in this field have to invest a lot in building their own delivery team and putting them into operation,” Thanh noted.
Baemin focuses on building professional food delivery services, its professionalism helping it succeed in a short period.
According to a recent survey, although Baemin only appeared in Vietnam from mid-2019, it quickly caught up with Gojek, another application in food delivery, in its proportion of users (up to 46 percent). Baemin also takes up 16 percent among the most frequently used apps.
According to the report, GrabFood is said to be popular among the old while Baemin suits younger generations.
Investing in rider partners is not enough in Baemin’s long-term development strategy in Vietnam.
“In Korea, where third-party logistics infrastructure is already developed, Woowa Brothers focuses on customer care, advertising and tradition,” said Thanh.
“However, in Vietnam, it is a completely different story.”
In addition to delivery resources, Baemin also has to pay attention to connecting with partners participating in its platform by providing flexible payment methods, with the most important being accompanying partners in the transition of the business model into an online format.
According to Thanh, in new markets like Vietnam, restaurants, and stores, especially traditional ones, are yet to grow accustomed to online sales. Thus, during this period, the most practical thing is generating a revenue stream.
Baemin’s strategy is to send staff to guide restaurant owners on how to achieve greater profits. At the same time, the company has also developed a department to timely respond and make payments so restaurant owners could continue to operate.
“These are very basic steps, but they create real value from which the restaurant has the confidence to establish a closer relationship with us,” Thanh emphasized.
In the coming time, Baemin plans to help restaurant owners create products suited to online business models. According to Thanh, this would allow transformation from a pure traditional restaurant to an online model in order to gradually expand with increasing revenue.
“More than anyone, Baemin understands that the success or failure of a company depends greatly on its partners. Although Baemin is newly launched in Hanoi, brand awareness of customers here is much higher than in Ho Chi Minh City. It may be a new city, but the market has heard a lot about us,” Thanh said.
Food-delivery service Foodpanda is to launch in Japan, its 12th market in Asia.
During the first phase of the launch, Foodpanda will roll out its service in six cities, including Nagoya, Sapporo, and Hiroshima. The move is part of Foodpanda’s strategy to strengthen its presence in Asia Pacific, with Japan one of the largest and most mature of the region’s consumer markets.
The service has been launched in three cities – Kobe, Yokohama, and Nagoya – with Foodpanda saying it will commence in other cities from October 1.
“This is a market we have long admired, and this market expansion is an important step in making food and grocery delivery accessible to everyone in Asia,” says Eric Wei, CEO at Foodpanda Japan.
Foodpanda Japan will also invest to grow its quick-commerce, where customers will be able to get their groceries within 25 minutes. The Foodpanda app will also offer an in-store pick-up feature.
The demand for food delivery in Japan has been increasing due to Covid-19. According to Statista Market Outlook, the online food delivery segment in Japan is expected to record 23.6-per-cent growth this year.
“In the first half of this year, we expedited onboarding and doubled the number of merchants and riders on our platform across the region so their businesses can survive the economic impact, while rider partners can continue to earn a living,” said Jakob Sebastian Angele, CEO at Foodpanda APAC.
The company said it aims to expand to more markets in the Asia Pacific region. Founded in 2012, Foodpanda operates in more than 300 cities across 12 countries.
Taiwan foodservice sales have slumped by 21 percent year on year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Ministry of Economic Affairs data revealed total F&B sales of NT$51.9 billion (US$1.73 billion) this year across the territory, the steepest decline since reporting on sales figures began in January 2000.
A parallel survey of Taiwanese restaurant sales saw a 23-per-cent drop in sales early this month. Figures revealed a downward trend in Taiwan foodservice sales before the government introduced social-distancing measures, with venues serving Chinese cuisine the most strongly affected.
Ministry deputy head of statistics Wang Shu-chuan said that full-month figures for April could see a similar drop of around NT$16 billion ($532.5 million).
