Case Study: Online food home delivery service companies in India – an overview

Case Study: Online food home delivery service companies in India – an overview

Indian Cities - Mumbai - The Greater Mumbai Municipal Corporation Building, online Food home delivery in India
Indian Cities – Mumbai – The Greater Mumbai Municipal Corporation Building

Recently I came across an assignment from a digital marketing company to develop a digital marketing strategy for a food home delivery services company in India. This led me to research some aspects of the industry in the country. I will write a multi-post series on the subject that will cover the following topics:

[dropshadowbox effect=”horizontal-curve-bottom” rounded_corners=”false” width=”99%” height=”275px”]

  • Overview of the food home delivery services industry in India
  • Operating models of the companies
  • Business model adopted by each company
  • Services provided by the companies to customers and to restaurants
  • Logistics of the food home delivery business in India
  • Competition analysis of the industry
  • The digital media marketing requirement of the food home delivery services business
  • Current status of the digital marketing and online presence of each company
  • Recommendations with a power point presentation

[/dropshadowbox]

Introduction to the food home delivery industry in Indian cities

The online food ordering and delivery services industry in India is a new phenomenon and have created a new segment of business by catering to a real need increasingly evident in the Indian cities. The industry has started a few years ago in the country, and is still in the nascent stages and so it is difficult to call it a success story. There are some companies that are making money but there are many others who simply are unable to find traction.

 

The need for food home delivery companies in Indian cities

The concept of food home delivery is not new to the country and especially the cities.

Companies: – There are two categories of food outlets who deliver food to customers homes – the normal pizza chains that cropped up around the country’s mega cities initially during the 90s, and the regular as well as famous restaurants that serve regular meals.

There are many pizza delivery companies in Indian cities like McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Papa Jones and others. Even good restaurants have their own home delivery services.

 

The customers: Those who want their food delivered are generally those who love pizzas and hamburgers (well, that may not be true for all instances) and other similar food stuff. Although this concept might have been true a few years ago, it doesn’t hold true now for sure. Now the young as well as families have started to avail these services.

[dropshadowbox effect=”horizontal-curve-bottom” rounded_corners=”false” width=”99%” height=”375px”]

Factors involved:

There are many factors that might have contributed to the rise in home delivery of food. Some of them are listed below:

  1. Rising complexity of cities transportation infrastructures
  1. Increased waiting time at the more famous restaurants – this may hold true for the young as well as the families headed by not so young parents. Reason for this may be the demand for a particular restaurant in an area being too large compared to the seating capacity, especially during weekends and festivals.
  1. Changing lifestyles of the young populace ( the BPO and IT crowd as well as the young professionals)

[/dropshadowbox]

What do these companies provide that others don’t

These home delivery companies provide one advantage that no regular restaurant provides. They provide the customers the much needed choice of a wide variety of food items from a menu not just of a single restaurant, but from possibly all restaurants from a particular area where you reside and it will be convenient to deliver the food from.

 Quality Service delivery: there are two choices of mode of delivery, either using other service providers or hire delivery guys of their own. Most of the companies seem to have opted for the second option because there were no other companies that specialized in food delivery services. This ensures better control over the service delivery and ensure prompt response to any customer requests.

Wide coverage: The industry has spread its reach to all the metros and is becoming popular in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. Other cities like Hyderabad, Noida, Gurgaon, Chennai and Kolkata

 

Competition in the Indian online food home delivery service industry

The competition in the industry that itself is at a nascent stage of development is increasing by the day. Many companies have entered the space, some domestic as well as some multinational. I will discuss about each company in considerable detail in my next post. Till then.. stay tuned.


Have an opinion about this post? Let us know what you think with a comment…