HungryPanda, the overseas food delivery platform specialising in Chinese and Asian food, is closely watching the price wars in China between rivals like Meituan and Alibaba Group Holding, a company executive said.
However, HungryPanda operated in markets with “less price sensitive” consumers who had “high spending power”, according to Kitty Liu, the company’s director of public affairs.
This year, competition in China’s on-demand services market, long dominated by Meituan, has intensified with the entry of JD.com in February and Alibaba’s launch of Taobao Shangou in April. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
The rivals have been engaged in a fierce price war that included special offers of free meals and drinks to lure new users, with daily order numbers reaching hundreds of millions and subsidy and marketing costs estimated at hundreds of millions of yuan every day.
Liu said that although HungryPanda did not operate in China, it had been “closely observing the trend of instant commerce in China”.
Similarly, when HungryPanda launched its service in a new city, it also offered cash incentives, but customers in the United Kingdom, United States, Australia and other Western economies were not “very much price sensitive compared to users in China”, she said.
“What we do see clearly is that, in overseas markets, customers care more about quality and service rather than just price,” Liu said. “That’s why, instead of putting a disproportionately high share [of resources] into marketing, we dedicate more resources to product development and continuous service optimisation.”
As such, it has gone to great lengths to make the food “authentic”. Compared with bigger rivals like Uber Eats or DoorDash, which primarily deliver dry food like pizzas and wraps, HungryPanda had to work with merchant partners to enhance packaging because Chinese food “has to be fresh and hot” and usually comes with soup, Liu said.
“It takes a little bit more time than Western food to be wrapped or prepared,” she said. “So our end users have a slightly different concept compared to what they expect from Uber Eats and DoorDash.”
Founded in 2017 in Nottingham, UK, the platform has expanded to more than 80 cities in 10 countries, including Japan, South Korea and Singapore. It has also helped Chinese brands such as Molly Tea and Auntea Jenny grow overseas.
For example, when Molly Tea first launched in the US in 2024, HungryPanda, as the exclusive delivery partner, arranged an online presale that sold 2,000 cups of drinks in two days, forming “a very solid foundation” for its US expansion, according to Liu.
Similar to Meituan, Alibaba and JD.com, which have promoted the concept of instant commerce beyond food to include items like an iPhone 17 delivered within 30 minutes, HungryPanda had taken the “natural extension into adjacent categories such as Asian groceries, snacks and lifestyle products”, Liu said.
As such, it handled groceries and daily essentials via the PandaFresh platform, “which has been performing very well in the UK”, while the VouchersPanda site offered discounted service options, from dine-in offers and beauty services to home cleaning and other everyday lifestyle needs, in Australia and the US, Liu said.
Both new businesses were launched in 2021 and would be “part of the long-term strategy”, she added.
After completing its latest funding round of US$55 million in 2024, HungryPanda was “evaluating timing for the next round of fundraising, which could support accelerated expansion and potentially prepare the ground for an eventual [initial public offering]”, Liu said.
