In this episode, we take a closer look at the fast-paced and competitive food delivery industry in Southeast Asia. ShopeeFood is gaining traction in Vietnam—but does this pose a real challenge to market leader Grab? Is TikTok considering a move into local services? And could drones become the new norm for food delivery?
We’re joined by Weihan, our insights lead, to unpack these questions and more. From drone delivery trials in Dubai to the high costs of operations in Singapore, we explore the trends and challenges shaping the future of how we order and eat food.
What does this mean for the industry—and for consumers?
Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcast.
[AI-generated Transcript] [00:00:00] Sabrina: Hello everyone and welcome to the Impulso Podcast. I think you haven’t heard my voice in a while because we’ve been having a very busy month, right?[00:00:09] Jianggan: Sabrina has been away, on a very nice trip to Taiwan while everybody else is working their ass off.
[00:00:14] Sabrina: Yeah, Sabrina has been very relaxed for the past two weeks, but, turns out no one was only me.
[00:00:20] Jianggan: So you, you also see a face here Weihan When were you last here on the podcast? Like a year ago?
[00:00:24] Weihan: I think. At least a year ago.
[00:00:27] Jianggan: Okay. So, when she’s not on a podcast, which is like 99.99% of the time, she powers most of the reports from Momentum works that you see out there
[00:00:35] Sabrina: and insights.
So that’s why we’ve dragged her into the podcast today to share a little bit.
[00:00:40] Jianggan: So, but how’s Taiwan?
[00:00:41] Sabrina: It was so cold. Oh my gosh. Well, I was so unprepared for the weather. I dunno why I never thought,
[00:00:46] Jianggan: how cold was it? Okay. Eight degrees.
[00:00:49] Sabrina: When I was in Taipei, everywhere else was fine, but Taipei was raining.
Okay. So it was like, it’s like eight degrees, 10 to 14 degrees. That’s
[00:00:55] Jianggan: not cold.
[00:00:55] Sabrina: It is so cold. So when we, we are gonna China next week, right? I’ve got a plan for the weather. [00:01:00] [00:01:00] Jianggan: So when she was in Taiwan and some of us was actually in Huangzhou, and it was one day in the morning I was in a hotel and I had the, the window open and I was looking outside. I say, okay, there’s something white coming down from the sky.
[00:01:10] Sabrina: Did it snow?
[00:01:11] Jianggan: Yeah. For about, I don’t know, half an hour. I mean, , it was not heavy, but that day was zero degrees.
We’ll go to China next, next week.
Yeah.
[00:01:17] Sabrina: Yes. So it will be cold and I will be prepared I’m very excited to go to China again and order my Meituan is the highlight of my, so I, I’m gonna fly in with, right.
I already told her, I was like, when we land, ’cause we are landing at night in Shanghai. I was like, we need to order Meituan in the hotel room. It’s like first order of business when I go to China.
[00:01:34] Jianggan: So, and, and people say that, that they order food delivery, they order like a quick commerce because it’s fast.
But sometimes when we go down and, I mean, you order, something gets delivered what, half an hour?
[00:01:44] Sabrina: Half an hour? Yeah.
[00:01:45] Jianggan: And you go down and, the commerce is everywhere and you sort of buy something and you can take it back to room in like 15 minutes.
[00:01:51] Sabrina: Yeah. But like, if I’m really in the room and like I’m clean, I don’t wanna leave the room.
That’s when delivery is good. Yeah. And it’s cold. So if you leave the room, the layers you need to put on, [00:02:00] especially at night, it like doesn’t make sense. Right.
[00:02:02] Weihan: That would never happen in Southeast Asia. I guess it’s a lot faster to just go out and get things yourself because I think the delivery here takes like what, at least in Singapore, 40 minutes minimum.
And then it’s very expensive.
[00:02:14] Sabrina: Oh yeah. I was like in Singapore, I’ll be willing to wait. ’cause if I go out I will sweat. But. The delivery fee.
[00:02:19] Jianggan: So, so, so either way, I mean, she’s just lazy.
