Insights on Foodpanda

By Talia Tan

Experience+ is a series of online learning journeys and industry visits that give students the chance to virtually visit workplaces, speak directly with working professionals, and learn about organisations that they aspire to join.

On 1 September 2022, Advisory hosted Experience+: Foodpanda, where participants had the opportunity to network with professionals and hear directly from them about their experience working at Foodpanda. We were privileged to have heard and gathered insights from:

• Minh Hien To, Manager, Marketing – Advertising & Partnerships (APAC)
• Saddam Basheer, Manager, Digital Payments (APAC)
• Vivek Abraham, Head, Commercial Projects (APAC)
• Bharath Krishnamachari, Director, Product Analytics

Our selected participants included students from various education levels and institutions with a shared passion for the online food and grocery industry, and a common interest to position themselves for available opportunities at Foodpanda and in the industry.

Below are some key points shared during the session:

Overview of Foodpanda

Started in 2012, Foodpanda is an online food and grocery delivery platform that operates in more than 40 countries, across 5 continents. As a leading delivery platform in Asia and selected parts of Europe, Foodpanda is dedicated to bringing consumers a wide range of food, groceries, and more, quickly and conveniently. As the regional headquarters of Foodpanda, Singapore houses 1,200 employees. Foodpanda has expanded from food delivery and pickup to quick commerce (pandamart), and new verticals (pandapro, pandago and panda ads).

The key value of Foodpanda is to be a sustainable and responsible member of the community, and was the first in Asia to launch a default cutlery opt out toggle and the first in Asia to launch reusable containers. Foodpanda also empowers consumers to make greener choices, and incentivises consumers to opt for sustainable vendors and sustainable choices (like reusable containers). Foodpanda strengthens its commitment towards sustainability by launching Green Label, a restaurant certification scheme to identify the most sustainable brands on the platform. Foodpanda was the first food delivery company in Singapore to launch such a programme.

Foodpanda was also ranked #10 and #11 in the list of Singapore Best Workplaces in 2020 and 2021 respectively, in the annual “Great Place to Work” award.

What are the different teams in Foodpanda?

They are:

• Technology, Product Design, UX and Design, Analytics
• Marketing, Finance, Commercial
• Dmart/Cloud Stores
• Communications and Public Affairs, People, Corporate Technology
• Logistics and Operations

What is marketing in Foodpanda like?

The main aspects are advertising, advertisement monetisation, panda ads, and supporting local teams to deliver their sales key performance indicators (KPI). The marketing team of Foodpanda focuses on both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing. B2B marketing mainly focuses on advertisement marketing and analysing advertisements, which include analysing key metrics, impressions of campaigns, cost per lead and cost per click. The key focuses of B2C marketing are social media marketing and customer purchases, which includes analysing click-through rates, cart sizes, and items sold. Jobs in marketing include Content Specialist, Social Media Specialist and Branding.

What are some tips that can help me land a marketing job?

The most important aspect employers look out for in a marketing interview is your knowledge of marketing yourself well. Through Linkedin, you can make connections and market yourself.

You can enrol in online courses, such as Hubspot Academy, Google Analytics Academy and Linkedin Learning, to show your interest and your understanding of marketing and advertising. Start by understanding the basic overall concept on how a campaign is set up, advertisement groups and advertisement variations, followed by more advanced concepts on the quality of advertisements and algorithms (machine learning).

What are some advice that will help me in my marketing job?

In your marketing job, you will have to collaborate with a lot of people, such as the sales team and the public relations team. To do well, one ought to be respectful and understanding, while being persistent in achieving your goal. For marketing professionals, it is exceptionally important to also build personal relationships with your team members. This is so that you can see where they are coming from, as everyone has differing points of views. Ultimately, everyone is working towards the same goal and by remaining open to new ideas and opinions, you can gain new insights from them.

Furthermore, it is not necessary to be a jack of all trades in the marketing field. Should you have a clear idea of what you want to specialise in, you can just build on it. Otherwise, you can also choose to dabble in everything and learn different skill sets and aspects in marketing, to discover where your passion lies.

The marketing industry is filled with unforeseen and unpredictable circumstances. Hence, you must be adaptable and keen to learn, as the job requires a lot of learning on-the-job. Versatility and communication skills will thus help you to do well in it.

What role does digital payments play in the operations of Foodpanda?

Digital payments are an essential part of the operations of Foodpanda as they ensure that consumers have a seamless app experience. Upon reaching the checkout page, customers should be able to purchase their items without added hassle. The digital payments department works closely with the operations team and engineers to achieve this goal.

Foodpanda handles digital payments in-house to reduce additional costs in payment processing. If payment processing is operated by external services, a fixed amount will be charged for each transaction (eg. 2%). Since Foodpanda handles millions of transactions daily, optimising the payment process helps lower down costs.

Is it possible to enter more niche fields like digital payments without specific prior experience?

It is definitely possible! Although your degree might not hold any direct correlation to specific industries like digital payments, the critical thinking processes you gain in university are relevant and transferable, such as having the ability to figure out the root cause of a problem can aid you in your work. Having well-developed critical thinking and strong curiosity for the industry can enable you to enter new industries, regardless of your background. This is especially true for fields like digital payments, where there is no formal university degree for it as the industry is relatively new.

What do hiring managers look out for in applicants, if they do not have prior experience specific to the industry?

Hirers look out for skills and curiosity. For the digital payments industry, interviewees can expect a question from a payments perspective to be posed to them. For example, how do consumer payments work? Applicants will be assessed on the relevance and depth of their answers, and those who got through were able to take a more creative approach in answering the question .

How should applicants interested in making a career switch approach this transition? How do you know if it is right for you?

Making a career switch from a field like finance to tech and analytics is possible if you can demonstrate your interest in the work, and show that you have made an effort to make the transition. Examples include learning about the requisite hard skills through online courses or internships, developing a personal website, or putting up interesting personal work with the use of public datasets.

Even after successfully making a career switch, staying in the field can often be difficult. Thus, being able to determine if an industry is right for you is also important. You can start by thinking about it in terms of your job scope and ask yourself some basic questions: Is this the right team for me? Is this the right manager for me? Meeting supporting colleagues that will help you ease in can influence your decision to stay on in the long run.

What does work in more technical departments of Foodpanda entail?

Work in the software engineering realm often necessitates finding the right balance between being analytical and being creative. An insightful resource you can turn to is “INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love”, by Marty Cagan.

As for working with data, Foodpanda adopts three fundamental approaches: good information management, data-informed decision making, and data-informed product strategy. Good information management involves figuring out the data needed, and then validating them. Tracking is then implemented by using technical product analysis and engineering. Ensuring that Foodpanda is on the right track will require well-defined KPIs and a well-developed self-serving analytics ecosystem of dashboards. Finally, enabling data to inform product strategy often calls for collaboration with the user experience research team to understand user motivations via exploratory analyses to identify opportunities to improve the products of Foodpanda.

What technical skills are in demand at Foodpanda?

It varies by role. Engineers must be proficient in JavaScript and TypeScript, while backend engineers should be well-versed in Golang, Python, and GoJS. Typically, you need a working understanding of business intelligence tools like Tableau and Data Studio as well. Python can also be fundamental in understanding our platform and how it functions.