Online food ordering and delivery firm Foodpanda on Thursday said it will provide third-party logistics services to its restaurant base across major cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, and Gurgaon. Foodpanda has already been delivering its orders from some partner restaurants for two years now – accounting for nearly half the orders it receives. As part of the new development, restaurants can use Foodpanda delivery services even for the orders which have not come through the Foodpanda channel.

According to the company, this expansion of the delivery ecosystem by Foodpanda is aimed at optimising efficiency of existing on-ground fleet, which was initially used only for orders placed through the brand.

The deliveries were first started as a pilot three months ago, and the initiative is now live across Delhi, Mumbai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore, Foodpanda said in a statement. This includes a fully integrated offering, where orders come via Foodpanda, and are delivered, as well as delivery on a need basis. restaurants will be charged per order, the company added.

Foodpanda on-boarded more than 500 partner restaurants and the number is expected to reach around 1,500 in the next three months, the company said.
“With our new delivery product offering, we intend to be significant support system for our partners by easing hassle of delivery for them and extend best-in-class service levels to more customers,” said Foodpanda India CEO Saurabh Kochhar.

“The new business partnerships with the restaurants are aimed to provide better services and to further expand our delivery network across the country,” added Kunal Suri, COO Foodpanda India. “We are currently able to deliver orders within 35 mins on average, which we further plan to improve on. With Dash we plan to extend this benefit to our restaurant partners thereby strengthening the delivery ecosystem across the nation.”

[“source-gadgets.ndtv”]