[00:02:21] Sabrina: Yeah. No, no, no. I just, like, if I’m clean, I don’t wanna leave the house. ’cause then I need to come back and like shower again. But then the delivery fee in Singapore is like $9.
[00:02:31] Jianggan: Did you use any delivery in in Taiwan?
[00:02:34] Sabrina: I actually didn’t order food delivery when I was in Taiwan. So Taiwan, the two main players are Uber Eats and
[00:02:41] Jianggan: Food Panda.
[00:02:41] Sabrina: Food Panda, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I, I had both apps. I use Uber a lot by the way, because my friend literally told me like, don’t trust the buses in Taiwan. So I took Uber a lot, but I didn’t order delivery.
[00:02:51] Jianggan: Mm.
[00:02:52] Sabrina: I don’t know why. I don’t think it was very cheap or. Like you said on the way back I would stop by the convenience store.
[00:02:58] Jianggan: Yeah, and you always have a store.
[00:02:59] Sabrina: Yeah. [00:03:00] Yeah. There’s like on my way back I would pass by at least like three or four, either like 7- eleven or family marts.
[00:03:05] Weihan: Do you see people ordering food delivery often in Taiwan then?
[00:03:08] Sabrina: I saw some riders saw. Food Panda more. But I think it’s biased us because Food Pandas are so bright and it’s pink, but Uber is black, so maybe I don’t notice the difference between like the Uber Eats riders and like normal motorcyclists.
[00:03:20] Jianggan: No, I think we did some research, I think, I think Food Panda probably has a bit higher market share compared to Uber Eats in Taiwan. Yeah. But Uber is, I mean, we used to have Uber in Southeast Asia. Yes. Before that much with Grab in 2018. And and for me it’s, I mean, I pass by Hong Kong quite a lot and every time you in Hong Kong sort of,
[00:03:37] Sabrina: is it Uber as well?
[00:03:38] Jianggan: Yeah, you can use Uber
[00:03:38] Sabrina: You don’t use Keeta? That’s Meituan’s app by the way.
[00:03:42] Jianggan: That’s for delivery. But, but we travel around and, so to this day, lots of taxi. I mean, Hong Kong is very easy to have, taxi from the street, but, lots of taxi still only take cash.
[00:03:51] Sabrina: Oh yeah. I did not take taxis when I was in Taiwan because my friends got scammed by the taxi driver.
[00:03:57] Jianggan: Oh, why?
[00:03:58] Sabrina: I think they overcharged them or something. Okay.
[00:04:00] So we just, we went with Uber. Well, is, I think that’s the thing about mobility, right? When you’re in a foreign country and you don’t wanna be scammed by taxi drivers, you use an app because you already know beforehand how much you’re going to pay.
Yeah. Okay. And whether or
not that’s a reasonable amount for you.
[00:04:16] Weihan: I think same goes for what we see here in Southeast Asia, right? Like usually we just have one main, mobility app that we use. And I think for us, a lot of time it is Grab, so what we do is that we are, we will use Grab mainly for mobility, but then sometimes like, hey, they also offer food delivery.
So it’s kind of like a convenience to have it both in the same app as compared to having to download something that is different.
[00:04:40] Jianggan: I also think about that. I mean, you don’t have to, you know, download a different app, do the registration, and sort of link your card, link your card
it’s actually quite, quite a bit of effort. I mean, it’s not that a lot, but people are lazy.
[00:04:51] Sabrina: People are getting lazy, but I guess that’s the advantage that Grab has, right? Because Grab is very regional. So anyone in Southeast Asia that travels to other Southeast Asian countries, you
[00:05:00] would use Grab.
You wouldn’t really think of other apps. And then essentially when you want food delivery as well, since you already have the Grab app, you might as well use Grab ’cause. Okay, so we launched the fifth edition of our food delivery platform report. Recently, links will be in the show notes below. And obviously it showed that Grab is the biggest player in terms of food delivery.
[00:05:18] Jianggan: It has been the biggest for a while, right?
[00:05:20] Sabrina: Yeah. And I think it’s because of what we discussed, right? Because it essentially, it’s a mobility app. Most people use it when they travel around Southeast Asia, of course. And then, you might as well just order food delivery as well.
