NEW YORK, Aug. 11, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — July 19th, JPMorgan, a global leader in financial services offering solutions to the world’s most important corporations, governments and institutions, hosted a panel discussion on "Asian Leadership" with HungryPanda, the world’s leading Asian food delivery platform. The event was held at JPMorgan’s offices in New York, USA and London, UK.
HungryPanda and JPMorgan US
The event was co-hosted by several groups of JPMorgan, including NextGen (a Business Resource Group for early career professionals), AWM-ALF (Asian Leadership Forum for tools and guidance to succeed their careers and promote leadership) and AsPIRE(Enhances the professional development of employees of Asian heritage).
The event also invited HungryPanda’s Founder and CEO, Kelu Liu, and VP of Strategy, Panwen Chen, in a series of discussions around the theme "How HungryPanda founders built a global start-up under 5 years". JPMorgan ALF members Rachel Tao and Wioletta Krejner, and NextGen Tri-State co-chair Peter Rawinski joined the event as the host and moderators in both New York and London. Mira Hole, Global head of digital, data & distribution solutions, asset management at JPMorgan, made the opening remarks.
Strategic decision of market differentiation
In the discussion, Panwen Chen mentioned, "Compared with traditional food delivery platforms, HungryPanda has its own uniqueness and irreplaceability. Instead of providing all the restaurants in a single stream, we are more targeted in the selection of authentic restaurants and dishes. In order to provide better Asian food delivery services, HungryPanda has now partnered with 90% of local Chinese food and a large number of Asian restaurants, 30% of which are exclusive. This ratio does not only maximize the selection, but also strengthen the service consciousness of the Asian food industry and provide higher quality Asian food."
"Most of our team can speak Mandarin, and many of them joined the company after studying and working overseas, so they especially understand user pain points and are therefore better able to provide a tailored experience for our users. Takeaway is not the only business of HungryPanda. We officially launched PandaFresh in April 2021, with nearly half of 2,000 products held exclusively, not only strengthening the business barriers, but also bringing users a richer choice."
Adjusting strategy to accelerate growth
The pandemic has brought challenges and opportunities for HungryPanda. The global lockdown also further boosted the public’s demand for delivery. For HungryPanda, takeaway business has grown by leaps and bounds. In the process of rapid growth, the company quickly adjusted its original business launch time to accelerate its lifestyle service business such as fresh food and group buying.
Panwen Chen said, "In this process, many merchants actually do not understand digital operations and the benefits they can get. Therefore, our experienced business development team played a huge role, not only popularizing the various advantages of digital operations to merchants, but also providing them with a variety of guidance and benefits, and helping them smoothly realize the transition from offline to online."
After life has returned to normal, users’ habits have been cultivated, so people keep using and recognizing HungryPanda, which is why more and more merchants are still joining. This is also a great opportunity for the fresh food business. At a time when European instant delivery platforms are in full swing, PandaFresh is making the most of product and demographic differentiation and is achieving double-digit growth every month. Besides PandaFresh just bought a larger centralized warehouse in central England to better enable a UK-wide merchandise delivery service.
Asian Leadership in Practice
Speaking on the topic of Asian leadership, HungryPanda’s CEO Kelu Liu said, "There are actually many Asian people in Europe and the US who have achieved business success, especially in the food industry. For me the Asian identity is also very beneficial. The accumulation of education in China plus the different experience of studying abroad has given me a more comprehensive thinking in looking at things, which helps me to be more hopeful to make my due contribution to the Asian community overseas."
"The first problem we encountered overseas was the language barrier, which was not only reflected in ordering food for classes but also in our work. But after summing up the experience of the past few years, I think these are only external factions. No matter how our accent is, how we use grammar and slang, this can’t stop us from further development in the workplace. Language is a plus, but the most important thing is that we have a clearer logical ability to understand what we want and understand what we have to do in the process."
HungryPanda, which has been upholding the idea of providing better and more convenient services to the overseas Asian community for several years, is also improving the digitalization of Asian merchants, bringing more opportunities for development. The company has also worked with embassies during the pandemic to distribute health packages and other medical prevention supplies to Asian students. And in the future, HungryPanda will continue to serve the overseas Asian community and hope to better help overseas Asian to improve their career development and increase the possibility of management positions through its increasing influence.
