---
title: "The Battle of \"Hundred-Billion Subsidies\" Has Finally Reached Food Delivery Platforms"
description: "JD Food Delivery launched hundred-billion subsidies, and Meituan followed, emphasizing that over the next three years, Meituan will invest a total of 100 billion yuan in the catering industry. With subsidy deals and public opinion battles, Meituan and JD.com stole the spotlight in April, attracting attention from consumers, merchants, and riders. Under this heat, marketing subsidy actions can achieve twice the result with half the effort. As the war of words intensifies, what is Ele.me doing? The \"red-yellow\" battle: what is the \"blue\" doing? The fierce battle between JD.com and Meituan has many wondering—\"What exactly is Ele.me doing?\""
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2025-04-30"
categories: "E-commerce & Instant Retail"
language: "en"
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markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-battle-of-hundred-billion-subsidies-has-finally-reached-food-deliver-06efa8ec.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/nUaYkRPKIlox5GupIxtxUw"
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citation: "New Distribution. “The Battle of \"Hundred-Billion Subsidies\" Has Finally Reached Food Delivery Platforms.” New Distribution, 2025-04-30. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-battle-of-hundred-billion-subsidies-has-finally-reached-food-deliver-06efa8ec/"
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---

# The Battle of "Hundred-Billion Subsidies" Has Finally Reached Food Delivery Platforms

> JD Food Delivery launched hundred-billion subsidies, and Meituan followed, emphasizing that over the next three years, Meituan will invest a total of 100 billion yuan in the catering industry. With subsidy deals and public opinion battles, Meituan and JD.com stole the spotlight in April, attracting attention from consumers, merchants, and riders. Under this heat, marketing subsidy actions can achieve twice the result with half the effort. As the war of words intensifies, what is Ele.me doing? The "red-yellow" battle: what is the "blue" doing? The fierce battle between JD.com and Meituan has many wondering—"What exactly is Ele.me doing?"

JD Food Delivery launched hundred-billion subsidies, and Meituan followed, emphasizing that over the next three years, Meituan will invest a total of 100 billion yuan in the catering industry. With subsidy deals and public opinion battles, Meituan and JD.com stole the spotlight in April, attracting attention from consumers, merchants, and riders. Under this heat, marketing subsidy actions can achieve twice the result with half the effort. As the war of words intensifies, what is Ele.me doing?
**The "Red-Yellow" Battle**
**What is the "Blue" Doing?**
The battle between JD.com and Meituan is in full swing, and many are curious—"What exactly is Ele.me doing?" "If they don't join in now, are they planning to be kicked out?"
For Ele.me, if it doesn't join now, it will undoubtedly pose a great threat to its position and market share. Joining the battle just before May Day is the best choice.
Therefore, on April 30, Ele.me officially announced further increasing platform subsidies, launching the "Ele.me Super Subsidy Over Ten Billion" promotion from that day. Taobao Flash Purchase will also join forces with Ele.me to provide subsidies totaling over ten billion yuan, offering free orders, large coupons, and more.
In some regions, Alibaba has upgraded Taobao's instant retail business "Taobao Hourly Delivery" to "Taobao Flash Purchase." It is reported that this has been launched in over 50 cities, with nationwide coverage expected on May 6.
It is reported that the upgraded Taobao Flash Purchase will join forces with Ele.me to increase subsidies, focusing on providing consumers with maximum benefits: such as free order red packets, free milk tea, large full-reduction food delivery coupons, and other super benefits.
In addition, Ele.me's supply will be fully open to Taobao Flash Purchase. Combined with Taobao and Tmall's advantages in brand e-commerce merchants, Taobao Flash Purchase will cooperate with brand merchants' city warehouses and offline stores, connecting Tmall official flagship stores and hourly delivery inventory and prices, giving consumers the experience of "e-commerce low prices with instant retail fast delivery."
This also means that before May Day, Meituan, Taobao, and JD.com have officially gathered for the "Three Kingdoms Kill" of instant retail.
**Taobao Hourly Delivery Business Sunk Like a Stone**
**Can Taobao Flash Purchase Turn the Tables?**
In fact, as early as July last year, Taobao officially announced the upgrade and launch of the Hourly Delivery channel, adding a first-level traffic entrance for "Hourly Delivery" at the top tab of the homepage.
Taobao's "Hourly Delivery" also established deep cooperation with Ele.me, covering categories such as supermarkets, convenience stores, pharmacies, vegetables and fruits, beverages, flowers and plants, providing users with better 24-hour local life services.
One month after the Hourly Delivery entrance opened, over 3,000 Apple authorized stores nationwide fully connected to Taobao Hourly Delivery.
It must be said that the gains were minimal, barely making waves. Facing a giant like Meituan, Taobao Hourly Delivery has always lagged behind.
But with the capital of traditional e-commerce, Taobao Flash Purchase still has a significant advantage in apparel and beauty.
In April this year, Taobao Hourly Delivery began to lay out plans—launching a major commission preferential policy, with over 50 leading apparel brand merchants joining. It is reported that Miniso's "24H Super Store," which previously cooperated deeply with Meituan in the flash warehouse format, will also connect to Taobao Flash Purchase.
In addition, Taobao Flash Purchase is also expanding into special categories, such as Taobao Printing—consumers with printing needs can place orders online, send files to Taobao Flash Purchase's corresponding system, and riders will print nearby and deliver to consumers.
It is not hard to see that Taobao seems to have truly realized this time that instant retail business might be the panacea to solve its midlife crisis.
**Traditional E-commerce's "Midlife Crisis"**
Over the past decade, traditional e-commerce platforms like Taobao and JD.com have dominated the retail market with their advantages of "rich SKUs, low prices, and large-scale logistics," profoundly changing people's consumption habits and shifting consumers from offline to online.
However, with the development of instant retail, facing the surge in consumer demand for immediacy and convenience, their shortcomings in fulfillment speed, high-frequency product delivery capabilities, and regional services have gradually been exposed.
According to data from the "Instant Retail Industry Development Report (2024)" released by the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce, in 2023, China's instant retail scale reached 650 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 28.89%, accounting for 4.2% of online retail sales, 17.89 percentage points higher than the growth rate of online retail in the same period, making it a new growth point for consumer spending.
Traditional e-commerce is almost fighting bare-handed, but there is still significant room for growth in the instant retail track. Therefore, this year we have seen traditional e-commerce platforms like JD.com and Taobao place great importance on the instant retail sector.
It is undeniable that the final "five kilometers" of instant retail is full of business opportunities, but it is always an endurance marathon.
For Alibaba, the core issue to consider is how to make Ele.me achieve the goal of "guaranteeing second place and striving for first" in this competition.
Flowing water does not compete for the lead; it competes in being continuous. We do not know what the future landscape will be, but we can see that this track is full of temptation.


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: New Distribution
- Published: 2025-04-30
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-battle-of-hundred-billion-subsidies-has-finally-reached-food-deliver-06efa8ec/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/nUaYkRPKIlox5GupIxtxUw

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