After the launch of Taobao’s flash sale, the number of orders skyrocketed, consumers were enthusiastic, and Ele.me also took this opportunity to shift from strategic defense to offense, and entered strongly through more than 10 billion subsidies to seize market share. At the same time, Ele.me has continued to make efforts in the application of AI technology and rider protection to build sustainable competitive barriers.
Taobao + Ele.me, finally settled, “Taobao Flash Sale”, came out, only 2 days, business accelerated.
On the morning of April 30, when the takeaway battlefield fell silent, Taobao announced that it would upgrade the instant retail business “Hourly Delivery” to “Taobao Flash Sale”, and jointly increase subsidies with Ele.me.
Originally, the newly upgraded Taobao flash sale was expected to be launched in more than 50 cities first, and it was planned to cover the whole country on May 6. But unexpectedly, in just the past two days, the progress of Taobao’s flash sale business has far exceeded expectations.
According to media reports, within 24 hours of the launch of Taobao flash sale, multi-brand takeaway orders soared year-on-year, and consumers everywhere demanded that they be launched as soon as possible in their cities, and the distribution capacity of stores in core cities across the country was running at full capacity.
This sky-breaking traffic, Taobao flash sale not only caught it, but unexpectedly, it was also faster.
Early on the morning of May 2, Taobao’s official Weibo announced that Taobao flash sales were fully launched in advance, and users across the country can receive large red envelopes to buy takeaway through Taobao flash sale entrances from now on.
Since February this year, marked by JD.com’s high-profile entry into the takeaway arena, the takeaway market has set off a huge public opinion war, JD.com and Meituan have played the policy card to compete for users and merchants, and at the same time, Ele.me, as a pole of the takeaway industry, has remained still, until April 30, after the battlefield calmed down, the launch of Taobao flash sales quickly changed from defense to offense, and on May 2, Taobao flash sales were fully opened, which has undoubtedly become a “key node” to reverse the tide of the war.
01 Open up the Alibaba ecosystem
On April 30, Taobao announced that it would upgrade its instant retail business “hourly delivery” to “flash sale”, and fully connect with Ele.me’s merchant resources. In addition, Taobao has also joined hands with Ele.me to provide consumers with large subsidies such as “Taobao user exclusive red envelopes”.
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Observing the relevant information on social media platforms such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu, it can be found that within two days of the launch of Taobao flash sale, a large number of consumers from all over the world posted online orders, such as drinking milk tea for 0.1 yuan, eating a meal for 2 yuan, eating blueberry kiwi for 5 yuan, and so on. In Taobao’s official Weibo comment area, comments from consumers everywhere asking for it to be launched as soon as possible in their cities are always swiping the screen.
In addition, according to Sina Technology, within 24 hours of the launch of Taobao flash sale, Nai Xue’s tea Ele.me takeaway orders soared by more than 200% year-on-year.
The “Market Elephant” experience found that with the launch of Taobao’s “flash sale”, users can directly access Ele.me’s instant retail service through the first-level entrance on Taobao’s homepage, and Ele.me merchants can undoubtedly gain exposure opportunities from a large number of Taobao users and achieve true “1+1>2” ecological collaboration.
This action marks Ele.me’s leap from a single takeaway platform to a super entrance to local life, and access to Taobao can not only bring a flood of traffic to the first-level entrance of the super APP, but also mean a comprehensive upgrade of Ele.me’s strategic position in the Alibaba system.
Previously, there was speculation that Alibaba was focusing its growth on the field of AI, and whether the local life business represented by Ele.me was relatively static. But whether from the management position or the increase in subsidies, Alibaba is undoubtedly very optimistic about the major strategic value behind Ele.me.
In June last year, Alibaba Group Chairman Cai Chongxin mentioned in a conversation with Kam Shing Kwang, chairman of the North Asia region of American investment bank JPMorgan Chase, that takeaway delivery may not be Alibaba’s core business, but Ele.me has a high strategic value for Alibaba/Taobao, and its instant delivery infrastructure is of great significance to local consumers.
For merchants, the alliance between Ele.me and Taobao will bring greater imagination. Tao merchants can use Ele.me to open up the instant delivery capabilities of local stores and achieve the hourly delivery experience of low-priced e-commerce goods; Ele.me will also usher in a major increase in the scale of delivery, users, and merchants, and further expand from catering takeaway to all consumer goods.
Previously, Ele.me has determined its long-term strategy for the next three years as “1+2”, of which “1” refers to Ele.me’s home catering platform that wants to grow healthily and better understand consumers, and “2” represents the two major tracks of instant retail and instant logistics network.
This time, Ele.me has completely broken the strategic defense impression speculated by the outside world, not only to seize takeaway users, but also to expand from catering to all consumer goods, forming an advantage in the instant retail track. Compared with JD.com and Meituan’s flash sale + takeaway business portfolio, Ele.me is exploring a new path of “e-commerce instantization” backed by Taobao’s “massive commodity pool + ultimate fulfillment efficiency”.
02 The best time to enter
On April 30, almost at the same time as the official announcement of the “Taobao Flash Sale”, Ele.me announced that it would provide users with “more than 10 billion subsidies”. Compared with a simple user subsidy action, Ele.me chose to release the subsidy policy on April 30, which happened to be stuck the day before the May Day holiday, and the choice at this point in time is not accidental.
First, Ele.me avoided the period of public opinion fluctuations and value disputes in the entire market through late-tailed attacks, and conveyed the image of focusing on operation to avoid public opinion wars.
