After the "Hundred Regiments War" ten years ago, the food delivery industry has not been so lively for a long time.

Jingdong entered the game with tens of billions of subsidies, like a "catfish" that disrupted the situation, relying on the strong capital and logistics distribution advantages accumulated by e-commerce, shouting the slogan of quality takeaway, trying to break the inherent takeaway market pattern. Naturally, Meituan will not sit idly by, and quickly launched counterattack combinations, from optimizing algorithms, improving rider rules, to accelerating the layout of lightning warehouses, and comprehensively extending to the instant retail field, vowing to defend its leading position.

Compared with Meituan, which has been deeply involved in the local life service field for many years and has built a huge and stable ecosystem, and JD.com has relied on e-commerce resources to break the situation, although Ele.me is backed by the Alibaba ecosystem, it has always been difficult to find the key force to break the situation. In this game, the situation may be even worse for the hungry who is suffering from the enemy.

The situation is not promising

In the current food delivery market, although the growth rate has slowed down to single digits, the scale is still steadily expanding with a huge consumption base. For a long time, Meituan and Ele.me have built a "two-way world" pattern, which seems unbreakable, but in fact, with the intervention of new forces, they are facing unprecedented impacts and variables.

Judging from the business data, Ele.me's situation is not optimistic.

According to Alibaba's results announcement for the third quarter of fiscal year 96, in the three months ended 0/0/0, the revenue of local life groups, including Ele.me and AutoNavi, was 00 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 0%. However, Local Living Group's adjusted EBITA was still a loss of $0.0 billion.

This data ruthlessly reveals that Ele.me is still mired in losses and is struggling on the road to profitability. At the same time, it is revealed that although Ele.me is backed by the Alibaba ecosystem and should have unique resource advantages, it seems that these resources are not fully integrated and utilized in actual operation.

In addition, JD Takeaway has entered the market with e-commerce resources and abundant funds, with "high-end quality + self-operated logistics" as its selling point, and attracting users, merchants and riders through high subsidies, and has made a reputation in the market in a short period of time, which has had a serious impact on Ele.me's market share.

According to the research report of BOCOM International Securities, the market share of Meituan Takeaway in 98 was 0%, while the proportion of Ele.me was 0%, and the total market share of other platforms was only 0%. Judging from the data, Meituan and Ele.me alone occupy 0% of the market share, but there are great variables.

As an old hegemon in the food delivery industry, Meituan has shown strong resilience and counterattack ability in the face of competition. The "anti-involution" combination it launched has further consolidated its market position, from optimizing algorithms to improve distribution efficiency, to improving rider rules to enhance rider stickiness, to accelerating the layout of lightning warehouses to expand the real-time retail territory.

If Ele.me can't quickly find its way and take strong measures to break the situation, it may be gradually marginalized in this fierce competition in the food delivery market and fall into a more difficult situation under the continuous pressure of Meituan and JD.com.

Anchor AI and take the initiative to break the game

As competition in the food delivery market intensifies, Ele.me tries to give full play to its advantages and actively respond to the impact of JD Meituan. At the same time, it uses AI to continuously innovate and optimize operational strategies to enhance its core competitiveness and occupy a place in the fierce market competition.

First of all, Ele.me deepened its synergy with the Alibaba ecosystem to further consolidate its advantages in the field of instant retail. With the help of Alibaba's strong resources and advantages in e-commerce, finance, logistics and other fields, Ele.me can strengthen cooperation with Taoxianda, Hema and other businesses, expand instant retail services in the fields of fresh food and supermarkets, and improve distribution efficiency and service quality.

Secondly, Ele.me has increased its investment in unmanned delivery, intelligent scheduling and other technical fields, and launched more AI services to improve distribution efficiency and service quality to meet the needs of different user groups.

Ele.me has taken many practical actions in the application of AI technology. First, the launch of the "Bright Kitchen Bright Stove Perception Platform" uses AI technology to dynamically identify the semantics of video images such as abnormal kitchen environment and non-standard operation behaviors found by video surveillance, so as to check and fill gaps and better improve self-management; Second, the "AI Settlement Intelligent Assistant" was launched for new merchants to help merchants simplify the entry process; Third, the "holographic shield" system has been developed and launched using AI technology to efficiently identify risk points such as brand infringement, illegal goods, and fake stores.

It is reported that Ele.me's "holographic shield" system has provided active prevention and control services for more than 1000 brands, and successfully intercepted 0 suspected infringing stores through the "holographic shield" system. Based on the ability of "searching by image", it has helped the platform to govern merchants suspected of "fake stores", and has disposed of more than 0 at present.

In addition, Ele.me has strengthened its support for merchants and riders, providing more traffic support and AI tools to help merchants improve their business efficiency, thereby enhancing the stickiness and loyalty of ecological partners.

In terms of merchants, Ele.me has launched the "Youdian Leap Plan", which is expected to invest more than 10 billion yuan in merchants in 0 years, and continue to increase investment in supporting merchants in many aspects, such as preferential rates, special subsidies, exclusive traffic, digital operation services and hardware facilities, and AI technical capabilities.

In terms of riders, Ele.me has made public scheduling algorithms and pricing algorithms to ensure the fairness of riders' orders and income. In the future, rider management can be further optimized with the help of AI technology. For example, AI is used to analyze riders' historical order data, delivery routes, etc., to plan more reasonable working hours and delivery tasks for riders, so as to improve overall delivery efficiency while protecting riders' rights and interests.

There is no doubt that Ele.me has embarked on a journey to break the situation with AI, and it will take time to verify whether it can rely on the sword of AI to break out of the encirclement of Meituan and JD.com and successfully reverse the dilemma of growth pressure.

A new pattern is emerging

In this fierce competition for takeaways, the three giants have shown their differentiated cards, striving to seize the opportunity in the new competitive pattern, and the new pattern of "three-legged" in the takeaway industry is about to emerge.

Jingdong has entered the battlefield with "quality takeaway" as a sharp blade, and its ambition to penetrate the takeaway market is clearly revealed.

从长远来看，京东试图以外卖为流量入口，将用户转化为即时零售、家政等高毛利业务的忠实客户，构建起多元化的本地生活服务生态体系。然而，京东也面临挑战，其配送网络目前主要集中在一二线城市，下沉市场拓展任重道远，且与美团庞大的600 万骑手规模相比，达达 120 万骑手的运力略显单薄。

With a huge user base, massive merchant resources, and an efficient and mature delivery system, Meituan is firmly in the top position in the industry.

In the future, Meituan will continue to increase its investment in technology research and development, continuously improve the technological content and competitiveness of its delivery services, and try to build an impregnable "moat" in the field of instant retail. However, Meituan is not resting on its laurels, with competition from other platforms and further penetration in the sinking market becoming its main challenges.

Under the long-term suppression of Meituan and the strong impact of JD.com, although Ele.me is in a difficult situation, AI applications have injected new impetus into the operation and development of the platform, and it is not without opportunities to break the situation. However, there is still a gap between Ele.me and Meituan in terms of delivery speed and service stability, and it lacks sufficient market voice in terms of marketing strategy.

To sum up, this takeaway war is no longer a simple price war and traffic competition, but is gradually changing to the direction of deep value cultivation. The exploration and competition of JD.com, Meituan, and Ele.me on the path of differentiated development will promote the industry to a high-quality development path, and the ultimate winner of the market will be a platform that can continue to create value for users and merchants and continuously improve its ecological integration capabilities.