foodpanda leaves Thailand: the sharing-economy myth is slowly crumbling
Originally written in Chinese. Translated with AI, reviewed by Gary. Read the Chinese original →
foodpanda has announced it will officially leave the Thai market on 23 May 2025, ending 13 years of operations there. A delivery platform that rode high during the pandemic is now quietly leaving, and behind it lies a deeper trend: the myth of the sharing economy is slowly crumbling.
With cumulative losses of 13.8 billion baht (about RM1.7 billion) and a market share down to just 15%, foodpanda has fallen far behind Lineman Wongnai and GrabFood. Its parent, Delivery Hero, has chosen to pull resources out of an inefficient market and redeploy them to regions with higher returns.
This isn't one brand's failure. It looks more like a watershed for Southeast Asia's whole platform economy. When I chatted with a mentor recently, we talked not only about foodpanda but about how the whole ecosystem is evolving, especially Grab.
Is Grab really still "sharing"?
Grab started out under the banner of the "sharing economy", claiming anyone could use their spare time to drive and take orders for some extra money. It sounded a lot like early Uber: use technology to activate idle resources, empower individuals, earn flexibly.
But reality changed long ago.
Today many Grab drivers take out loans to buy a RM60,000 car and drive full time. The car is no longer an "idle resource" but a tool for making a living. The work isn't a side job either; it's "taking on debt to support yourself".
By comparison, a traditional taxi driver's cost may be just a RM30,000 permit, with maintenance and insurance possibly covered by the taxi company. A Grab driver, though, carries all the costs, and still has to follow the platform's rules and commission. Call it "flexible", but it's really closer to a modern, digital structure of outsourced labour.
Founders shouldn't only look at traffic, but at the structure of responsibility
From food delivery to ride-hailing, from e-commerce to finance, many platforms around us look "light", but behind them sits a very heavy structure. Who owns the assets? Who bears the costs? Who controls the cash flow?
A platform's success often comes from controlling traffic and the efficiency of scale, but it is also built on a great deal of outsourced labour and resources put in at the edges.
foodpanda's exit is a natural return to business logic. Any business model that can't create balanced value for all three sides, platform, users and service providers, over the long run won't go far.
Behind the growth frenzy, if the unit economics don't work, if there's no ability to generate its own cash, and no mechanism for delivering long-term value, then it isn't a sustainable business.
Back to ourselves as founders: what should we learn?
I'm a founder too, and I've walked the road of platforms, brands and e-commerce. I'm more and more convinced that:
"The models that keep running aren't the flashiest. They're the steadiest."
It's not about how high the GMV is, but whether every order makes money;
It's not about how many users you have, but whether customers are willing to stay and buy again;
It's not about how hard you throw subsidies around, but whether you can stand on your own and have positive cash flow over the long term.
The sharing economy has left us a lot of innovation, and also a lot worth reflecting on.
foodpanda's ending may be the close of an era. Or perhaps it's the start of another one for founders: more pragmatic, more focused on fundamentals, more serious about "long-term value".