HappyFresh Strategy in Southeast Asia Post-Acquisition of Whole Foods by Amazon

Some time ago Amazon announces quite a shocking news, namely buying the Whole Foods food and beverage outlet chain worth $13,7 billion or around Rp182,19 trillion. Amazon's decision as a player E-commerce The largest in the United States made the acquisition, providing validation that the food and beverage industry has bright potential and certainly deserves to be developed.

So far, Whole Foods, which has a store chain of 410 outlets in the United States and has been established since 1980, is the largest food and beverage chain store in the United States. With the acquisition of Whole Foods, it opens up opportunities for Amazon to streamline purchasing services to the delivery of fresh food and beverages (Amazon Fresh) in an integrated manner, by combining offline and online business models.

In response to this, several startups in Silicon Valley that are known to have provided food and beverage delivery services such as Blue Apron, Instacart and others assess that competition will be tougher with a comprehensive acquisition made by Amazon. On the other hand, this acquisition proves that now and in the future, food and beverage delivery services on demand increasingly popular and will be used by consumers.

HappyFresh and its strategy in Southeast Asia

Although Amazon has not "officially" expanded its business in Indonesia, Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods has also attracted the attention of one of the players. online groceries in Indonesia, namely HappyFresh. HappyFresh CEO Guillem Segarra told the media that Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods proves that the business model that combines offline with online is an effective integration. Apart from Indonesia, HappyFresh also operates in Malaysia and Thailand.

“In Southeast Asia today Grocery is the most frequent purchase. The increasing middle class is taking advantage of online groceries now is clear evidence that technology adoption has been well done. So I think the acquisition is the best change for the region. For this reason, it is important for all offline business owners in Southeast Asia to then take advantage of technology to survive in running a business,” said Guillem.

HappyFresh, which has been present in Indonesia since 2015, is currently cooperating with Transmart Carrefour. Transmart Carrefour is a big player, even the biggest in the industry Grocery Indonesia, and this partnership is deemed important to increase the credibility of HappyFresh.

Initially HappyFresh formed a partnership with 2 outlets in Jakarta and plans to continue to expand it to reach more outlets in Jabodetabek.

To DailySocial HappyFresh Indonesia Managing Director Filippo Candrini emphasized that the Jabodetabek, Bandung and Surabaya areas remain the focus of HappyFresh this year and they have no plans to add new cities. Expansion will be prioritized to add outlets and partnerships with retail in these cities so that the coverage area becomes wider.

“HappyFresh's well-established relationship with grocery retailers in Southeast Asia provides an opportunity for us to understand and evaluate the challenges faced by today's store owners. We see that although now many shop owners have started using technology, most of them still don't understand how it works and how to run a good business online," concluded Guillem.