This article comes from WeChat public account “Geek Park” (ID: geekpark), the author is in the wild, love Fan Released with permission.
For most urban white-collar workers in China, takeaway has long been an integral part of life. Even in fast-paced cities like “Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Shenzhen,” many people are relying on takeaway to survive.
After the money-burning subsidy war in 2013, did you get hungry to buy Baidu Takeaway and sell it to Ali? Now it ’s fine with Meituan Takeaway, as if the battle is settled. The people in this battle who have gained a wealth of production experience and means of production are looking for another market where these “experiences” and “data” can be used for reproduction. India, which has just emerged from the mobile Internet, has become a beautiful new target.
Recently, India ’s takeaway market has changed again. E-commerce giant Amazon has begun a new careful test, while Uber, which once placed a heavy bet on this “new target”, has resolutely withdrew. At the same time, the old player Swiggy has received a new round of financing, including South African Internet giant Naspers and Meituan.
This new continent is in high winds, but players from all walks of life have made progress and retreat. The reasons for this are really interesting. If the Indian takeaway market is a piece of meat, then it’s there and everyone sees it, but it’s not fat, and you have to turn it over and take a closer look. As for what kind of meat is suitable for anyone, that is another story.
Lunch in India
Gurgaon is located in the southwestern part of the Indian capital, New Delhi, and is one of several satellite cities in New Delhi. As India’s third largest capital inflow city, there are a large number of Internet companies. From the perspective of Li Cha, who has traveled to India for a long time, it is also one of the few regions in India that has a takeaway business.
“Some people call for take-out in India. Maybe only some white-collar workers in big cities knows take-out.” Li Cha attributed this to the gap between the rich and the poor. It ’s called pizza or fried chicken only when we have a meeting or when foreigners join. “
Xu Min, who previously worked on Toutiao today, confirmed this claim. She had traveled for a long time in Gurgaon during her headline. According to her recall, unlike the dependence on takeaways in Beijing, the frequency of calling takeaways in India during the business trips in India dropped significantly, “maybe only 1/3 of the time a month will be called takeaways.”
“In India, the pace of work is not as tight as in China,” Xu Min analyzed. “In the country, we have a take-out at noon to eat at the work station, and then we work immediately after eating. Complete at noonThe lunch time can be guaranteed, and everyone will choose to go for a walk at noon. “
When I first arrived in India, Xu Min ’s lunch habit even caused my local colleagues to understand: “The colleague who is more familiar with me also asked me why we always eat in front of the computer at noon, even without a meal. Right? “
It ’s been a long time, and Xu Min also went to town to follow the custom, and went out for lunch. “There are many restaurants in the company gathering area, similar to those in our domestic malls. It is easy to find food near the company. It ’s OK, it ’s very convenient very soon, both expensive and cheap. ”
Unlike “travelers” Xu Min and Li Cha rely on takeaways or restaurants, local Indians are more used to bringing meals from home. “Bringing meals is really common. No matter whether the local colleagues have money or no money, many people bring lunch from their own home to the company.” Xu Min also touched it many times and often ate.
Curry on the stall
The fact that Indians do n’t call for takeaway is reflected in the data.
The latest data in February this year shows that the current order volume of India ’s two major takeaway platforms, Swiggy and Zomato, is basically the same, and both parties maintain around 40 million orders per month. In contrast, last September Meituan Takeaway announced that its daily order volume had exceeded 30 million orders. The monthly order of the former and the daily order of the latter are on the order of magnitude, and the difference is tens of times when converted. It is worth noting that India’s population base is 1.36 billion, which is almost the same as China.
The fact that the data is iron-clad proves that the Indian takeaway market is not as beautiful as it looks. But to find out why Indians do n’t call takeaways outside of the data, you have to talk about the cultural environment there.
In Li Cha’s opinion, the reason why Indians do n’t call takeaway is that food is readily available. He used one word to describe India’s food culture-Taner. “There are many stalls on India Street, such as fried rice stalls, snack stalls, and juice stalls. Locals usually eat when they stand. Better stalls will have several small tables at standing height, usually There are no chairs. “
The reason for solving lunch at the stall is that Li Cha thinks that the locals are not so particular about eating. “The Indian diet is relatively monotonous. Many of them can only eat chicken and make various curry pie.”
▲ India Juice Stand ｜ Respondents provided
In addition to having a lot of stalls, there are also many housewives in India. Housewives usually prepare lunch for their husbands, which has even spawned an ancient errand distribution industry-dabbawalla.