[00:05:31] Jianggan: But, but not because of that long. I, I mean, so most of the users probably. We don’t travel out of their country. I think most users will probably be people local, what they per using in the country. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:05:44] Sabrina: So then why is Grab the top?
[00:05:46] Jianggan: Because they have executed over so many years.
[00:05:49] Sabrina: Yeah. They have the operational fleet and all right.
[00:05:51] Jianggan: Yeah, yeah.
[00:05:52] Sabrina: But what’s interesting is that Shopee Food is the third player regionally. Obviously we’re from Singapore, right? So obviously if we don’t do research about this at all, I wouldn’t even know that Shopee Food is a thing and it’s weird ’cause we look at Sea’s results quite frequently.
[00:06:06] Jianggan: Yeah. It just came out like they just came out a couple days ago and the share price rose like more than 10%. Oh, 12% over two. Over two days. So apparently, I mean, investors were happy about their results. It sort of quadrupled from their low. So if you, if if you bought some shares at $30, now you are like rich.
[00:06:22] Sabrina: Yeah. I was like, damn should have bought some.
[00:06:25] Jianggan: That’s why all the people next door, in in the Sea’s office are kind of happy nowadays.
[00:06:28] Sabrina: Yeah. But Shopee Food is something that they don’t really talk about, which is interesting because, it’s growing quite rapidly, right?
[00:06:35] Jianggan: Yeah. It’s measured, right?
[00:06:36] Sabrina: Yeah. Yeah. They’re third in the region and they are.
Okay. So looking at like maybe a more specific market in Vietnam? Yeah. Specifically, they are almost on par with Grab, which is the market leader. Hmm. So it’s kind of like a duo poly there, right?
[00:06:50] Jianggan: They started in Vietnam quite early, right? I mean, they bought this company called Foodie back in 2016 as a food review site, and Foodie later launched food delivery service. So they have always [00:07:00] been a major player in Vietnam, but of course, from outside region, people don’t pay much attention to food delivery Vietnam because is it, I think it’s still the smallest market in Southeast Asia, even though it’s growing very fast.
[00:07:11] Weihan: Yeah, it’s one of the smallest market, but I think in Vietnam’s case, right, even when we are on the ground, we also seek some very interesting trends, is that when we were in Ho Chi Minh City last year, I think even though we knew that Grab and Shopee Food were on a duo poly system in Vietnam, right? We feel that, eh, we only see more Grab drivers and other players in Ho Chi Minh City. Mm-hmm. But when we were asking around, we’ve noticed that actually Shopee Food has a much larger presence in the north, like in, in places like Hanoi Haiphong. I’m just wondering, Sabrina , since you’re such a frequent traveler to Vietnam, do you actually see this since you like Hanoi so much?
[00:07:51] Sabrina: Yeah. I try to remember like, oh yeah, I was in Hanoi before we went to Ho Chi Minh City. I think last year as well. I do think I saw a lot more Shopee Food [00:08:00] riders when we were in Hanoi than compared to Ho Chi Minh City.
But in Ho Chi Minh City, we really don’t see a lot. So we were there in August. I see a lot more Shopee Food in Hanoi, which is the northern part. Right. But when we were in Ho Chi Minh city, I don’t think I saw a lot of Shopee Food. What’s the yellow color? I recognize them by their, yeah, I recognize them by the color of their bags.
[00:08:19] Jianggan: Be Group. Yeah
[00:08:20] Sabrina: Be Group is kind of new as well, right?
[00:08:21] Jianggan: Yeah. They have been around for a while, but, but I think they’re backed by, by one of the telcos. So, so they’ve been around for a while and, they had some ambitions. but I think in terms of food delivery, they’re relatively small. So, about Shopee food specifically. I also had that experience, right?
I mean the, the, I think the second or third time we did the, the annual report on food delivery platforms, we actually did a survey in, in Ho Chi Minh City about people’s preference. I. Hmm. and it was clearly, clearly, majority towards Grab, but then we look at the data coming from other sources, it’s, it’s a bit different.
