Mumbai, India – Essence, a global data and measurement-driven media agency under WPP’s GroupM, has been appointed as the integrated media agency of record by online restaurant company Rebel Foods in India. 

Rebel Foods is home to brands such as Faasos, Behrouz Biryani, Oven Story Pizza, Lunch Box, and Wendy’s, amongst others. It currently operates over 45 own and partner brands, ranging from startups to global majors, to cater to consumers’ different food missions.

As part of the partnership, Essence‘s scope of work includes strategy, analytics, media planning, and media activation for the internet restaurant company’s brand marketing activities. Its first few activities for Rebel Foods include campaigns for Faasos and Sweet Truth, along with integrated communications plans for Behrouz Biryani and the company’s food court on an app experience, EatSure, in key markets.

Ankush Grover, Rebel Foods’ co-founder and CEO for India, shared that keeping their vision in mind, it is inevitable for their brands to have a communication strategy that focuses on customer-first offerings, while complementing their brand promise. 

“Over the years, our communication has been authentic, relatable, creative, innovative, and at the same time, has reflected the brand’s core value. We believe Essence is an ideal partner to help us in our journey with an insight-led analytical approach, while bringing a unique style of creativity and innovation. We are looking forward to collaborating with Essence on some exciting campaigns and strategies,” said Grover.

Meanwhile, Sonali Malaviya, Essence’s managing director for India, said that with their data-driven approach to strategy, analytics and media, focused on delivering value to brands and consumers through innovation, they see opportunities to help Rebel Foods drive greater synergies and efficiencies across its brands while defining bespoke growth paths for each brand.

“We are thrilled to collaborate with Rebel Foods on its exciting growth journey and become its ally in achieving its growth goals,” added Malaviya.

Singapore – In one of Asia’s largest virtual brands partnership, online food and grocery delivery platform foodpanda and Indian restaurant company Rebel Foods have partnered to roll out Rebel Foods’ flagship brands and new jointly-created offerings in more than 2,000 outlets within Asia through an initial five-year partnership, starting in six markets.

Through the partnership, Rebel Foods will extend its culinary works, standard operating procedures and food tech innovations to F&B outlets in Asia through foodpanda. With a brands-as-a-service (BaaS) model, the partnership allows foodpanda’s restaurant partners to easily plug-and-play Rebel Foods iconic brands to grow additional revenue streams.

Meanwhile, foodpanda enables hundreds of thousands of restaurant partners and cloud kitchen operators to plug-and-play virtual brands into their current operations to grow additional revenue streams, at little to no start-up costs. 

“This foodpanda-Rebel Foods partnership introduces a new digital-first F&B format to Asia. foodpanda is always seeking new, innovative ways to change the way F&B businesses operate in a hyper-digitalised economy — we want to push our ecosystem further into the future,” said Pedram Assadi, COO at foodpanda.

He added, “Most importantly, these virtual brands will give our restaurant partners, especially SMEs, new opportunities to earn additional revenue.”

In the first phase of the partnership, which began in December 2019, Rebel Foods introduced four brands across six markets — Singapore, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Thailand, Hong Kong and the Philippines through the foodpanda network.

“Over the years, we have built some category leading brands in its current markets and a full-stack operating system which integrates culinary expertise, efficient SOPs and technological innovations together. We are glad to partner with foodpanda and scale our iconic brands with localized offerings across their network in Asia”, said Kallol Banerjee, co-founder at Rebel Foods.