Coca-Cola India invests in food delivery company Thrive
The investment will allow Thrive – which currently works with 14,000 restaurants in India - to ‘access business opportunities and improve consumption on the digital front’. The collaboration also promises to bring an improved experience for consumers, who will be able to order Coca-Cola beverages alongside their meals from partner restaurants.
“This presents a great opportunity for both Thrive and Coca-Cola India Pvt. Ltd. given the online food delivery market's projected rapid growth and contribution to the total food services industry,” says Thrive, as it announces the partnership.
What is Thrive?
Online food delivery in India is expected to grow rapidly at around 35% to $18B GMV and contribute around 18% of total food services by FY25, led by a tripling in users from 20 million to 60 million.
But Thrive says restaurants face problems in this online ordering ecosystem: including high commission rates charged by delivery aggregators, lack of control over customer data, and difficulty in competing with larger, established players in the market.
Thrive Now started out in the pandemic to provide restaurants with a ‘modern ordering solution’, where customers can place orders directly with microsites instead of via an aggregator platform. “The defining factor is that the commission Thrive charge restaurants per order is as low as 3%, in comparison to the 25-30% charged by the duopoly in the space of food delivery,” says the company.
App expansion
Currently, over 14,000 restaurants across 80 cities in India use Thrive. The beta version of the consumer application is available for download from the respective app stores and can be accessed by customers in Mumbai. The app will soon be available to the wider public and expanded to other cities over time. Jubilant FoodWorks, Whiteboard Capital, Ahimsa Capital, thinQbate Ventures, Upekkha, Razorpay Founders have also invested in Thrive.
“This collaboration between Thrive and Coca-Cola India Pvt. Ltd. will ensure an improved experience for consumers as they can order beverages of their choice along with their favourite meal from Thrive’s partner restaurants," says Thrive. "This presents a great opportunity for both Thrive and Coca-Cola India Pvt. Ltd. given the online food delivery market's projected rapid growth and contribution to the total food services industry.
“This has been more than a year in the making - to understand each other and what we’d like to bring out of this partnership. With this partnership, Thrive will be able to accelerate its restaurant reach and acquire consumers through various Coca-Cola India assets.”
Greishma Singh, Vice President, Customer & Commercial Leadership, Coca-Cola India & Southwest Asia, said: “Coca-Cola India is delighted to partner with the Thrive Now ecosystem as we see digital capability as an essential multiplier for our India growth strategy. Meals are a critical consumption occasion for our beverages, so the Eat & Drink channel is an ideal place for us to be investing in technology and innovating to digitally enable every outlet to provide a superior consumer experience online and offline.”
