Following the Uber route, Ola has been foraying into the food delivery system under the namesake Ola Foods. As a part of this latest venture, the company has already announced several new in house food brands like Bowlsome, Paratha Experiment, and proliferated the offerings under the top performer Khichdi experiment. Now, with the success that it claims to have seen with these brands, Ola is planning to further expand by adding more brands under the initiative.
COVID 19 coerced the company to take measures to reduce its reliance on its ride hailing business, as the sector came to a complete halt for a large part of the quarter. During this time, many like Zomato and Swiggy saw a huge boom in business, which enticed Uber and Ola, which were earlier more of a passive participant, to actively foray into the growing food delivery sector. Now, with Uber partnering with Zomato, Ola had to catch up, which it did with the introduction of in house brands to deliver food to its users.
Over the last 9 months, the company has added brands like Bowlsome, Paratha Experiment, Meal Kits and expanded Khichdi Experiment- one of Ola Foods’ most successful endeavours. This was after the company closed its food delivery platform Foodpanda in October last year, as it failed to compete with in the cut throat market.
Khichdi experiment was one of the company’s first offerings, and has seen massive success in just a short amount of time. “Khichdi Experiment was a category creator that helped us create a playbook to build other brands,” said Pranay Jivrajka, CEO of Ola Foods in an interview to ET. Today, the brand has over 60 brands in itself competing for a slice of the market.
Now, with this growing market and successful run of multiple in house brands, Ola might have found its stride in the food delivery business, and is thus planning to introduce the number of such brands.
“Increasing the wallet share of a customer is the key metric for us… right now, we have four brands – across various stages of expansion, and we plan to add more,” Pranay said to ET.
However, for the time being, the company will not follow through with its plan to establish offline kiosks, or establish other in person facilities like mall stores, food trucks etc.
