Foodpanda.com, tastykhana.com, justeat.in are few of the names of online food ordering companies that operate out of Bangalore. However these names make me wonder:
What is the USP of these companies?
What is the service that they provide?
How do they make money?
What hooks they have to ensure that they are irreplaceable?
Can they ever be profitable?
To me a food delivery ecosystem has the following elements
- Customers: Without a market no business model reach
- Order taking: Includes ability to influence user behavior by switching restaurants, trying out new food items
- Chef: Ability to actually cook food in time
- Delivery & logistics (including reverse logistics of a wrong order, item missed etc.)
- Billing & promotions
- Feedback & customer delight
All the 3 websites that I mentioned are giving 50% off on billing to attract the crowd, but the question is what is the unique thing they are doing? Attracting crowd via discounting is neither sustainable nor builds us the right customer expectations.
Food delivery is really in infancy in India. Basic elements like packaging, warming the food, On-Time delivery or Customer satisfaction is too much to expect. The tech-geeks with their online models could do a lot, but I am still struggling to find one that has done anything commendable. Do you know of any such website?
Tomorrow: What are the gaps and how can they be bridged.