Looking back at 2020, what did Ele.me do？

Editor | Yu Bin

Produced | Yu Jian

In 2020, the local life service industry can be described as war-torn and turbulent. During the epidemic, staying at home to buy and buy has become the home lifestyle of most people. And the takeaway platform represented by "Ele.me" has also taken advantage of the trend and changed from a single catering delivery service in the past to the number one player in local life services.

According to data, this year’s Ele.me saw a gratifying rise in various business data. With the help of people’s online consumption habits, Ele.me can be said to have made a beautiful turnaround in local life services. So, what did Ele.me experience this year to reach the peak of this era and become a leader in local life services?

Service upgrade to deal with the epidemic, revenue and the number of merchants double growth

According to Ali’s financial report, the revenue from local consumer services in the first fiscal quarter was RMB 7.101 billion yuan (about 1.005 billion US dollars), an increase of 15% over RMB 6.18 billion yuan in the same period last year.

It can be seen that from the most serious period of the epidemic, Ele.me has been providing users with basic life services such as food ordering and delivery, and has continuously enlarged the business volume.

It is understood that during this period, Ele.me has launched five major measures, including commission reduction, financial support, and the rapid launch of takeaway, which have concentrated the value of its "new services" and showcased the tremendous energy of local services.

In addition, in February 2020, Ele.me and other fresh merchants, such as Youxian Vegetable Market, Caiwenji, and Vegetable Commune, guaranteed the shopping business in 38 cities across the country to meet the food supply of consumers during the epidemic prevention and control period, covering a total of 60,000 stores. Since then, the service business of fresh vegetable delivery has become an important business segment of Ele.me.

During this period, on the Ele.me APP page, after consumers enter the grocery buying channel, they can find nearby fresh stores, and vegetables, fruits, meat, poultry and aquatic products can be purchased in one stop. It is worth mentioning that the average number of Ele.me stores in a single city is more than 1,000, covering most areas of the urban area. Moreover, with the gradual recovery of store business rate, the coverage has further expanded.

It is understood that Ele.me also adopts a self-operated model to increase the amount of directly sourced ingredients from high-quality origins to ensure the supply of fresh vegetables, meat and poultry and other ingredients. Moreover, for consumers who do not have an online vegetable market nearby, they can also use the Hummingbird errand service, and the takeaway brother will buy the food on their behalf.

In response to the epidemic, Ele.me’s service upgrade is like a timely rain. For example, in terms of preventing virus infection, Ele.me has also launched a contactless "peace of mind delivery" service nationwide, avoiding face-to-face contact during delivery.

Consumers can choose "contactless delivery" in the remarks column of the order, and ask to place the goods at the designated location such as the door, front desk, etc. After the rider is properly placed, they can pick up the goods without direct contact.

In Wuhan, where the epidemic situation was the most severe at that time, Ele.me cooperated with "10,000 tons" to "displace" Wuhan’s 100 self-pickup points, allowing consumers to place orders online and pick up dishes at their doorstep according to their own time, which was very convenient and fast.

Strategic upgrade expands boundaries, Ele.me realizes "everything can be sent"

On July 10, 2020, Ele.me announced a comprehensive upgrade, from a catering takeaway platform to a life service platform that solves all the immediate needs of users. Then on July 17, the Ele.me APP was newly revised and launched.

This upgrade covers four aspects: from food delivery to providing full-service city life, personalized recommendation, content-based interaction, and membership system upgrade. At the same time, the Ele.me takeaway brand has been upgraded and Wang Yibo has been invited as the brand spokesperson.

This strategic shift is no accident. In 2019, Ali’s local life service company released the "new service" strategy, which is based on the intelligence of the service system, the intelligence of the product system, and the intelligence of the hardware system to comprehensively help merchants reduce costs and increase efficiency.

So far, Ele.me’s focus on local life services has changed from "traffic" to "people" – "We want to make operators no longer rely on’traffic ‘to make money, but on’craftsmanship’ to make money, so that every worker can gain dignity in the industry," Ele.me CEO Wang Lei said in an interview with the media last year.

After this comprehensive upgrade, Ele.me continues to focus on consumers’ "economy around them" from delivery to delivery of all things and services. The connotation of "delivery of all things" is constantly expanding, and goods and services can be taken home. In addition to retail goods such as fresh milk, mother and baby toys, beauty, books, stationery, sports equipment, etc., items such as manicure, beauty, housekeeping, and cleaning will also be delivered to your door.

Ele.me also launched a new service of "ordering at will" for the first time. When users order fresh milk and other takeaways, in addition to instant delivery, they can also enjoy cycle delivery, with 7-day, 15-day, and 30-day options.

In fact, Ele.me up the ante non-catering takeaway service, consumer demand-driven results. Over the past year, Ele.me users’ non-catering demand has continued to grow, especially in supermarkets, fruits and vegetables, medicine, flowers and other categories.

After the epidemic hit, with the sharp increase in the number of non-catering stores, the number of such stores even exceeded that of traditional catering stores. For example, the number of pet supply stores increased by 6 times, and the number of hot pot skewers and mother and baby stores also increased exponentially.

Obviously, today, Ele.me has got rid of the label of food delivery platform and become a veritable local life service platform. And its core competitiveness is also increasingly competitive because of the increasing number and categories of platform merchants.

Ten Billion Subsidies Seize Double 11 Home, MAU Data Reaches Peak

In August this year, Ele.me launched Ten Billion Subsidy, and as it has said to the outside world, it has turned Ten Billion Subsidy into a regular action. The specific gameplay is that consumers can enjoy an additional subsidy of up to 20 yuan when they place an order at a merchant participating in Ten Billion Subsidy. The subsidy amount can be used in combination with red envelopes and price-break discounts.