General retail sales for the first financial quarter this year dropped 0.6 percent from last year to NT$924.5 billion ($30.8 billion), with revenues for March hitting NT$290.6 billion ($9.7 billion), down 3.4 percent. At the same time, e-commerce operators saw sales rise 19.1 percent year on year to NT$81.1 billion ($2.7 billion) during the first quarter.
The pending merger between South Korea’s number one food-delivery app Baedal Minjok (Baemin), and Yogiyo, the industry’s second-largest player, has fuelled widespread concerns about monopolistic market behavior.
In particular, recent changes to Baemin’s fee system from a flat rate to a pre-payment method has sparked controversy, raising concerns over such a monopoly.
Woowa Brothers, Baemin’s owner, has apologized for causing controversy over the “open service” fee system.
“Woowa Brothers humbly accept the criticism that we introduced the new fee system without considering the difficult situation of the restaurant owners, hit by the Covid-19 outbreak,” management said in a statement.
Starting this month, the delivery service will apply a 5.8 percent pre-payment fee to restaurants for food orders. The system is designed to replace the current monthly fixed amount system, which costs 88,000 won (US$71.90) per month.
This will result in 5.8 percent of sales being taken by Baemin as commission from this month.
However, small business owners say the changes are not for small businesses.
According to the Korea Federation of Micro Enterprise, stores with monthly sales of 1.55 million won (US$1267) or less are eligible for lower fees due to the new policy.
Some self-employed people raised the issue, saying that the fees paid to Baemin are excessive compared to the past.
Gyeonggi Province Gov Lee Jae-myeong openly criticized the company, citing “the tyranny of monopoly,” and targeting Baemin on his social media account.
The controversy is continuing as politicians and consumer groups joined the campaign. A recent survey by Consumers Korea showed that 86.4 per cent of consumers oppose the merger of Baemin and Yogiyo.
The survey also showed that Baemin accounts for 59.2 per cent of delivery apps, with Yogiyo another 35.6 per cent, suggesting a combined 94.8 per cent for the two companies post-merger.
The biggest reason for the opposition to the merger was, “food prices and delivery fees rising due to the formation of an exclusive market,” cited by 82.9 percent of respondents.
The decrease in incentives for business innovation or service improvement followed at 46.3 percent, reduction in consumer benefits such as coupons and events came in at 40.5 percent.
Recently, ride-hailing drivers have been losing income as more people stay at home and less people travel due to the public health crisis. Uber has recently started concentrating more of its services on food delivery as demand for this is growing.
Drivers in the US are encouraged to take on food delivery, even if they hadn’t participated in Uber Eats before. Last week, drivers were sent notifications with instructions on how to access the Delivery view on the app because of an increased demand for food-delivery services.
In particular, Uber is witnessing a growing number of requests for food delivery in Seattle and San Francisco. According to Uber Eats’ vice president, Pierre-Dimitri, the coronavirus outbreak is starting to affect routines and the changes benefit the food delivery business, so drivers are encouraged to focus on it.
In addition to that, Uber has been trying to mitigate the effect of the coronavirus on drivers and recently, Uber’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, asked Uber’s drivers and delivery workers to be included in the coronavirus stimulus package, that would make people eligible to receive insurance and up to $1,200 direct deposit from the US government.
Deliveroo has offered support for its Hong Kong restaurant partners as many of them are suffering from falling dine-in sales due to the coronavirus crisis.
The company will reduce its commission rate for restaurant partners by 5 percent for a month, starting February 16, equivalent to a 15-20 percent discount in fees.
In addition, the company will also offer a four-week payment delay strategy for its exclusive restaurant partners to ease their cash flow, the company said in a statement.
“In our most recent survey and conversations with leaders of the F&B industry, we estimate in-store F&B retail sales to be down 30-50 percent year on year, with signs of further deterioration,” said Brian Lo, GM at Deliveroo Hong Kong.
The company has urged its rivals in the food-delivery sector to provide support where they can.
