Foody.vn — from a Food Review Website start-up to become the Viet Nam’s Leading Food Delivery App and local food ordering game changer: A case study.
Food is a never-ending demand. Ordering food via an app nowadays is effortless and hassle-free process. Even if you’re lazy on a Sunday morning or in the middle of the meeting at work, just a few taps and your food is on its way, ready to serve your hungry stomach.
Background of FOODY.VN
Founded in 2012, Foody.vn is one of the most successful start-up stories in Viet Nam. This Vietnam-based company provides food recommendations, restaurant listings and value added services such as order delivery, reservations, vouchers or coupons to create culinary experiences for the customers in the local market. With 9,288,000 monthly web visitors, Foody.vn is ranked 6,130 among websites globally.
On May 5th, 2016, Foody.vn launched the “NOW.vn" app — an on-demand food delivery service app along with the website Now.vn (former is Delivery Now). Since 2018, Now had over 40,000 delivery orders everyday, which accounts for 70% of the market. According to Havas Riverorchid’s survey, when local consumers are asked about food ordering services in Ho Chi Minh City, Delivery Now is the first name which was chosen from among various of online food booking service providers such as GrabFood, Vietnammm, Lozi (Loship), Lala, Eat.vn, Chonmon.vn, etc,…
To date, Foody has successfully received seed funding from large foreign investors such as Southeast Asia’s Sea Ltd — a leading internet company in based in Singapore(series B investment with $64 million for 82% of public shares of Foody). This acquisition of Foody could have expand the company's online payment platform “Airpay”, which is utilised in Now App and was introduced in Vietnam from 2014.
HOW DID THEY DOMINANT THE FOOD SERVICE MARKET?
1.A vast and accessible market
According to Vietnam Report — market research firm, Vietnamese spend more than one third of their monthly income on food and beverages, which made this industry to be a potential market for new online food ordering service to jump into.
Smartphone penetration rate is also a key reason for growing in Vietnam's online food delivery sector. As reported by Nielsen, smart phone user grew 84% in 2017 in key cities and 71% in secondary cities. Moreover, in Vietnam, 88% of population from 18 to 36 years old either use the internet occasionally or own a smartphone.
2.Journey to become a market leading in online food ordering service industry
From the beginning, Foody was founded to be a food/ restaurant review & rating based on website platform during the time Facebook and smartphone users were exploded. At that time, there were others website which currently in this market before and they are well-known to the consumers. To differentiate between the competitors, Foody.vn launched a mobile platform for its website. To encourage the the behavior of reviewing and rating to service of the Vietnamese, the CEO used users rewarding with coupons. This strategy has gradually changed the behaviour of the consumers and endeared them to the market, which resulted in some serious user growth. Up to now, the Foody.vn owns a large listings and reviews of over 120,000 restaurants which was built based on the contents and rating from their 1M registered users. The Foodee — which is Foody.vn user, is now having their trusted sources to find any nearby locations to eat, see real photos and recommendations or comments from other users about the services, menus or prices of the restaurants, which make their eating experience is easier and more diversity.
Furthermore, on social media such as Facebook, Foody.vn used content marketing to generate millions of followers by low-cost video production but has high impact. On Foody.vn fan page, they are posting daily video content with mouth-watering mood and tone, which is interesting, down-to-earth and simple, to introduce about new kind of food to their “hungry” Foodee. Foody.vn had created an phenomenon that any restaurants that promoted on their page are likely to have an unexpected increasing in walk-in customers as well as orders. Moreover, each video from Foody.vn fan page earned high organic engagement rate from the users. (average of 100K views and over 4,000 reactions of Like, Share or Comment). Therefore, Foody.vn has a long waiting list of booking from the restaurants to be introduced on their page with a fee. In terms of attracting the Foodee users on Facebook to the website, a link that “reveal" detailed locations & information of the restaurants from a video will trigger users to click, which redirect them to the Foody.vn.
But for long-term, it is believed that Foody.vn has to be more than just a review website and app. To survive, Foody realized the important to connect their users more deeply, both the restaurant owners and the consumers. Therefore, the CEO — Dang Hoang Minh started to create an ecosystem centralised by Foody — which is an information sources to link with other value added services. Besides reviews, ratings and restaurant listings on Foody.vn, users could be able to make reservation by TableNow and order food with Now (website & app platform). Besides, Foody also provides NowPOS — online ordering system for restaurants. Altogether, they helped Foody.vn enjoys up to 8M users each month.
3.Expanding the “ecosystem" to other service industry
Now.vn are providing many more services than just a food delivery app. In the tap from the top of the website Now.vn or in its app Now, it displays a wide range of selection for users to choose from, with numerous listings with updated prices and promotions offered:
- Fresh — ordering meat, vegetables and fresh raw ingredients
- Liquor
- Flowers
- Products — such as cosmetic and FMCG products
- Medicine
- Laundry — from laundry booking & shipping to providing housekeeping by hours
- Pets — booking service for dogs and cats
Foody.vn also introduced NowMOTO, which offering ride-hailing service at the end of October, 2018. In a meanwhile, Grab and Go-Viet (supported by Indonesia's Go-Jek) are sharing the biggest pie of the market in this service industry. This movement is considered to be one of the strategy to diversify in its service as well as to stay competitive with other new players (such as GrabFood, Go-Food, Lalamove, ect…) that are trying to join the online food ordering market — which is predicted to be grown at a rate of 32% in the period of 2017–2021 by Technavio.
REFERENCE:
Crunchbase. (2018). Foody.vn website statistic 2018. [online] Available at: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/foody#section-web-traffic-by-similarweb [Accessed 1 Dec. 2018].
Intellasia.net. (2019). Intellasia East Asia News — Online food delivery a tough segment to conquer. [online] Available at: https://www.intellasia.net/online-food-delivery-a-tough-segment-to-conquer-676367 [Accessed 1 Dec. 2018].
Inside Retail Asia. (2018). Foody Vietnam sold to Singaporean firm — Inside Retail Asia. [online] Available at: https://insideretail.asia/2017/10/02/foody-vietnam-sold-to-singaporean-firm/ [Accessed 1 Dec. 2018].
Intellasia.net. (2018). Intellasia East Asia News — Online food delivery a tough segment to conquer. [online] Available at: https://www.intellasia.net/online-food-delivery-a-tough-segment-to-conquer-676367 [Accessed 1 Dec. 2018].
nielsen.com. (2018). SMARTPHONE KEEPS UP THE GROWTH MOMENTUM WITH INCREASING USAGE INCIDENCES IN KEY CITIES; WHILST RURAL SMARTPHONE USERS REACHING UP TO 68%. [online] Available at: https://www.nielsen.com/content/dam/nielsenglobal/vn/docs/PR_EN/Web_Nielsen_Smartphones%20Insights_EN.pdf [Accessed 1 Dec. 2018].
Saigoneer.com. (2018). In 2017, 53% of Vietnamese Owned at Least a Smartphone, Compared to 35% in 2015: Report | Saigoneer. [online] Available at: https://saigoneer.com/vietnam-news/13774-in-2017,-53-of-vietnamese-own-at-least-a-smartphone,-compared-to-35-in-2015-report [Accessed 1 Dec. 2018].
SimilarWeb. (2018). foody.vn Traffic Statistics. [online] Available at: https://www.similarweb.com/website/foody.vn#overview [Accessed 1 Dec. 2018].
VIR, V. (2018). Sea seizes 82 per cent of Foody. [online] Vietnam Investment Review — VIR. Available at: https://www.vir.com.vn/sea-seizes-82-per-cent-of-foody-52678.html [Accessed 1 Dec. 2018].
