Exclusive | Covid-19 has been a ‘roller-coaster ride’ for Asia’s food delivery business, says Foodpanda Asia CEO
- The Covid-19 pandemic has brought urgent challenges for the food delivery industry in Asia
- ‘The whole ecosystem has been heavily impacted’, Foodpanda Asia-Pacific chief executive Jakob Angele says
“It has been quite a roller-coaster ride for us,” Jakob Angele, chief executive for Foodpanda Asia-Pacific, told the Post in an interview this week, adding that the current health crisis has been “challenging” when it comes to dealing with a surge in demand, changing consumer behaviour and the need to keep both drivers and customers safe.
“The whole ecosystem has been heavily impacted” due to the constraints imposed on restaurants with their dine-in business, as well as on riders in terms of how they can deliver food safely according to regulations in different markets, Angele said.
Nevertheless, the health crisis is driving aggressive growth and Foodpanda has seen “positive development” across most of the Asia-Pacific markets it operates in, according to Angele, who said he could not divulge precise figures due to disclosure rules related to the Frankfurt listing of Foodpanda’s parent company, Delivery Hero SE.
He also noted that the crisis is driving demand for Foodpanda’s recently-launched grocery delivery business, new areas like “semi-finished meals” and increased usage by older customers and not just tech-savvy millennials.
