foodpanda, Asia’s largest food and grocery delivery platform, today announced a long-term, multi-market partnership with Rebel Foods to enable restaurant partners and cloud kitchen operators to grow additional revenue streams, at little or no start-up costs. Rebel Foods is the world’s largest internet restaurant company headquartered in India. The new digital-first F&B format sees foodpanda and Rebel Foods joining forces for the benefit of local and small players in the F&B industry.

Through this partnership — for an initial five years — both companies will aim to launch more than 10 virtual brands in over 2,000 outlets across the region, making this the largest virtual brand partnership in Asia, and the first of its kind in the region at this scale.

As part of the partnership, Rebel Foods brings their culinary expertise, efficient SOPs and iconic ready-to-deploy brands that are easily customisable for local preferences in any region.

Meanwhile, foodpanda enables hundreds of thousands of restaurant partners and cloud kitchen operators to plug-and-play virtual brands into their current operations to grow additional revenue streams, at little to no start-up costs. Smaller SMEs and restaurant partners on the foodpanda platform can adopt new recipes and utilise their spare capacity to grow additional revenue streams while creating diversity in their menu offerings.

In the first phase of the partnership, which began in December 2019, Rebel Foods introduced four brands across six markets — Singapore, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Thailand, Hong Kong and the Philippines through the foodpanda network. Orders for Rebel Foods’ brands on the foodpanda app on average grew 40% month-on-month in the past six months, with more than 200 outlets across the six markets signed up to add virtual brands to their existing food and beverage (F&B) offerings.

“This foodpanda-Rebel Foods partnership introduces a new digital-first F&B format to Asia. foodpanda is always seeking new, innovative ways to change the way F&B businesses operate in a hyper-digitalised economy — we want to push our ecosystem further into the future,” said Pedram Assadi, COO, foodpanda. “Most importantly, these virtual brands will give our restaurant partners, especially SMEs, new opportunities to earn additional revenue.”

Virtual brands: revolutionising the food ecosystem for a digital-first future

A virtual brand is an online-only food concept where a brand exists digitally, with no dine-in presence, and offers food that is available for delivery or pick-up from the outlet. Virtual brands can operate from the kitchen of an existing restaurant or through traditional cloud kitchens.

Through this partnership, customers across Asia can enjoy great food options from these virtual brands:

• Faasos: Rebel Foods’ flagship brand that offers an exciting variety of wraps that stand true to its philosophy, ‘Surprises under wraps’.
• Behrouz Biryani: A category leading royal biryani brand that makes every moment special with its choicest spices and premium ingredients.
• The Biryani Life: Offering value biryani options as part of daily meals with consistently elevated flavours.
• Lunchbox: Lunchbox celebrates local food with the motive to evoke a sense of familiarity and nostalgia with fresh ingredients and homestyle cooking.
• Honest Bowl: A newly jointly-developed localised offering by foodpanda and Rebel Foods that offers a selection of food bowls with global and local flavours.

In addition to introducing Rebel Food’s iconic brands to foodpanda customers in Asia, both companies have also worked together to co-develop new offerings under Honest Bowl. The Honest Bowl menu was especially created to suit the taste buds of customers in Asia, building on Rebel Food’s culinary expertise and foodpanda’s insights on customers’ preferences in the region.

“Over the years, we have built some category leading brands in its current markets and a full-stack operating system which integrates culinary expertise, efficient SOPs and technological innovations together. We are glad to partner with foodpanda and scale our iconic brands with localized offerings across their network in Asia”, said Kallol Banerjee, Co-founder, Rebel Foods.

Enabling growth in digital deliveries

Globally, the online food delivery market is worth more than USD 35 billion annually, according to the ASEAN Post. In its H1 2021 Trading Update, foodpanda’s parent company Delivery Hero reported that orders in Asia doubled year-on-year, as GMV for the region grew 175%, surpassing the EUR 10 billion mark. foodpanda alone reported more than 70 million orders completed each month — sure signs that food delivery will continue to grow.

Beyond activating virtual brands, foodpanda restaurant partners are also able to tap into a variety of digital growth tools to attract new customers, boost exposure and visibility on the app to drive sales and reward loyal customers. This includes new merchant-growth features like pandabox, pandaclicks and pandapicks — restaurant partners can take control of their business growth by easily activating these growth tools via foodpanda’s self-service platform on the merchant app.