With approximately 6000 restaurant partners, Deliveroo has witnessed a significant escalation in the number of restaurants aiming to suspend trading or shut down. Its research suggests as many as one in 20 restaurants is considering closure.
“As a stakeholder in the F&B industry and the leading food-delivery platform in the market, we want to play a part, however small, in supporting our restaurant partners and lend a helping hand to the industry in this time of need,” said Lo.
Australia’s food waste problem is getting worse, like meal delivery services fuel further waste.
The nation’s total food waste bill is now $10.1 billion, up from $8.9 billion dollars in 2018, making it the highest in four years of data collected by the Rabobank Food Waste report.
Australia is the fourth highest food waster in the world, with the average household now throwing away an average $1,026 worth of food per year, a 15 percent increase from $890 last year.
Household waste makes up 34 percent of food waste nationally, with 31 percent from primary production and 25 percent from manufacturing.
Glenn Wealands, head of Client Experience, Rabobank Australia said food waste is one of the most “significant challenges facing our nation and planet”.
“As individuals, each and every one of us can and must make a difference. When we waste food, the ramifications go far beyond just dollars, impacting our planet and precious resources,” Wealands said.
“We know from this research that more than three-quarters of us care about reducing food waste and are annoyed by it. However, it is alarming that less than three out of 10 of us recognize the impact our food waste has on the environment.”
Rabobank said the main contributor to household waste was poor food prepared properly, leftovers going uneaten, buying too much and changing plans after shopping.
Gen Z remains the most wasteful generation, binning $1,446 of the food they purchase every year, up $234 from 2018. While Baby Boomers remain the least wasteful of all Australians, throwing out only $498 of their food.
Chinese food-delivery website Meituan has closed three of its Ella Supermarkets in Jiangsu, almost halving its network of outlets.
The business initiative, which sells fresh supermarket produce online for fast home delivery, has just four remaining locations in Beijing and Wuxi.
The closures were reportedly put down to mismanagement, and stand in stark contrast to the company’s stated plans to open 20 outlets within last year.
Its shortcomings are reflected by competing brands, however, with rival groups Yonghui Super Stores, 7Fresh and SuFresh also performing under par. Alibaba’s Hema offering is an exception with reportedly strong trading.
India’s food ordering and delivery platform Swiggy Tuesday said it has launched ‘Swiggy Stores’ moving beyond its core food delivery segment to provide access to consumers items across multiple categories. The company will deliver from these stores “in categories such as fruits and vegetables, kiranas and supermarkets, florists, baby care, health and supplements among others,” Swiggy said in a statement.
With the launch of these stores, Swiggy wants to become the one-stop delivery app that enables access to every store in the city, it added.
“Today’s announcement takes Swiggy to categories beyond food, where we hope to deliver the same level of delightful experiences to consumers for their everyday needs,” Sriharsha Majety, CEO, Swiggy said.
It is the first milestone in Swiggy’s vision to elevate the quality of life for the urban consumer by offering unparalleled convenience, he added.
Swiggy Stores will give its merchant-partners unmatched access to a combination of core assets to reach more existing and new customers, the statement said.
For the delivery partners this will give them access to an additional avenue for income, it added.
Founded in 2014, Swiggy currently connects consumers to over 60,000 restaurant partners across more than 80 cities.
Online restaurant guide and food ordering firm Zomato Monday said it is planning to convert 40 percent of its delivery fleet into power-assisted bikes in two years. Currently, the company has over 5,000 cyclists operating across 12 cities in India, with the majority of the fleet being in Delhi-NCR, Zomato said in a statement. The company provides food delivery services in 150 cities across the country with a last-mile delivery fleet of 1.5 lakh partners, it added.
“We are working closely with our vendor partners to raise the scale of e-cycle adoption and aim to convert 40 percent of our fleet to power-assisted bikes within the next two years,” Mohit Gupta, CEO – Food Delivery Business, Zomato said.
The company aims to build a future that creates more tangible value and leaves a lesser carbon footprint, he added.