Subsequent to three consecutive upgrades in less than three months, the scope of subsidies expanded from catering to life services and other categories, and the subsidy cities expanded from the original 24 cities to nearly 130 cities. According to reports, with the advancement of the Ten Billion Subsidy project, the scope of subsidies will continue to expand to all categories, including daily general merchandise, medicine, snacks, fresh fruits, rice noodles grain and oil, pet supplies, etc.

According to the data of QuestMobile, an authoritative third-party data agency in China, in June 2020, after the deduplicate APP and Mini Program were added, the monthly active user number (MAU) of Ele.me was 76.61 million. Before the opening of Double Eleven this year, the monthly active user scale in October broke the historical record, reaching the peak and ranking first in the industry.

This also indicates that Ele.me’s 2020 service upgrade, platform upgrade, strategic upgrade and other measures have begun to bear fruit. While the category and number of merchants have doubled, it has also brought a huge increase in new users. And under the double up the ante of Alibaba capital and platform resources, the Ele.me platform also shows a strong platform appeal and brand influence.

In the past Double 11, local merchants benefited significantly from the new cycle of "nunchakus" this year. Ele.me continued to break through in catering by virtue of its card coupons and live broadcast advantages: during Double 11, the sales of multiple takeaway categories and catering brands on the platform increased by more than 100% year-on-year, and takeaway orders in lower-tier markets surged. Orders in nearly 40 prefecture-level cities rose by more than 50% year-on-year, and orders in many cities across the country more than doubled year-on-year.

Whether it is the exponential growth of Ele.me MAU, the increase in the number of merchants on the platform, or the sharp increase in the order volume of its platform, there is no doubt that it has strengthened the moat for its competition in the takeaway track, and it can be said to be the success of its Double Eleven strategy.

Alibaba’s new retail system empowers Ele.me to attack new digital services

In September this year, at the 2020 Alibaba Investor Conference, Ele.me CEO Wang Lei revealed that in the past year, Ele.me and Alibaba Group have completed comprehensive integration, not only connecting with the group in terms of users and traffic, but also Ele.me’s product technology and other infrastructure are also on Alibaba Cloud. After the integration is completed, Ele.me began to appear "food card", "sub-province" and many other differentiated goods and services, and its ecological growth flywheel has begun to start.

It is worth mentioning that Zhang Yong, chairperson and CEO of Alibaba Alibaba, also attaches great importance to the business of Ele.me. He once said to the internal team: Local life service will be a tough battle, and this battle needs to be fought together.

When Zhang Yong said everyone, he meant to start this battle with Hu Xiaoming, CEO of Ant Group. Two years ago, in April 2018, Alibaba completed its largest acquisition – the full acquisition of Ele.me for $9.50 billion. In October, Alibaba integrated Ele.me and Koubei to officially establish a local life service company, which is enough to prove that Alibaba has strategic ambitions to eat local life services.

This is due to the synergy effect between Ele.me and various businesses in Alibaba’s economy, including Alipay, Taobao, and Autonavi. Ali’s financial report disclosed that as of March 31, 40% of the new consumers of Ele.me food delivery came from Alipay.

During the 318 Alipay City Life Week, consumers ordered 1.66 million cups of Coke and 1.76 million skewers of mutton through Ele.me; more than 80,000 hot pot restaurants and more than 60,000 milk tea shops recovered and even exceeded the level before the epidemic. During the "Shanghai Five-Year Shopping Festival", Shanghai’s small shops in Ele.me orders increased by more than 40% compared with the same period in March.

Alibaba Group’s latest financial report shows that local life service revenue in fiscal 2020 was RMB 25.44 billion yuan, an increase of 41% year-on-year, "mainly due to the increase in the number of orders delivered and the increase in the average value per unit."

The soaring data, on the one hand, is due to the connection with Alipay, Taobao, Tmall, Autonavi and other national-level traffic portals, and the diversion of merchants through Ele.me. On the other hand, in the next year, Ali Local Life will upgrade the "Digital Intelligence Zhongtai" for 1 million merchants to help them realize the digital upgrade of the full link of operation. At the same time, Ali Local Life will also help more than 5,000 merchants open Tmall stores to realize the connection between retail e-commerce and local life.

This is also the implementation of the "new service" strategy proposed by Ali Local Life in October 2019. In the future, the combination of new retail and local life services to realize online digital operation is an inevitable trend. Connecting Ele.me local life services to Alipay digital life open API will also open a new pattern of industry competition and once again stabilize the moat of Ali and Ele.me in local life services.

For Ele.me, it can be said that the epidemic has accelerated its pace of digital upgrading in the local service industry, and Ele.me’s upgraded "new service" will also be a new journey on a new track, and it will also create differentiated competitive barriers.

For example, after Eli.me "enters the Tao", it will open the Tmall flagship store, the Mini Program in the Alipay ecosystem, and the offline scan Mini Program of merchants, as well as multiple marketing ports such as word-of-mouth and Ele.me platform stores.

At the same time, the membership system and digital marketing system have also achieved multi-segment synchronization, making the efficiency of merchant marketing more three-dimensional and diverse. Whether it is through Tmall or private domain traffic, it can be reached at any time.

Wang Lei said: "So this upgrade, from another perspective, is also a start." Despite this, but backed by the big tree of Ali, Ele.me’s pace of entering digitalization is very stable and unusually firm.

conclusion

The disastrous year 2020 is coming to an end, an epidemic has changed people’s way of life and changed people’s various concepts. Ele.me’s homeopathic and rapid change has really shown people the power of a company with a sense of mission and responsibility to embrace change.

We believe that Ele.me will continue to serve as an industry leader in the local life service industry after repositioning its strategy and upgrading the dimensions and heights of its platform services. Together with Alibaba, we will also make a comeback for local life services.