foodpanda Indonesia Sees High Potential in Food Delivery Business, Will Provide Alternate Payment Methods

Food delivery business has been in infant stage in Indonesia, but it's definitely expanding. In busy cities, the need of good food has never ceased off, while sometimes people just can't move from their workplaces. Of course everybody want to have good meal, not just fast foods, but not every restaurant chain provide luxury of delivering the foods right in customer's door. As regional player, foodpanda understands this need and would like to play its part to grow and nurture this niche.

According to foodpanda Indonesia's Managing Director, Juan Chene, generally people still find it more convenient to order food offline, using phone, but foodpanda has already started to see a big channel shifting to online and mobile which will even accelerate over the next years. He said, "Main partners like Chopstix, Sour Sally, Mos Burger or Gado-Gado Boplo help us to provide the greatest varieties of food and many more are joining us as we speak. We received highly positive feedback and hence generated more customers. To summarize we see lots of movement and highest potential in the food delivery business in Indonesia."

As of today, foodpanda has over 500 restaurants in Indonesia and 15,000 partner restaurants worldwide. There are more than 500 employees globally and are active in 27 countries, targeting 3 billion people. Chene stated, "Currently, we are focusing on a market with about 50 million people in Indonesia. As a startup we don’t talk about actual delivery numbers right now. But we progress fast and see especially a big potential in mobile: Just shortly after launch of our mobile app already around 25% percent of the orders come from a smartphone or tablet. By the way most of them during lunch time."

Asked about the possibility of expanding throughout cities in Indonesia, Chene answered, "We want to become the market leader in Indonesia and cover all of Indonesia. Our advantage is our great network of partner restaurants and the constantly growing variety of cuisines we offer. We are growing multinational and we will go step by step. By now we are in the metropolitan area of Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya and Bali and keep on expanding."

foodpanda in Indonesia still use "cash on delivery" payment method. Yet, as Chene replied, in near future the company will adapt new payment methods and extend to mobile credit card payments, online banking and bank transfer. But of course providing alternate payment methods isn't the only thing his team focus on. He stated, "We are totally customer orientated and want everyone to get their tasty meal hassle-free and most convenient. Our focus has been on providing an excellent choice of restaurants at a great user experience and service. From here we will advance further.

To support his previous statement about mobile shifting, Chene closed the discussion by emphasizing, "We've already successfully launched a mobile app (for iOS) and according to AppAnnie (stat), it is the number one app for Food & Beverages (category) in Indonesia. We globally reached a quarter million downloads in less than three months and became the number one food app in eight countries."