So, so then we dug a little bit deeper. I mean, I mean, a couple of things. I mean, first, for [00:09:00] whatever reason, Grab is still a little bit more premium, in Southeast Asia. And some people say that it’s because of deliberate design, but we tend to believe in the narrative that, it’s because, for whatever reason they targeted everyone and then when they became a little bit more cautious about incentives, the good users stayed.
Oh, okay. But, but, but in Vietnam, I remember those once I go to Hanoi a lot about a year and a half ago, and I was walking around the neighborhood, a random neighborhood is not even in like any of the tourist recommendations stuff. Yeah. I mean, just walked, then there was a small lake. Mm-hmm. And in front of the lake there was a, a few cafes.
I mean, like, there are cafes everywhere in Vietnam, so we just sat there for like half a day and there you see all the motor bags zipping past the small lanes. You do see a clear majority of, orange color, I mean the Shopee Food, in that neighborhood at least. So, so yeah, that backs the narrative, right?
You don’t see that much in, in, in the commercial areas in Ho Chi Minh City, but you do see that in a lot of neighborhoods in the [00:10:00] north.
[00:10:00] Sabrina: I guess it’s also because of kind of their, I guess this impacts their basket size know as well. So Shopee food
[00:10:05] Jianggan: It’s correlated for sure. Yeah.
[00:10:06] Sabrina: Probably has a much smaller basket. It’s interesting. Maybe we should try Shopee Food when we are in Vietnam.
[00:10:13] Jianggan: There’s also another market, right, Indonesia. So our estimate is what Shopee food is like 18%,
[00:10:17] Weihan: I think about more than 5% in the past year. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
So I think for Indonesia, it’s a very interesting case. So tying back with what we mentioned about Vietnam just now, right? So Gojek exited last year. So that leaves
[00:10:32] Jianggan: exited Vietnam. Yeah. Vietnam last year. Yes.
[00:10:33] Weihan: So that leaves Indonesia as their only market left. Yeah. So a lot has been happening in Indonesia in the past year.
We heard that from our friends that there were a lot of sort of incentive or like mini price wars that are going on such that everyone’s trying to offer low cost. And then, with that, you see that I think uptake has grown because ultimately what the food delivery currently is, is, is not everyone can [00:11:00] afford it on the usual basis.
Yeah. So by lowering the prices, right, more people are more receptive to, oh, let me just try it. And I think for Shopee Food, that’s precisely the, audience that they are trying to go. So I think with that in mind, they have managed to capture quite a decent portion of new users, which explains why they’ve grown so much.
[00:11:20] Jianggan: I think naturally e-commerce appeals to more people compared to ride hailing and food delivery, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, even if you’re poor, you can still go and buy things on e-commerce because it offers would,
[00:11:30] Sabrina: there’s things you still have to buy.
[00:11:31] Jianggan: Yeah. Yeah. And it offers, value for money for lots of items.
So I think Shopee naturally has a wide range of users. and food delivery is something that, I mean I think nowadays they don’t talk about it alone. It’s basically part of Shopee. Right. So, and people go to Shopee to order food. I
[00:11:48] Sabrina: Is it a separate app or is it within the Shopee app itself?
[00:11:51] Jianggan: In most markets it’s within the Shopee app. It’s within the app. So I mean of course for them, they probably need to discuss whether they should, Do a separate app, because I mean, think [00:12:00] about e-commerce and food delivery on the same app, think about experience
[00:12:03] Sabrina: it can get very messy, but I guess if we’re talking about ease of having to download the app, then mm-hmm.
Having it on the same app makes it easier. A lot easier. Right?
[00:12:11] Jianggan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, so another thing about Indonesia is, I think similar to what you observed in Vietnam, I think when our previous report, was launched in 2024. Mm-hmm. We’re saying that, okay, Shopee Food is the third player in Indonesia.
Mm-hmm. Then I had like so many who tell me, no, no, no way. No way. I’m, I’m, I’m in my office right in the central of Jakarta, I don’t see any Shopee rider. So last year I brought a few friends to the city of Bandung. Mm-hmm. Which is about, I think an hour away by high speed rail from Jakarta. And once, once you’re in Bandung, you see like Shopee Food riders everywhere. Everywhere. so clearly they’re targeting a different cohort of consumers, at least for their sort of, current size.
