Bolt, an Estonia based transportation network company, announced that it would launch a food delivery service in Tallinn, and Estonia. Bolt has been Uber’s toughest competition now for some years adding to the already extreme competitive European market of various services, be it food or transport.
Bolt announced that initially the food delivering services will be opened in Latvia, Lithuania, and South Africa later this year. Bolt is hoping that it would not take them a long time before their services are expanded into other countries of Europe. The company has plans to expand its services in African by 2020. The food delivery service will be available through an app called Bolt Food.
Bolt’s late entrance into the field of the already-crowded food delivery system needs to have that oomph factor to lure in customers who are already accustomed to using other available delivery services.
In this context, Uber and Deliveroo are Bolt’s main rivals, and they need to figure out a way to outsmart them, so to speak. It should also be mentioned that Britain’s Just Eat agreed to merge with Amsterdam based Takeway.com which is going to create the biggest food delivery company outside of China.
But it cannot be ignored that food delivery services have been struggling with making profits. Even the CEO of Uber Dara Khosrowshahi is skeptical about the future of Uber Eats and the benefits roped in by this department.
According to Jevgeni Kabanov, the Chief Product Officer at Bolt said on Wednesday that the company’s strategy regarding the soon to be opened food delivery chain will be based on their existing 25 million users. They are also willing to offer lower prices than their competitors to appeal to a diverse range of customers.
A somewhat similar strategy had been taken by them in the past as well in terms of their transportation service which offered steep rider discounts and higher driver commissions.
Didi Chuxing and the German automaker Daimler are two of the investors of Bolt, and it operates currently in 30 countries.
