Talabat was created in 2004, by a group of entrepreneurs who wanted to make food delivery easy.
Their vision gave way to an effortless experience for both renters and restaurant owners.
Today, many customers are flocking to their easy-to-navigate website and app which offer two channels of communication between them and the delivery agent.
We’ve featured the latest technology so that you reap the full benefits of the digital age.
Early Challenges
When there was a little box that connected you to the internet called a modem (which made funny noises, and provided slow internet), customers would place orders over the phone, which would take up customer service time.
The team then needed to disconnect from the internet, call the restaurant, place the order, and reconnect to the internet.
Delivery used to be a bigger issue because there were no maps!
Growth
In 2015, Delivery Hero acquired Talabat. Delivery Hero is one of the leading global online food ordering and delivery marketplaces.
It operates in 40+ countries internationally in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East and partners with 500,000+ restaurants.
Fastforward 4 years later, according to ranking websites, Talabat’s acquisition of Zomato gave them the majority market share, forcing competitors like UberEats to close their operations.
They’ve changed the food delivery industry in the MENA region.
It’s much easier now – simply a few taps of an app and voila, your food will be on its way – with high quality trackers, fare delivery and the ability to contact your driver right inside the app.
Talabat started as a food delivery app and now provides groceries, pharmaceuticals, and more.
Their q-commerce has your deliveries completed in 30 minutes or less!
The Business Model
Talabat is a hyperlocal food delivery service that focuses on providing customers with easy-to-understand and accessible menus.
They use high-end technology to connect consumers with the restaurant, ensuring that their needs are met.
Furthermore, Talabat has both an app and website. Customers can order food or groceries through either of them.
Apart from ordering food from the nearby restaurants, it also has a menu on the app that shows customers which items are available at their favorite restaurants.
On-demand hyperlocal services adopt a straightforward ordering process for their customers.
A customer registers on the app, selects a restaurant to order from and uses Talabat to order from the menu.
The order is then sent to that restaurant, who prepares it and assigns a delivery agent to pick it up and bring it to the customer’s location.
Throughout all this, the customer can monitor the process in real time via notifications
How Talabat makes money?
Talabat is three-pronged when it comes to our revenue model. This will come from three sources:
1. Commissions on Orders
Commissions fall in the range of 15% – 25% of the restaurant’s order bill. Furthermore, Talabat offers restaurants a 5% to 10% reduction in commission if they agree to exclusivity. This helps them form exclusive relationships with restaurants and decreases competition in the market.
2. Delivery Charges
The company delivers orders of all sizes, with no minimum order size required for delivery.
They assess a delivery charge based on the size of your order. The larger your order, the less you’ll have to pay for delivery.
Advertisements
Talabat monetizes advertisements in two ways:
Banner Ads:
Restaurants can leverage Talabat’s userbase by showing their ads on the Website’s banner to gain more coverage in their city.
Listings allows Restaurants to gain more visibility in front of customers as higher listings tend to lead to increased customer orders for restaurants.
Priority Listings:
Features of Talabat
Talabat is a fast, safe and cheap food delivery application for all your favorite restaurants.
The Talabat app offers a lot of great features, including:
- The customer app includes a panel with all the information you need, including product profiles, the account’s earnings and losses, and affiliate referrals.
- Restaurant Panel
- Delivery Agent App/Panel
Features of Talabat’s Customer App
- Login: Customers have the option to login using any of these different options- email, phone number, social login, or OTP (one time password).
- Location Selection: Talabat customers can select their location to see all the restaurants in that area.
- Menu: Customers can browse through the menu of a restaurant to choose what they want to order. Each restaurant’s menu can have multiple themed categories for different types of items.
- Pay online: Customers are increasingly favoring online payment options. Talabat provides customers with the option to pay online using UPI, credit cards, and more.
- Reviews: The ability for customers to write a review for restaurants.
- Product Search: It can be a big trouble to find a product when you don’t know which merchant provides it.
Talabat solved this problem by giving customers a feature to search products and bringing up merchants that supply the product in the search results.
Following the creation of its state-of-the-art mobile application, its corporate merger as well as its takeovers of local competitors, Talabat now has a major stronghold in the q-commerce sector of the Midde East region.
Other Rising Companies in UAE
The Top Startups for 2022 in the UAE are:
Features of Talabat’s Customer App
- Ekar
- Postpay
- Pure Harvest Smart Farms
- The Giving Movement
- Right Farm
- Tabby
- Sarwa
- Baraka
- Opontia
- Huspy
Several key trends were observed this year from the top-ranking Startups. These are:
Going green:
The region faces many risks of food shortages due to increased droughts and climate change.
For this reason, sustainable solutions, and innovative intentions in agri-tech between startups like Pure Harvest Smart Farms (#3) are essential for food security.
Charity:
Charitable businesses, such as The Giving Movement (#4), help make the world a better place by producing clothing with sustainable materials for environmentally conscious consumers.
They also donate part of their proceeds to help do better in the world.
“Postpay” is one of the top-ranked fintech business in the world and has become a shining example of what can be achieved with “Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) platforms”.
Other countries are seeing strong declines in such ventures, but Postpay is an anomaly, having already raised more than $10 million from global buy now pay later leader Afterpay and Australia-based AP Ventures.
Postpay currently works with hundreds of international and local brands, including H&M, Footlocker, Dermalogica, The Entertainer, and Squat Wolf.
It plans to use the latest funds to grow its business across GCC.
Another new contender named Obodo arrived, combining aspects of the fintech industry with that of The Giving Movement.
It allows people to barter their items in a very easy and fun way – bringing real life-like auctions scenarios to the digital world.
Apart from the Barter feature, Obodo also offers classifieds services focused on keeping both our planet as well as consumers happy – helping users find homes for their preloved items including furniture, home appliances, and office equipment.
Obodo has a barter system with Artificial Intelligence that learns from what you exchange so it can make complex, intelligent matches to get you the best price.
When users choose a product on the app, they’ll see trades for that item on either side of the screen.
They can pay or be paid for the difference in value. If their product is worth more than their trade, then they’ll see the money in green.
If their product’s value is less than other trades, then be sure to watch out for red digits!
This young company has been catching some serious attention, bagging a nomination for the Most Innovative Tech Solution of 2022 at the Tech Innovation 2022 awards presented by Entrepreneur Middle East. In 2023 we’re betting that this startup will continue to make waves.
Conclusion
Conclusively, UAE’s Top Startups List 2022 reflects the future of entrepreneurship and innovation.
Following in the footsteps of giant, Talabat which is now a leading food delivery and grocery delivery platform in the MENA region.
Operating in 14 countries, including GCC members such as Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Oman, Bahrain, and Jordan.
These Startups are earmarked to thrive and capitalize on the new opportunities for both businesses and consumers in despite the gloomy declarations of global economic instability.