[00:12:49] Sabrina: I think that’s interesting, right? ’cause when we’re preparing for this report, also a lot of the people that we speak to, they don’t see how big Shopee Food is.
[00:12:56] Jianggan: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:57] Sabrina: I think ’cause maybe if, I mean, if you’re not in a city, [00:13:00] like for us, we don’t even have Shopee Food in Singapore.
I guess we’re not their target audience. Yeah,
[00:13:04] Jianggan: But what’s the point of doing that in Singapore? I mean, if I were Shopee here, I would launch ride hailing in Singapore not food delivery.
[00:13:10] Sabrina: Really?
[00:13:11] Jianggan: It’s too much effort. Oh, ride hailing is so profitable. Yeah. Yeah. That is so, so profitable. And I was looking at the data published by authorities and 90% of the rides in Singapore are now hailed through app. Like only very few people are still going out and flagging a cab.
[00:13:28] Sabrina: That’s true.
[00:13:30] Jianggan: What Denise is doing now, flagging a taxi
[00:13:32] Sabrina: Although sometimes it’s a lot cheaper to flag a taxi still.
But the convenience wise, you won’t even think of it anymore. Oh my god, really? I think this ride hailing and mobility, food delivery apps ruin our perception of convenience.
So it’s interesting. Maybe we should try shop food when we are in Vietnam, so, ’cause we’ll be going to Vietnam end of March.
[00:13:50] Jianggan: End of March. So
[00:13:51] Sabrina: End of March. Right. So for you guys that are interested, just briefly, the reason why we’re going to Ho Chi Minh City is ’cause we’re doing an immersion endorsed by the [00:14:00] Department of Industry and Trade in Vietnam, where we’ll be visiting a couple of e-commerce players as well as retailers.
[00:14:06] Jianggan: Yeah. Large retailers from Vietnam.
So if you
[00:14:08] Sabrina: If you guys are interested, more details will be in the show notes below, so you can just check it out.
[00:14:12] Jianggan: Yeah, right.
[00:14:13] Sabrina: But not just, Shopee or Shopee Food right. Another interesting thing that we’ve seen also is TikTok, not really entering the food delivery scene, they haven’t gone there yet, but they have kind of entered local services.
[00:14:25] Jianggan: What is local services?
[00:14:26] Sabrina: Yeah, what is local services?
[00:14:28] Weihan: I, I think you can, in layman terms, you can think of local services as a voucher buying, offering that you can actually directly, buy right on TikTok itself. So I think TikTok now, the fact that they already have TikTok shop. So there is sort of like the capabilities inbuilt in the app.
So. what they’re trying to do is that, okay, so they work with a couple of, let’s say, coffee chains and then they’re saying that, Hey, you can use my platform as a marketing channel, right? As a marketing channel. Yeah. And from there they offer like, let’s say how many percent off, maybe one for one [00:15:00] vouchers, and then consumers will be like, Hey, this looks like a good deal, let me buy it, and then I’ll go to the offline store to redeem, to redeem it.
[00:15:06] Jianggan: Okay.
[00:15:07] Weihan: So that’s the idea of local services, but I think it’s also kind of similar to what Grab has been trying to do with their Dine Out Service. So I think this might encroach in a sense, into Grab’s territory and somehow encroach into maybe food delivery in the future as well.
[00:15:26] Jianggan: Did you notice that when you are in China, sometimes they’ll just come to you saying that, Hey, buy this voucher on D on. Yes. It gives you a discount.
[00:15:33] Sabrina: Yeah. And so they always ask you to order through an app instead of directly at the restaurant itself.
[00:15:38] Jianggan: Sometimes they’re wondering, right. I mean, I’m going to order like on my own. It is probably cost me more. Why, why are you offering you a discount? Yeah. But it’s quite common there.
[00:15:47] Sabrina: Yes it is I think this is something we discussed in our, podcast with Freeman right, about why they wanna do this even. But it’s interesting. So this TikTok local services, is it. across Southeast Asia?
