In what seems like a whole bunch of eating going on – just last June we saw Koziness acquire an old-school food delivery platform Dial-a-Dinner (see Online Food Ordering and Delivery Platform Koziness Concepts Acquires Hong Kong Competitors) and now they themselves have been acquired by Rocket Internet’s Foodpanda.
We sat down with Koziness’ founder Gary To to quiz him on the recent acquisition (see Foodpanda acquires competitors in 7 Asian markets) and find out what happens to the food delivery network he built now.
First, here is the section about Koziness from Foodpanda:
Foodpanda Hong Kong will integrate 4 brands to cement itself as market leader in Hong Kong, by acquiring Koziness.com, previously branded iDelivery, which also operates the brands Dial-a-Dinner, SOHO Delivery, and Ring-a-Dinner, which have been delivering food since ten years. After the acquisition, foodpanda will optimize traffic between all four brand names – to offer for the best user experience. All brands will continue running, giving customers the chance to order their favourite meal from over 500 restaurants.
Congrats on the acquisition – when did FoodPanda start talks with you?
Gary To: few months back and it took us few months to finalize the result.
Why did the acquisition offer sound attractive to you?
It took us few months to realize the deal was attractive and I would like to develop something more disruptive or creative on my next venture. It actually the best decision for the team and for the vendors.
What happens to Koziness in the next 90-days?
No changes at this stage, but we will be having a great no of marketing activities to enhance both our business & utilizes each advantage or strength of our businesses.
We love ordering food from our mobile phones – what do you see will happen in HK for mobile ordering in say the next 12-24 months?
It would surely take some time before everyone ordering by mobile phones, especially those in the offices, but it will be the trend that will eventually takes up the majority of our orders.
What kind of innovation do you see in this market in the future? Will there always need to be a middle man or will restaurants start delivering themselves if it gets cost effective?
I guess what are the challenges this vertical faces in the coming years. It will always be a middle man as this is the marketplace for food-ordering user and restaurants (in Hong Kong) will not be interested or have the resources to operate their own deliveries. Again it is both different consumer base, dinning consumer & food delivery consumer and the innovation would be how far you could go in Hong Kong in order to attract those premium restaurants to join us and utilizes our data to develop other products for delivery than just cooked meal.
We’ll have Gary out to talk about the recent acquisition as more and more of Hong Kong startups are being bought by other companies looking to enter or lead their entry into Hong Kong (see Is Acquiring Early-Stage Startups by Companies’ Wanting to Enter the Asian Market the Next Big Trend in Hong Kong?)
Hunting for recipes, shopping for ingredients, putting it all together and finding time to do it all can make you feel like it’s a full time job. Good thing there are Hong Kong food delivery services like this that can take the stress out.