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After staying away from listing on Food Panda, India’s largest food delivery site, MNC food brands such as Mc Donald’s and KFC have at last relented. Rohit Chadda, Managing Director, Food Panda, said, “MNC food brands prefer to be present on both platforms and we are in the process of signing up Mc Donald’s and KFC who will be selling through our site.”
Food Panda is an aggregator of food outlets but not many MNC-led brands are on board. Most MNC brands prefer to stay away from engaging in a discount-based pricing model.
The start-up Food Panda, launched in 2012, has a revenue-sharing model with food outlets.
Burger King had decided to use Food Panda during its launch phase but subsequently withdrew from the site.
Pilot project
“Burger King did a pilot with us during its launch as it wanted to reach out to more people in Mumbai but after that it no longer is on our site,” said Chadda.
Typically, food delivery sites help neighbourhood eateries, which lack technology know-how, reach out to customers. Most of the MNC brands, on the other hand, prefer to do e-commerce on their own terms through company websites.
Pizza Hut has adopted an ‘on and off’ approach which involves listing on the site only when it has freebies and offers.
Unnat Varma, GM, Pizza Hut, said, “ We come on board Food Panda only when we have offers or discounts. Since we are here to build a food brand, being on food delivery sites has benefits as well as short falls. MNCs typically would like to stay away from giving discounts all year long.”
Pizza Hut has its website for online deliveries and so do others like Mc Donald’s (Mc Delivery). “There are always periods when we do not have offers and that is when our own website does the job. We only engage in partners like Food Panda if it works for us,” says Varma.
Even Dominos Pizza, one of the pioneers of the food delivery format, had recently come on board Food Panda. Harneet Singh Rajpal, VP Marketing , Dominos Pizza, said, “We came on board Food Panda about five months ago since we already have an online portal. But the discounts given by Food Panda will not be any different from what we give on our site.”
With 12,000 food outlets listed on its site, Food Panda will soon face competition from start ups like Zomato, which is in the process of starting in food delivery services.
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