Foodpanda
Foodpanda (stylized as foodpanda) is an online food and grocery delivery platform owned by Delivery Hero. Foodpanda operates as the lead brand for Delivery Hero in Asia, with its headquarters in Singapore. It is currently the largest food and grocery delivery platform in Asia, outside of China, operating in 12 markets across Asia. History. In 2012, Swiss Lukas Nagel and Rico Wyder established Foodpanda in Singapore. They then expanded in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. A year later in 2013, Foodpanda was launched in Bangladesh and Romania. With more than 20,000 employees operating in their company, Foodpanda is  currently the largest food delivery service in Bangladesh. In 2014, the service expanded into the Balkans, Brunei, as well as the Philippines. In February 2014, Foodpanda had acquired its main rival in Pakistan, Eat Oye. Global expansion of the Foodpanda business was led by Ralf Wenzel, Felix Plog and Ben Bauer. In 2015, cofounder Rohit Chadda stepped down from roles at the company. By 2016, none of the original managing directors or cofounders were present with the company. Its original operation in Indonesia had shut down due to competition with flourishing app-based taxi-motorbike services, while the company sold  its Delivery Club business in Russia to Mail.Ru for $100 million in November 2016. Foodpanda's largest investor Rocket Internet sold the service to Delivery Hero in December 2016. On 1 November 2017, Foodpanda re-branded and changed its color from orange to pink with updated logo across all served countries, following its acquisition by Delivery Hero. It had gone through three management changes by 2019. In April 2018 they left the Brunei market. From 2019 to 2020, Foodpanda began operating in other markets in Southeast Asia, launching in Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos. Foodpanda was also launched  in Japan in September 2020. In May 2021, Glovo acquired Foodpanda brand in Bulgaria and Romania. In September 2021, Delivery Hero unified its subsidiary brand NetPincér with Foodpanda in Hungary, with NetPincér rebranding as Foodpanda. In December 2021, Foodpanda stopped its food delivery services in all cities of Germany, except central Berlin. In early 2022, Foodpanda announced its new mascot called Pau-Pau, an anthropomorphic panda that cares about empowerment and environment. The new mascot will be rolled out across all of Asia. It was permanently closed on 1 February 2022 in Romania, due to Glovo's purchase. Foodpanda India . In early 2015, the company made an all-stock purchase of TastyKhana.in, and the portal Just Eat India. In the end of 2015, the company laid off around 300 employees in India. During that time, there was also a news expose alleging malpractice at Foodpanda India, including non-payments to restaurants and fake listings. The company was based in Gurgaon at the time and active in 200 cities. By 2016, Rocket India was seeking a buyer for the company, listing relatively low prices such as $10 to $15 million. Foodpanda's business in India was acquired by Ola  for all-share deal on 11 December 2017, at a valuation of $40-$50 million. Ola said it would invest around $200 million additional funds in Foodpanda. The company began offering discounts to increase usage, and at its peak, in August 2018, it had around 200,000 daily orders. That dropped to around 5,000 daily orders by the middle of 2019. Ola suspended Foodpanda India's food delivery business in the middle of 2019 and fired most of its 1,500 food delivery executives. The Foodpanda brand was said to continue in-house brands or cloud kitchens. The cloud kitchen concept  had started for the company when it had acquired the company Holachef in October 2018. In 2019, however, it only had three private label brands under its cloud kitchen business, among them FLRT and Great Khichdi experiment. Operations. Foodpanda is operating in 12 markets in Asia and four markets in Europe, including: Platform. Foodpanda processes and sends orders directly to partner restaurants, then delivers the meals by delivery riders to the customers. The service is available via its websites and mobile applications. It connects customers with restaurants that offer food delivery in their area and lets them choose, order and  pay online/offline. Customers order food by entering their postcodes on the site and browsing for food from a list of restaurants. They can create meals by browsing restaurant menus and selecting items they want to order before entering an address and proceeding to the checkout. Foodpanda sends out an SMS to confirm orders and their estimated delivery time. Foodpanda also has a review section on restaurant pages, where customers can comment on sales process, delivery, taste, and overall impression of restaurants. Investments. Foodpanda raised $20 million in initial funding from Investment AB Kinnevik, Phenomen Ventures and Rocket Internet  in April 2013. In September 2013, iMENA Holdings invested $8 million. In February 2014, there was another funding round of $20 million from a group of investors, including Phenomen Ventures. On 11 August 2014, the company announced that it has collected another $60 million in financing from a group of investors. In March 2015, the company announced it has raised over $110 million from Rocket Internet, as well as other investors. Less than two months later, a group of investors, including Goldman Sachs, invested over $100 million in Foodpanda. In December 2016, Delivery Hero announced  a full acquisition of Foodpanda for an undisclosed price. Controversies. In August 2020, Thai pro-democracy protesters launched a boycott against Foodpanda after it was found among the advertisers on Nation TV, a pro-establishment mouthpiece. The boycott forced the company to suspend all of its advertisements on the channel over concerns about its reputation. In July 2021, the company again suffered a widespread boycott in Thailand, after it tweeted that it would dismiss one of its drivers who was seen at the place where a royal portrait was set on fire during a pro-democracy protest on 18July, saying  his act breached its policy against "terrorism". It was reported that around two million users in Thailand had deleted their accounts on the Foodpanda application overnight. Many restaurants also joined the boycott, announcing their withdrawal from business partnership with Foodpanda. The company later apologised, stating that it supports free speech and would not dismiss the driver. In July 2021, the company experienced protests in the Philippines over allegedly unfair wage policies among its riders. Shortly before the protests started, at least 30 of its riders were reportedly suspended for 10 years. The company later apologized for the suspensions, claiming that  they happened due to technical glitches in their riders' software. In October 2021, the company in Malaysia received backlash after several of its vendors claimed that the service charges them excessively high commission rates as well as other hidden fees. Some vendors have even gone ahead and terminated their accounts with the service after a revelation of a compilation of more than 70 screenshots of Facebook posts and pictures of invoices from foodpanda vendors who claim that they are being charged a hidden fee which results in a zero return of sales. In November 2021, some Foodpanda workers in Hong  Kong striked, denouncing exaggerated monthly income promises and other problems.