Foodpanda has launched in thirteen cities, nearly doubling the number of markets it’s already in. The service has launched in: Jaipur, Chandigarh, Kanpur, Lucknow, Indore, Ahmedabad, Nashik, Nagpur, Mysore, Bhubaneswar, Guwahati, Visakhapatnam and Coimbatore. In these cities, Foodpanda has partnered with 3,000 restaurants and 5,000 delivery agents. By March next year, the company said it hopes to quadruple the delivery fleet.
Since Ola acquired Foodpanda, it has invested heavily in reviving it. From handing out free snacks during cricket matches to deputing a top Ola lieutenant to head the food delivery service, Ola is moving aggressively. While Ola is ahead of Uber in the number of cities it operates in, Ola’s food vertical didn’t have a bigger geographical spread — until now. By adding thirteen new cities totalling twenty, Foodpanda has overtaken UberEats, which is currently in thirteen Indian cities.
According to an Entrackr report, Ola plans on overtaking UberEats completely by December. This scale probably comes from the Rs 400 crore that Ola pumped into Foodpanda in February. Pranay Jivrajka, formerly Ola COO and one of its co-founders, is Foodpanda India’s CEO now. He is one of six high-powered executives deputed to head Foodpanda, per Entrackr. The competition with UberEats — and other services like Swiggy and Zomato — is heating up. UberEats alone was recording 50% month-on-month growth in May on the back of aggressive promotional pricing.
I cover the digital content ecosystem and telecom for MediaNama.
