Copyright scmp
Alibaba Group Holding is rebranding its Chinese food delivery platform Ele.me as Taobao Shangou, aligning the service more closely with its flagship e-commerce ecosystem, as the company seeks to enhance synergy across its consumer businesses. A logo of the beta version of the updated app, available to select users, adopts Taobao’s signature orange colour, according to screenshots seen on Chinese social media. The move aligns with Alibaba’s recent efforts to phase out Ele.me’s original branding, with its blue courier uniforms being replaced with bright orange outfits resembling Formula One racing suits, featuring logos from various Alibaba units. Alibaba, owner of the Post, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. Taobao Shangou, which means “flash shopping” in Chinese, was launched in April within the Taobao marketplace app and uses Ele.me’s courier network for deliveries. The initiative marked Alibaba’s entry into the country’s heated instant commerce sector, a retail model focusing on providing fast delivery – typically under an hour – for a wide range of products such as groceries, household items and consumer electronics. Founded in 2009, Ele.me quickly emerged as a top player in China’s food delivery market before it was acquired in 2018 by Alibaba and its fintech affiliate Ant Group for US$9.5 billion. In June this year, Alibaba merged Ele.me into the group’s core China e-commerce division as part of a broader strategy to create a “comprehensive consumer platform”, as competition with food delivery market leader Meituan intensified. At the height of the delivery war in July, Alibaba pledged 50 billion yuan (US$7 billion) in subsidies over 12 months to attract users and merchants, underscoring its commitment to strengthen its consumer business. Alibaba’s instant commerce service achieved a record 120 million daily orders and 300 million monthly active users in August, according to Jiang Fan, head of the firm’s E-commerce Business Group. The executive told investors during the company’s second-quarter earnings call that instant retail could contribute as much as 1 trillion yuan additional transactions to Taobao over the next three years. Last week, Alibaba announced an additional 2 billion yuan investment to establish a nationwide network of Taobao-branded convenience stores, expanding the range of goods and merchants included in its instant commerce push. Fuelled by investor optimism over its retail integration and artificial intelligence initiatives, Alibaba’s shares have soared more than 95 per cent in Hong Kong this year, while its US-traded stock has nearly doubled.