[00:15:59] Jianggan: They [00:16:00] tried in, I think they started when in, Indonesia, Indonesia and Thailand. I, I know some of the guys were, were implementing that. So, so the process is that they will hire agencies with influencers who like promote certain, like restaurants, certain cafes, and, users can buy the vouchers and the users go and redeem and afterwards they do the settlement.
[00:16:20] Sabrina: But yeah, this like, this makes sense to me because obviously if I’m looking for new places to eat, right, like I wouldn’t go to Grab to find places to eat, but whenever I’m scrolling TikTok, like I’ll see new cafes or new restaurants and I will want to try it.
[00:16:35] Jianggan: Because you don’t deliberately look for places, right?
[00:16:37] Sabrina: Yeah, I don’t, it’s kind of like natural discovery. Then I add it to my maps or something.
[00:16:42] Jianggan: Yeah but after you bought, you have bought voucher, would you actually go to the cafe?
[00:16:45] Sabrina: I will, I will, oh my gosh. You’ll okay. My, my whole TikTok dms, right? Yeah. It is just me sending cafe and restaurants to my friends.
Okay. And then ask me like, let’s go. Where shall we go?
[00:16:55] Jianggan: You actually go. Okay.
[00:16:56] Sabrina: I, I actually go, so,
[00:16:57] Weihan: I think it’s more like Gen Z kind [00:17:00] of marketing channel. So I think this is something that maybe platforms are also trying out more to see that the traditional way of like, let’s say engaging audiences are very different now.
So, TikTok is the way to go. Yeah.
[00:17:10] Sabrina: Will you not go, if you see like a video of a nice cafe on TikTok? And then you’re like,
[00:17:15] Jianggan: Yes, I, I might buy a voucher and then I forget about it.
[00:17:18] Sabrina: Oh, you won’t like,
[00:17:18] Jianggan: There’s too many things to go and too many travels, too many business trips.
[00:17:21] Sabrina: Okay. Okay. But that’s also my problem with TikTok.
Like, there’s so many cafes, right. Sometimes by the time I want to go to the cafe, I realize it closed down.
[00:17:28] Jianggan: Okay. That’s, that’s, that’s not a problem with TikTok.
[00:17:30] Sabrina: Yeah. Yeah. Like that’s a problem of having too many cafes. Yeah. But I guess it makes sense for them and this is something that they did try out in China, right? With Douyin?
[00:17:41] Jianggan: Fairly big, right?
[00:17:41] Weihan: Yeah. So I think in, in, in China’s case, local services is actually doing quite well. It contributes to quite a sizable portion of Douyin’s GMV, and I think the most interesting thing about it in China is that Douyin itself, number one, it’s firstly competing with the big [00:18:00] e-commerce giants.
At the same time, they’re also encroaching into the space of the food delivery giants. Mm-hmm. So it, the rise of Douyin in China. So now not only are they selling vouchers, a lot of live streaming is also gone into helping to promote this restaurant while they’re selling these vouchers,
[00:18:16] Jianggan: They, they’re also working with the food delivery players, they’re working with Alibaba to actually deliver, because think about the vouchers, right? I mean there will be people like me who forget to redeem the vouchers. But when you have that delivered, you don’t have that problem right. You click and someone will deliver to you and the whole loop will be closed.
[00:18:33] Weihan: So I think that has made Douyin a very, very formidable competitor for Meituan, and I guess, if you guys wanna find out more about that topic, we actually have a very extensive coverage in our past podcast, I think Sabrina will link it in the show notes below as well.
[00:18:50] Jianggan: Yeah, and also you can find that in the report itself, there’s a fairly extensive global benchmark where we look at trends in food delivery across the world.
[00:18:57] Sabrina: It’s interesting. So you can kind of just watch like a live stream [00:19:00] of someone eating at a restaurant on Douyin, and then you place an order for food delivery. That’s so dangerous, and the food delivery fee in China is like 50 cents. I was like, you know what gives me self control in Singapore, the delivery fees. Okay. Can you imagine if you are just watching, and you know, sometimes at night like, I don’t know, I think you do the same as me. We’ll watch like people cooking or people eating on TikTok, and then it makes you even hungrier and then you feel like, oh, I want to order food delivery.
