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Foody from Vietnam
However, there is another factor of uncertainty-Donghai Group’s (Sea Group), which is currently making rapid progress in the secondary market Shopee recently renamed Foody Thailand to Shopee Foody TH, which caused speculation about whether Shopee would try food delivery in Thailand again.
After all, Donghai’s next major payment and financial services require stronger scenarios beyond e-commerce—it is obviously unrealistic to do taxi-hailing, and offline is too heavy. Takeaway seems to be a good choice.
Foody was originally a startup company that was a restaurant recommendation platform in Vietnam. It was established in 2012 and received seed funding from CyberAgent Capital of Japan in November of that year. After that, Foody successively received investments from Garena and Tiger Funds in July 2015.
Finally, in July 2017, after Garena’s upgrade, Donghai Group decided to merge Foody at a price of $64 million, incorporating Foody and its food delivery service Now delivery into its mobile payment system. At the same time, Foody expanded its market to Thailand in 2017 and is operated by Foody Services Co, Ltd., a subsidiary of SEA Thailand Group, through an online information platform. Its takeaway business was overwhelmed by the fierce competition in Thailand, and it only lasted for one year before stopping the service in January 2019.
Will Shopee Foody take advantage of the epidemic and the capital market to try takeaway again?