Chennai: E-ride or e-food? In the race between the duo, the winner is e-ride. The newer models in online mobility services are growing rapidly, but the average order value of food aggregators is rather shrinking. This helped e-mobility to move ahead of food tech in volume of transactions. The average order value of food tech has also been coming down over the last few quarters.
In the September quarter, online mobility platforms recorded a total of 1.3 billion annualised trips, while food tech apps witnessed 1.1 billion annualised orders. While both the segments have been registering growth, food tech saw slower growth in the September quarter and e-mobility retained its pace of growth, finds RedSeer Consulting. According to the Bengaluru-based consultant, the growth in e-mobility is currently driven by alternative mobility services like e-bikes and e-autos as cab services have become expensive. In the case of food tech, the average order value has been coming down quarter after quarter.
"For the longest while, India's ride-hailing space was dominated by four-wheeler cabs, which are expensive and less available. However, our research shows that this is no longer the case. Autos market has grown to become significantly big in alternative mobility space and bike hailing is catching up rapidly as well. Other segments are much smaller but growing steadily and likely to continue accelerating going forward,' says RedSeer.
Autos and bikes have already grabbed 11 per cent of the online mobility market. Both bikes and autos are addressing a few pain points relating to affordability, availability and convenience as they manoeuvre traffic in congested metros. E-bikes are 26 per cent cheaper than cabs.
Apart from high double-digit growth in rides, expansion of operations to additional cities is also helping the overall growth of bikes and autos.
On the other hand, in food tech, the average order value (AOV) of aggregators have been falling due to flat-priced meals and affordable single-serve meals, which are priced Rs 80-150. The contribution of these orders is increasing. The AOV has come down from Rs 380 in Q4 2017 to Rs 260 in Q3 2019.
