Online acceptance propels Edenred meal card transactions on food delivery platforms
The rising penchant to ordering food online by the salaried class, reinforced by Edenred’s Ticket Restaurant Meal Card acceptance with 50 plus food delivery partners, led to soaring of the number of online transactions from 1% in 2014 to 15% at the end of 2017 .
The growing network of food delivery platforms is redefining the way consumer orders and a restaurant serves. For a customer, ordering food online becomes convenient as they can choose from a wider range of restaurants. For a restaurant, it helps to expand its reach and increase the number of orders resulting in an improved resource utilization and an additional business source.
The trend of ordering food online is rapidly emerging especially amongst the salaried class in urban cities, where people have limited time to visit a restaurant for their daily meals. The French multinational, Edenred saw its Ticket Restaurant Meal Card use for these food delivery services soared from 1% in 2014 to 15% at the end of 2017. The first to launch a digital meal card in India, the company provides work-life benefit and Incentive and Rewards solutions to more than 3500 plus corporates with 2,500,000 plus beneficiaries. The company has tied up with more than 50 food delivery partners including Swiggy, Food Panda, Fresh Menu and Goodbox. These strategic tie-ups enabled the acceptance of Edenred’s Ticket Restaurant meal card both online and offline.
Subin Kumar, Head – Marketing, Solutions & Channels at Edenred India, said, “We apprehended the rising trend of ordering food online by the salaried class, especially in the urban cities, and it’s bearing on our business at an early stage. With the launch of India’s first meal card in 2014, we commenced the process of strengthening our online affiliates’ network by partnering with food delivery partners and grocery stores like Bigbasket and Grofers. Equipped with state of the art technology that is in use in 42 countries, Edenred’s plug & play solution is capable of integrating with most of the online food delivery platforms, giving us an opportunity to continue expanding our network at a rapid pace. Since the inception, we have 40,000+ affiliates’ network in 3500+ locations to ensure wider acceptance of Ticket Restaurant meal card both online and offline.”
Edenred envisages next level of growth will be propelled by the digitization of its hyperlocal affiliates’, and the rise in the number of salaried class opting for meal allowances in tier 2 & tier 3 cities. “A significant number of corporates are expanding their operations in tier 2 & tier 3 locations. The rise in the number of these corporates in the region will lead to the rise in the number of salaried class. With the digital transformation of hyperlocal players, we expect a multi-fold increase in the number of online transactions from tier 2 & tier 3 locations. We are already seeing the trend catching up in locations like Ludhiana, Ghaziabad and more.” said Kumar.
The company has also expanded footprints in terms of platforms –with synergies from both offline as well as online affiliates networks coming to fruition. The Ticket Restaurant meal card and myEdenred mobile app, both are complementary to offer a holistic and seamless customer experience, especially for those who have migrated from physical meal vouchers to meal cards. The mobile app comes with QR Code, NFC and SMS integration to empower the customers to transact across various platforms. This is more suited for employees who are used to purchasing their food from small outlets near their offices or homes which do not have a POS terminal deployed.
“100% tax compliance and 100% customer satisfaction remain to be our key focus in rolling out solutions, be it for corporates clients, public institutions or end users. Our work-life benefit solutions are considered as a hallmark of tax compliance standards, an assurance we have nurtured for 21 years of successful operations in India. Our true growth lies in the network that ensures the highest level of commitment towards the customer satisfaction. Therefore, parallel to our strong offline affiliates network in urban, tier I, II & III cities, we will continue to develop online affiliates network to ensure wider acceptance of our meal cards both online & offline across geographies. On top of our offline and online network expansion to ensure the satisfaction of 100% of our stakeholders, the deployment of combined digital solutions via card, QR Code, NFC, SMS is a key success factor to answer to the various needs of our stakeholders without compromising on the compliance. The digital which is an integral part of Edenred Group DNA is at the heart of our strategy allowing us to deploy and launch new solutions to optimizing expense management for 750,000 companies, increasing purchasing power for 43 million employees and driving additional business for 1.4 million merchants”, concluded Johann Vaucanson, the Managing Director & CEO of Edenred India.