Tesco Malaysia, HappyFresh announce online partnership

• Service to provide delivery of groceries within one hour
• HappyFresh has served 2,500 users via the partnership with Tesco.

HYPERMARKET Tesco Malaysia has partnered with online grocery platform HappyFresh to expand its capability to meet on-demand online grocery delivery services in the Klang Valley.

The new partnership is expected to benefit customers by offering them express delivery services for their shopping, with items being delivered within an hour of placing their order.

Though Tesco Malaysia had begun its journey into online shopping three years ago with its home delivery services, its chief executive officer Paul Ritchie said they had discovered a gap in the market where online shoppers who are pressed for time want to receive their goods within an hour.

“By expanding our multi-channel reach through HappyFresh, we continue to serve our customers’ online and on-demand shopping experience by making it even more seamless and enjoyable,” he says.

“Today’s consumer lead a different lifestyle, most do not have the time to drive out to a store and buy their groceries weekly. The Internet lets them do all of that at a click of a button,” Ritchie explains.

However when asked if the relationship could lead to the posssibility of Tesco investing in HappyFresh, Ritchie demurred saying that Tesco only sees HappyFresh as a complimentary partner, one that could hopefully attract new customers for Tesco as well.  [Added paragraph to story.]

Meanwhile, HappyFresh Malaysia managing director Opal Wu agrees that more online shoppers are demanding for instant shopping services.

“Even though customers are given the option to set the delivery of their groceries up to six days in advance, busy people who don’t know their schedule prefer to get their items on the same day.”

The partnership will enable shoppers to select from more than 12,000 products ranging from food to non-food items, including Tesco’s own brand products, carried by their nearest Tesco Malaysia hypermarket.

HappyFresh has already conducted its initial trial run over the past six months at five selected Tesco hypermarkets located in the Klang Valley - Mutiara Damansara, Ampang, Puchong, Shah Alam and Cheras.

Since its partnership with Tesco Malaysia, HappyFresh has fulfilled orders from 2,500 users. Apart from having the option of getting their groceries delivered within the next hour, freshly produced items would be hand-picked by HappyFresh’s personal shoppers.

HappyFresh has already partnered with eight other supermarkets including Sam’s Groceria, Village Grocer and Jason’s Food Hall with Tesco being the first hypermarket.

“We hope that this partnership will expand our coverage even further as we have previously been very focused on the Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya area. With Tesco, we are able to extend coverage to areas like Shah Alam and Puchong,” said Wu.

Apart from the Klang Valley, Wu says HappyFresh is also looking at extending its services to other major urban centres in Malaysia like Johor Bahru and Penang but without giving a timeline.

HappyFresh recently raised its Series B funding from Dubai based PE firm, Samena Capital, for an undisclosed amount in Aug. A year earlier it had raised US$12 million in its Series A. It launched in Feb 2015 focuing on the Malaysian and Indonesian markets and has since added Thailand. UNtil recently it also operated in the Phillipines and Taiwan but exited those markets on raising its Series B.

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