Yes, but like
[00:19:25] Jianggan: Self control comes with age.
[00:19:27] Sabrina: I think this has ruined my self-control. No, the Grab’s $9 delivery fee is very good self-control for me. ’cause I don’t get it.
[00:19:37] Jianggan: But the, the, the, that’s not a Grab problem. That’s, that’s a market problem. Yeah. It, you just don’t have enough rider because you need to hire the locals.
Right?
[00:19:43] Sabrina: Yeah. Because it’s obviously in Singapore’s so different. So when I travel, my self control goes out. Like if I’m in Thailand or Vietnam Yeah. And I’m hungry at night. I don’t even hesitate. I don’t even think about it. I’m just like, of course I’ll order Grab, what do you mean? It’s kind of like when, when I was in Taiwan with my friends right, if you want to [00:20:00] go anywhere, we’re just like, just call Uber. Why do we need to think about this? This is what we discussed with Kaifei in the interview as well, right? Mm-hmm. About kind of a new value proposition for
[00:20:10] Jianggan: Laziness. Yeah.
[00:20:10] Sabrina: Brands. Laziness. Consumers laziness. Yeah. But TikTok doesn’t do food delivery
[00:20:15] Jianggan: TikTok doesn’t do that. There, there were rumors that they might acquire a, a fleet of delivery player in China last year, but somehow it didn’t happen. So, I would think that, even in Southeast Asia they’ll probably not do that. ’cause there’s whole lot of management. Operation. Yeah. It’s, it’s not their forte,
[00:20:31] Sabrina: But I guess they can work with someone else, ’cause I would say the difference between TikTok and these other platforms is that TikTok has the traffic already. Yes. They don’t have to acquire traffic that these, they don’t have to do the work that these platforms are doing in terms of increasing the frequency of which people use the app because I think people are already very frequent.
[00:20:49] Jianggan: Yes, of course. That’s why we’re asking this question, right, TikTok local service friend or foe, right, because, on one hand you can work together. You have, I mean, you have somebody who, who, who can do the, the traffic [00:21:00] acquisition. You know, somebody who can do the actual operations of fulfillment. The question is that, I mean, if, if by doing this you become, I mean, the other party becomes big, would you be scared, right, that they might, I mean, have, more incentives being encroached into your space? So we saw that happening with, with ecommerce, right? I mean, initially Shopee and J&T Express, they grew like in tandem. Very good partner, but, but then when Shopee becomes big, they say, okay, I wanna do it myself.
[00:21:28] Sabrina: I guess, yeah, that’s the risk, right? When your partner becomes big enough, they can just decide that, okay, I wanna do it myself. But I guess they’re still kind of testing the markets. I mean, they’re not even in all the Southeast Asian markets yet?
[00:21:37] Jianggan: Not yet, not yet.
[00:21:38] Sabrina: They’re just in Thailand and indonesia.
[00:21:41] Jianggan: I think I, I, I saw some of the ads in Singapore actually selling vouchers. So, so I who, I think it was Yorlin saying that, so she saw some KOLs promoting like a spa vouchers.
You are not the, the target of spa vouchers.
[00:21:58] Sabrina: Yeah. I was like, okay, [00:22:00] I’ve gotta go and scroll on
[00:22:01] Jianggan: TikTok.
But Weihan exercise a lot. She doesn’t need to go to spa.
[00:22:04] Sabrina: If you exercise a lot, you should go to massage. Yeah. I was like, now I’m thinking I would use it more for food. Yeah. ’cause TikTok is kind of like the Gen Z way of finding things to do.
Actually, no. Even for like exhibitions in Singapore and all, I haven’t seen any vouchers so far on TikTok. Maybe I should go and scroll more. Okay. I’m gonna go and do my research.
Yeah, so it obviously, TikTok is the global one, right?
And then in China it is Douyin and Meituan. If you guys are interested, we do have quite extensive coverage of that in our report. But speaking of Meituan.
[00:22:38] Jianggan: I think in the global benchmark part, yeah, we talked about Meituan’s expansion in Saudi Arabia and we talked about a lot of like consolidation happening globally.