Hong Kong food-delivery startup Plum has closed its Singapore operations. An email delivered to Plum’s customers read: “It is with great sorrow to announce that we are ceasing our operations in Singapore from 21st January. Plum would like to thank you for your past support and going on this wonderful journey with us. We would not have achieved what we had without you. Best wishes to the year ahead.”
Plum’s Singapore operations lasted less than a year in a highly competitive market, which saw the exit of hawker food delivery service Fastbee several months ago. The firm’s entire Hong Kong staff were let go in November to “right size” operations.
The market is set to get even more competitive this coming year as Grab and Go-Jek struggle for market share in the territory.
E-wallets, food-delivery and online shopping apps are offering a range of Tet (Lunar New Year Festival) promotions to widen their customer base. On January 21, e-wallet cashless payment platform MoMo experienced a temporary freeze of its network shortly after launching a promotion that gives customers a chance to receive gifts when using the app to send money.
Shortly after the promotion was launched, MoMo recorded an additional 500,000 downloads and registrations of its app, forcing the platform to upgrade its capacity immediately.
At the time of the freeze, MoMo reported a record of over 1 million customers who had logged on at the same time for a chance to receive something from MoMo’s pool of gifts worth over VND100 billion ($4.32 million).
About 2 days later, ZaloPay, another e-payment platform also entered the race by encouraging users to make deposits, payments and money transfers to receive bonus points and redeem vouchers from a pool of VND10 billion ($431,995).
The promotion heat has also spread to the food delivery industry, where Grab, the Singaporean-based ride hailing and food delivery app, has announced its expansion to an additional 12 provinces and cities, to make “food ordering easier during Tet“.
Tet, or Lunar New Year Festival, will be celebrated from February 2-10 this year.
Demi Yu, GrabFood regional director for Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Philippines, revealed that the number of GrabFood orders increased has increased 25 times since it was launched in Vietnam last October.
“With our extensive driver partner network, we’ve been able to lower average delivery time to 20 minutes in central Hanoi and HCMC, making us the fastest food delivery service in Vietnam,” she said.
A survey published by Vietnamese market research firm GCOMM earlier this month showed that 99 percent of those surveyed said they used online food ordering services at least 2-3 times per month. 39 percent said they ordered through these apps 2-3 times a week.
According to this survey, the 6 most popular apps are GrabFood, Foody, GoFood, Lala, Vietnammm and Lixi. However, because of the fierceness of competition, just a few days before the study was announced, Lala withdrew from the food delivery market to focus on providing software solutions to restaurants.
“Demand for delivery is growing in Hanoi and HCMC. I think in the next 5 years, it will thrive in the 10 largest cities. There are about 100,000 delivery orders each day in HCMC and Hanoi combined, whereas there was virtually no demand for this service 3 years ago.
The delivery market is now worth $500 million, but is expected to grow to $2 billion in 5 years,” said Luong Duy Hoai, founder of GHN, a courier service with over 7,000 staff.
According to a recent report by South Korean commercial giant Lotte, the number of orders and visits by online shoppers rose by 80 percent and 200 percent respectively in 2018.
Kim Kyou Sik, general director of Lotte.vn, the group’s online outlet, said: “Late 2019 will be a major battle for all e-commercial sites to establish market share. We aspire to become one of Vietnam’s top 4 e-commerce sites by the end of the year.”
According to research by Nielsen Vietnam, with 53 percent of the population using the Internet, nearly 50 million numbers registered on smartphones, most online shoppers being from 25-29 years old, the e-commerce market in Vietnam is full of potential despite growing at 22 percent per year.
The e-Conomy SEA 2018 report by Google and Singaporean investment firm Temasek also revealed that e-commerce, along with three other areas, namely online advertising, online travel and ride hailing dominate Vietnam’s Internet economy.
In 2018, the Internet economy had an estimated total worth of $9 billion. Earlier this year, the two companies collaborated in a report which revealed that gross merchandise volume of Vietnam’s Internet economy amounted to 4 percent of its GDP.