On the streets of Mumbai, Dabavaaras wearing white Gandhi hats travel in the world’s most messy traffic environment, and their unique iron lunch boxes are their unique mark. Before lunch, the housewives packed lunch into a special lunch box in Dabavala. Dabavala took on the role of errand distribution and delivered the housewife’s lunch to her husband through sorting.
Most office workers bring meals, or go to restaurants or stalls for lunch. Among some of the customers who need to be delivered, they are snatched by a native delivery system such as Dabavala. There are indeed not many orders left for Internet takeout platforms.
In addition, in Xu Min ’s view, India ’s complex ethnic characteristics are also the reason why the takeaway industry cannot be scaled up like China.
“Different religions and ethnic groups have different taboos, and even vegetarian is divided into many types.” Xu Min said, “You can feel this from flying to India. For this choice, everyone must go to the airline’s official website in advance to choose their own taboos. ”
Prudent capital
Compared to the domestic takeaway market, Indian takeaway is not only small in quantity but also low in unit price. When you open Zomato, you will find that the unit price for one person on the platform is around 150 rupees. The delivery fee is about 50 rupees.
Under such a unit price, the platform often tends to charge merchants a high commission to cover the cost. Early 2019 data shows that Zomato has 22% and Swiggy has 33%. In this regard, merchants have been dissatisfied, and even there have been joint actions against boycott platforms. At present in the Indian market, takeaway platforms and merchants have not yet formed a stable win-win situation.
In this regard, Indian takeaway is not as beautiful as imagined, but capital still voted for it. In January of this year, Google and Boston Consulting released a report on Indian food technology. The report states that the total investment in the Indian takeaway industry has increased by 25 times in the past 5 years.
Although it is growing rapidly, Indian takeaways may not erupt as expected. The above report predicts that by 2022, the scale of India ’s takeaway industry will reach US $ 8 billion, or RMB 56 billion. In contrast, according to Analysys data, the scale of China’s current takeaway market is about 600 billion yuan.
Although the market size is limited, it is worth noting that most of the entrants are mainstream capital. Take two players as an example. According to Crunchbase data, currentlySwiggy and Zomato have received total financing of $ 1.6 billion and $ 900 million, respectively, with valuations of $ 3 billion. Among them, Swiggy’s investors include well-known American private investment management company Wellington Management, South African Internet giant Naspers, Russia’s DST Investment Group, and Meituan Review and Tencent. Zomato’s investors include Ant Financial, Sequoia Capital, Temasek and others.
In addition to the two giants, Uber Eats, a Uber food delivery brand, has also taken a share in the Indian market. In January of this year, Uber sold Uber Eats in India to Zomato for $ 206 million in exchange for a 9.99% stake in the latter. Prior to the deal, Uber Eats’ order volume was approximately one-third of Zomato’s.
Exiters and Incomers
Uber exited for its own reasons. After going public in May last year, Uber is facing increasingly severe profit pressure. According to the New York Times, in the first three quarters of 2019, Uber Eats’ Indian orders accounted for 3% of its global orders, but operating losses accounted for 25% of the world’s total. In the Indian takeaway market, which has been occupied by two major players, 80% of U.S. takeaways, Uber Eats’ sales seem to be a huge burden for Uber.
Before Uber, its travel competitor Ola also entered Indian takeaways by acquiring its own kitchen brand FoodPanda, then quickly sold off.
The travel company does take-out with a “start with delivery” card. However, in India, Uber Eats’ distribution tools use customary motorcycles, but its motorcycle taxi license was called back in 2016. stop. The two businesses cannot share the infrastructure, which has become a constraint for travel companies to take delivery in India.
At the same time Uber exited, Amazon was launching its second trial. Last September, Amazon entered the game by acquiring FoodPanda, which has been kicked out by Ola, and lowered the commission card. However, the matter was not left. Amazon’s entry plan will be officially implemented in March this year, and it hopes to play a round card through its Prime membership system. This is undoubtedly clever in India, where the gap between rich and poor is huge.
Compared with the fanfare of the first trial, Amazon’s move is very cautious this time. According to reports, its initial plan for the Indian takeaway business is only for internal employees, and it will only open in five cities. The industry speculates that employee trials may be testing the waters for lap cards.
Will the new sturgeon enter the market? Analysts believe that despite Amazon’s late entry, it needs to face the already growing Swiggy andZomato two players, however, because Amazon has its own logistics and e-commerce system, and is willing to reduce commissions, it is still very competitive.
* At the request of the respondent, Xu Min and Li Cha are pseudonyms.