INDIA – Ola, the Indian ride-hailing firm has announced that it is restructuring its food delivery platform Foodpanda to focus on building a portfolio of its own as well as curated food brands through a network of kitchens and offline stores.

According to ET Retail report, Foodpanda is also considering setting up offline stores that could potentially sell products under its in-house brands.

The online food delivery platform is said to have already established over 50 kitchens across five cities, including Delhi, Bengaluru and Pune, and is working on expanding the network.

Its growth strategy involves expanding to new territories, having launched its services in 13 more cities including Jaipur, Chandigarh, Kanpur, Lucknow, Indore, Ahmedabad, Nashik, Nagpur, Mysore, Bhubaneswar, Guwahati, Visakhapatnam and Coimbatore.

“As part of our ongoing business repurposing initiatives, we are focused on building a portfolio of own food brands and curated food offerings through our fast expanding network of kitchens,” said a Foodpanda spokesperson.

“Many of these offerings are already available in all major cities through the Ola and Foodpanda apps.

“We continue to invest in expanding our facilities and kitchens, as well as our portfolio of food offerings for customers.”

This builds on the number of its delivery network in India where stiff competition from major players like Swiggy, Zomato and Uber Eats is driving online food sales.

Ola which is investing in its own network of kitchens and allowing tighter controls and clock higher margins is additionally working on in-house brands such as The Khichdi Experiment, Flrt, Lovemade and Grandma’s Kitchen.

Ola acquired Foodpanda in 2017 from Delivery Hero in a deal estimated at US$40 million, marking its entry into the Indian food delivery space.

As part of its expansion strategy, Foodpanda has set an ambitious goal to achieve 500,000 partners by 2020.

On the back of increased demand on its platform and rapid geographic expansion ahead, the delivery platform said it has reached over 300,000 orders per day from more than 25,000 restaurant partners.

Last year, it entered the cloud kitchen business after acquiring Mumbai’s food delivery service Holachef for an undisclosed sum.