DoorDash believes it has the scale to succeed where its competitors have failed. “We wouldn’t be launching and expanding if we weren’t confident,” DoorDash Australia,Canada and New Zealand general manager Rebecca Burrows said.
DoorDash,a $US21 billion ($32 billion) US-listed firm,has much deeper pockets than its Australian competitors and has learnt from their failures:the business will not make ambitious claims of fulfilling orders within a specific timeframe.
“We’re not building a proposition that is too good to be true,where it’s kind of unbelievable that you can do it,” Burrows said. “We’re building a proposition that is sustainable for what we know our consumers want and what our Dashers can do and what we can fulfil.”
DashMart’s Australian launch comes just weeks after Voly,astart-up that raised $18 million in seed funding to deliver groceries from similar “dark stores”,announced it was ceasing to operate,citing a tough economic environment.
Its collapse followed market peers Quicko,which folded in mid-March,and Send,which called in administrators in May. Milkrun,thebest funded of the local start-ups,is operating in parts of Sydney and Melbourne,butleaked investor documents from April showed it was losing about $13 per order.
Burrows said the short-lived start-ups’ ability to accumulate a substantial customer base was proof that demand existed for rapid delivery grocery services.