Chinese delivery firm Meituan has postponed its entry in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro, which had been scheduled for next week, a company executive said on Thursday, citing an excess of exclusivity contracts between its rivals and local restaurants.
Meituan had been planning to launch its Keeta app in the city in early March, after starting operations in three cities of Sao Paulo state last year. The company currently totals 39,000 restaurants and 115,000 delivery workers on its platform.
“Everything was ready – campaign, marketing, operations – but we came across a different reality,” Keeta’s vice president of commercial partnerships for Brazil, Danilo Mansano, told Reuters in an interview.
Brazil’s food delivery market is dominated by apps such as iFood, owned by Dutch firm Prosus PRX.AS, and 99, from Chinese company DiDi 92Sy.D.
“We expected to find an exclusivity rate of 8% to 10% (in Rio), but the picture is very different from what we imagined,” Mansano said.
The executive claimed the level of exclusivity between restaurants and delivery firms in the city is 50%. He did not give a revised timetable for Keeta’s entry into Rio de Janeiro.
iFood and 99 did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reuters