And I think a few days after this report went out, Prosus acquired Just Eat Takeaway in Europe. So there are that dynamics happening and specific about Meituan in Saudi Arabia?, I think we talked about that in some,
[00:22:58] Sabrina: Yes. We’ve talked about that in a past [00:23:00] podcast. I will link it down in the show notes below.
I think we talked a little bit more about essentially Meituan’s overseas expansion with Keeta into Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia.
[00:23:08] Jianggan: Mm-hmm. So, I think you can see on this, this was taken what, that’s of 17th February. Yeah, so I think by now, yesterday I was looking at it, and they’re already in all the top nine cities in Saudi Arabia and you might have heard that they’re, they’re, they’re delivering for KFC and some large merchants using drones in Dubai, and they’ve got a license to do that. Yes, I mean, it’s very suitable in Dubai
[00:23:28] Sabrina: Drone delivery.
[00:23:29] Weihan: Yeah. It’s too hard to deliver outside
[00:23:31] Sabrina: Yeah.
[00:23:31] Jianggan: I mean you actually don’t really care because it’s not the locals doing that. But of course, drone will be obviously faster, right? I mean, you don’t have to navigate the traffic and, and, and, and go around and stuff. So of course the question is that, how are they doing in Saudi Arabia or how do they think they’re doing in Saudi Arabia, and would that lead to further expansion? So I’ve been talking to some people and there are other Chinese players I’ll not name which one, but they’re looking at Meituan in Saudi Arabia saying, hey, maybe we should do something in the Middle East as well. So there are lots of active discussions going on. But [00:24:00] specifically about Keeta, some of the key executives shared a poster on their WeChat. So basically it’s the recruitment ad.
So you’ll be working with like people from more than 30 countries and, exploring international sort of food and quick commerce services to help everyone eat better, live better, and, and, and the specifics: they’re hiring country managers, city managers, head of government relations, head of marketing for countries, et cetera, et cetera. So the fact they’re saying that, okay, we’re hiring country managers means at least they have some plans to go to other markets.
[00:24:32] Sabrina: I think there planning of bigger expansion in the Middle East, but, so there were previously also rumors about Meituan maybe entering Southeast Asia, right?
Mm-hmm. And I guess those rumors have kind of.
[00:24:44] Jianggan: I, I would think that, I mean the discussions between them and the food panel for potential acquisition was real, and assessment that, okay, Southeast Asia will not be their first step is probably real as well. So knowing this company, they make a lot of data based decisions and, Saudi Arabia [00:25:00] is probably much easier market for them to enter, right?
I mean, it’s, I mean, we, we talked a lot about in the previous podcast, as compared to Southeast Asia and there are other markets in the Middle East, which, which they can still enter.
I mean, for a company to go global. from China they face a challenge that they don’t have enough people who have global experience, so they can’t like roll out that quickly.
Yeah.
[00:25:22] Sabrina: It’s interesting. I wonder, like, do you ever think about this from a consumer perspective? Do you even notice like whenever there are new apps or like when there’s like a new food delivery app? Do you feel concerned if you hear that like, if Food Panda’s gonna be acquired or Food Panda will exit. Because I feel as a consumer, for me at least, I only use one or two apps.
[00:25:43] Jianggan: Yeah you need to determine the player, right? I mean, when Meituan went to Hong Kong, when they went to Saudi Arabia, they’re very aggressive in incentives and I think the rationale is that, okay, if they count very quickly, build a market share that’s on par with the leading players, then it will cost them much more.
And once they’re on [00:26:00] par in terms of size, then they can compete on efficiency. So it’s not about throwing money. I mean, I mean, some people throw money and it’s down in the drain. Some people throw money and there’s actually some ROI.
[00:26:09] Sabrina: But you still have to throw. Yes,
[00:26:11] Jianggan: yes, yes.
[00:26:12] Sabrina: So thank you guys for tuning into another episode of the Impulso Podcast. We hope that you enjoyed today’s episode, and if you did, do like and subscribe to our channel to stay up to date on the latest happenings and trends in tech, new retail, and the broader digital economy.
