Ele.me invests over 1 billion yuan to seize the takeout merchant market

Author | Liu Baodan

Editor | Huang Yu

With the arrival of the hot summer, the takeaway market has also entered its peak season. In order to seize the opportunity in the fierce market, Ele.me has begun to prepare for action.

On June 16, Wall Street News learned that Ele.me has fully upgraded the "Quality Store Leap Plan," investing over 1 billion yuan to intensify its efforts in attracting quality takeaway merchants. Coupled with the 618 "Ele.me's Supplement of Over 10 Billion" 18.8 yuan red envelope campaign, Ele.me will adopt a dual approach targeting both B-end and C-end to showcase its capabilities during the takeaway peak season.

The "Quality Store Leap Plan" is a support program launched by Ele.me for merchants in March this year, with an investment scale exceeding 1 billion yuan. Now, Ele.me has doubled its investment based on the original amount, demonstrating its determination to support new merchants.

As a takeaway platform under Alibaba, Ele.me's strategy has become more clearly defined as Alibaba focuses its efforts, aiming to independently target the market and quickly explore profitable paths. Under this tone, Ele.me is deeply engaged in operations, emphasizing the certainty of business growth for merchants.

In March 2024, a new generation of leadership represented by Chairman Wu Zeming and CEO Han Liu will take office, and Ele.me has determined its long-term strategic track "1+2," where "1" represents the home dining platform, and "2" represents two new tracks: one is instant retail, and the other is instant logistics network. In October last year, Han Liu further emphasized the "1+2" strategy and expressed a firm strategic investment towards merchants.

Since the beginning of this year, with JD.com aggressively entering the takeaway market, a new round of competition has erupted in the takeaway market. As the second-largest player in the takeaway market, Ele.me has also begun to fight back, jointly increasing subsidies with Taobao Flash Purchase and launching a campaign to treat customers to 100 million cups of milk tea. On May 26, Ele.me and Taobao Flash Purchase jointly announced that daily order numbers have exceeded 40 million.

This takeaway battle is akin to a major exam. Wall Street News learned that Ele.me's daily order volume has quadrupled within 21 days, and while orders are rapidly increasing, the on-time rate for Taobao Flash Purchase orders reached 97%, proving its resilience. Moving forward, Ele.me will face the arrival of the takeaway peak season, and upgrading the "Quality Store Leap Plan" is one of its core initiatives.

Wall Street News learned that this time Ele.me is mainly focusing on chain brands and small to medium-sized dining merchants on the merchant side, with the 1 billion yuan investment primarily allocated to the following three areas.

First, fee discounts. To better support the opening of quality stores, the platform's technical service fee will be fully refunded for the first month, upgraded to a maximum of 3 months of commission-free service.

Second, traffic support. For newly settled merchants, on the basis of the previous "maximum 7+7+23 days of free traffic card," an additional maximum of 3 months of new store traffic support package will be provided. For quality chain brands and specialty merchants, Ele.me will also collaborate with Alibaba's ecological traffic resources to provide merchants with multi-channel traffic exposure and order conversion.

Third, AI tool support. Ele.me recently officially launched the "Intelligent Merchant Operation System," introducing a package of AI product tools including intelligent store opening assistant, intelligent store decoration, intelligent product distribution, operational diagnosis, and marketing intelligence investment, to help merchants improve their business operation efficiency Behind the increased support for new merchants, Ele.me aims to enhance its supply-side capabilities. Zhuang Shuai, an expert in the retail e-commerce industry and founder of BaiLian Consulting, believes that timely delivery and a rich and differentiated supply will be the core of competition among takeaway platforms in the future. Ele.me's move is to achieve differentiated competition through increased support for new merchants to provide differentiated supply.

It is worth mentioning that Ele.me's investment mainly includes resources such as traffic and AI tools, not just cash. Wall Street News has learned from internal sources that Ele.me has abandoned traditional traffic thinking and hopes to explore a long-term sustainable business growth model through digital product operation strategies and tools.

At the same time, this will also alleviate Ele.me's profit pressure. As of March 31, 2025, Alibaba Local Services Group achieved quarterly revenue of 16.134 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10%, driven by the growth of orders from Amap and Ele.me, as well as the increase in revenue from marketing services. In this quarter, the adjusted EBITA loss of the Local Services Group continued to narrow year-on-year.

In fact, whether in the takeaway market or instant retail, Ele.me's ability to withstand strong competitors like JD.com and Meituan is inseparable from the support of Taotian Group. In the face of a fiercely competitive market, outsiders are curious whether Taobao Flash Sale and Ele.me will merge in the future to enhance competitiveness.

In this regard, Zhuang Shuai believes that Ele.me is a delivery and supply service provider, while Taobao Flash Sale is a platform operator. The two can achieve rapid growth through collaborative development and leverage Alibaba's advantages in AI and Taotian's B2C advantages across all categories for differentiated competition. "Based on the current data and development momentum, it has achieved phased results. Ele.me is likely to continue to exist as an independent service provider, and it is even possible that it will achieve independent listing in this role."

With the peak season for takeout approaching, this is a summer that Ele.me cannot afford to take lightly.

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