In the early days of JD.com’s takeaway entry, fierce public opinion controversy broke out in the market around the practitioner protection system and consumer quality issues. Ele.me chose to stay still at this time, which not only avoided being involved in the quagmire of price wars, but also sent a steady signal of “focusing on operation”.
At this time, Ele.me released subsidies, with a scale of more than 10 billion yuan, not only strategically changed from defense to attack, but also began to take over and guide industry trends, leading the focus from the war of words to the consumer experience.
Second, the game between JD.com and Meituan for several months has activated the attention of takeaway consumers to market changes, and the mentality of users to compare consumer experience across platforms has been formed.
At this time, public opinion in the market weakens, and consumers begin to return to rationality, which is the golden window period to undertake traffic. Ele.me chose to enter the market at this time, but it can take advantage of the momentum of the market’s attention to takeaway subsidies to undertake consumer attention. A consumer review explains this phenomenon well: “Ele.me is silent and just blindly sends out large coupons.” ”
Third, the May Day holiday is the golden time to capture the minds of consumers.
During the holiday, the national tourism and catering industries ushered in a consumption boom, and subsidies of more than 10 billion yuan can stimulate consumers to pay attention to the local life market and place orders.
Ele.me also hits the peak season of the takeaway industry, with important takeaway categories such as tea, cold drinks, and desserts all in summer, as well as popular meals such as beer barbecue crayfish. The superposition of long holidays and subsidies has formed a double stimulus for the consumer market. Some users said: “The subsidized milk tea is too cheap, and I bought four cups in one go.” ”
In addition, the long holiday is also an important node for consumers to get away from work and visit relatives and friends, just as the New Year is the best time for Internet products to sink, the long holiday also allows users’ consumption habits to fission and spread, whether it is online social media or offline consumption scenarios, Ele.me’s subsidy of more than 10 billion yuan in the long holiday has repeatedly released potential energy, so that the customer acquisition benefits are further amplified.
Fourth, Ele.me seized the strategic window of its competitors and launched a successful raid. JD.com and Meituan invested a lot of subsidies in the early takeaway war, but when Ele.me made a move, the subsidies of both sides had begun to decline, and the policy card in the early stage had been exhausted. Taking JD.com as an example, May 1 is the annual commission-free deadline for JD.com’s takeaway merchants.
When the entire market enters the subsidy window period, Ele.me’s high-profile entry at this time avoids premature consumption of resources, and can respond to the expectations of consumers and merchants, harvesting the market with a “latecomer” attitude, pushing consumer attention to a new peak.
03 Dig deep holes and accumulate grain
Looking back at the entire takeaway war since the beginning of this year, Ele.me has always remained sober, not only did not participate in the war of words in the early stage of the industry, but also insisted on investing resources on the capacity side and the merchant side to explore the underlying capacity building of the industry. Facts have proved that Ele.me’s solid local infrastructure has contributed to launching a blitzkrieg of local life and successfully landing.
Taking AI capabilities as an example, when the industry focuses on resource competition, Ele.me took the lead in exploring the role of AI in improving the efficiency of local life.
“Holographic Shield” is Ele.me’s first AI Agent product invested in platform governance.
In the past, food delivery platforms had to rely on manual methods to identify risks and dig out fake stores or illegal goods to review the qualifications of merchants and goods. With the help of holographic shield, Ele.me can automatically identify risk content, which used to be completed by manpower in half a day, but now the time can be compressed to less than 1 minute.
Similar to this, there is also the intelligent assistant on the merchant side, in response to the problem of cumbersome procedures and long process for merchants to settle on the platform, Ele.me has developed an “AI settlement intelligent manager” to support conversational services for merchants, and can achieve one-stop guidance for merchants to complete the complete settlement process including authentication, uploading materials, and signing authorization.
On the rider side, the industry once debated whether the rider’s safeguards were in place, and Ele.me took the lead in exploring. On April 25 this year, the Ele.me (Shanghai) Negotiation Algorithm Consultative Conference released the country’s first online delivery algorithm and labor rules agreement, clearly mentioning that the platform will gradually abolish the penalty for overtime deduction, so that riders’ overtime anxiety can be turned into incentives.
At present, Ele.me has built 35 five-star party and mass service demonstration sites and more than 150,000 knight stations across the country, providing riders with affordable rental housing, 10 yuan love meals and other services. Since June last year, Ele.me has cooperated with the All-China Federation of Trade Unions to launch love meals in 76 cities across the country, serving more than 8 million riders, couriers, ride-hailing drivers and other groups, of which Ele.me provides nearly 100 million yuan of meal subsidies for riders.
On April 25 this year, Ele.me released the takeaway rider intelligent AI assistant “Little Hungry”, which can reduce the manual operation steps of riders when taking orders, automatically remind them of road closures, dangerous weather and other information, and can also provide riders with peripheral order heat maps, so that riders can minimize driving risks and optimize delivery efficiency.
In 2025, when the war in the takeaway track is rekindled, Ele.me chooses to stumble on its strategic determination, explore the future ecology of the industry while avoiding wars of words, and try to build sustainable competitive barriers through the comprehensive upgrading of technology and workers’ rights and interests.
For the industry, the saliva crusade is really meaningless, looking to the future, deeply cultivating user value and industry efficiency is the way to develop. In the future, the instant retail industry will be a competition between supply and efficiency, and in addition to more than 10 billion subsidies, Ele.me’s exploration of the future ecology may be more worth learning from.
