Meituan's drone business is also going global, and its first stop, Dubai, has achieved commercialization on the ground | Exclusive

Text｜Ren Cairu

Editor｜Qiao Qian, Yang Xuan

Meituan's overseas expansion is in full swing, with the latest development coming from its drone business. Surprisingly, the first stop is not Saudi Arabia, where its food delivery service first landed.

36Kr has exclusively learned that Meituan's drone business has officially gone overseas. The first stop is Dubai, the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the commercial application has been successfully implemented. The overseas name of this business is "Keeta Drone". From the initial virtual project team form to the establishment of a new business department currently, led by Mao Yinian, Vice President of Meituan and Head of the Drone Business Department. Currently, the R & D team and business lines have a certain scale, and there are full-time employees overseas.

According to informed sources, the initial operation mode of Keeta Drone is similar to "3PL" (Third-Party Logistics) - it has reached cooperation with some catering chain enterprises to undertake the delivery services in specific areas of Dubai. However, the deliverable areas are still limited, mainly focusing on the RIT campus (Rochester Institute of Technology) and the DDP area (Dubai Digital Park). In addition, Keeta Drone is also in discussions with local hospitals to expand into the medical field such as drug delivery, gradually integrating food and beverage, fresh produce, and pharmaceuticals into the supply chain.

In fact, Meituan's drone business has already made some moves in Dubai before. At the "Gitex Global 2023" event held in October 2023, Meituan conducted a test flight demonstration of drone delivery, which was also the first time that drones were allowed to take off in a crowded place in Dubai.

An insider told 36Kr that Meituan's drone team began to take some "outward-looking" actions after the Spring Festival last year. The reason for choosing the Middle East is that for the drone business, the policy openness is very important, and at the same time, the local food delivery market should also have a certain foundation. "After several factors are superimposed, a similar judgment is made with other businesses, and the Middle East is given priority."

According to the insider, Mao Yinian himself went to the UAE for an investigation in May last year and set the goal of "participating in Gitex and conducting a test flight demonstration in October" after returning to China. In the opinion of this person, this goal was very "aggressive" at that time because it required obtaining a number of special approvals, and there was no precedent for drones to take off in the city center before.

The latest progress of this attempt is that Keeta Drone has obtained the BVLOS Drone Delivery Commercial Operation Qualification Certificate issued by the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority on December 17, Dubai time (this is the first certificate issued in this region), which also means that Meituan officially has the qualification to carry out commercial drone operations in the UAE. The above-mentioned person said that Mao Yinian has gone to Dubai at least three times in 2024.

Drone delivery is Meituan's exploration of supplementary delivery methods and an important measure to implement the "Retail + Technology" strategy. Public information shows that as of December 2024, Meituan's drones have opened 53 routes in cities such as Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Guangzhou in China, and have completed a cumulative total of more than 400,000 orders. Calculated, the average daily order volume of drone delivery in China is about 1,000 orders, and there is still a great room for improvement.

At this stage, the reason why the penetration rate of drone delivery is difficult to increase rapidly is diverse. It is not only affected by policies and infrastructure, but also related to the relatively high delivery cost and the imperfection of the "last mile". Therefore, the best way to find increments is to reduce costs while looking for more application scenarios.

The Middle East is undoubtedly a good scenario. From the demand side, the weather in the Middle East is extremely hot, which will lead to a harsh delivery environment for manual delivery during the noon to afternoon period in summer, and the food delivery supply will also be limited. In addition, the regional contiguity and road continuity of Middle East countries are relatively low, and there are more areas where the advantages of drone delivery can be exerted.

An insider close to Meituan gave us an example. There are many artificial islands in Dubai, and there are many one-way roads on the islands. Between two seemingly close points, it usually takes a long detour to reach, and traffic congestion is also the norm. "For drones, it may only need to cross a few hundred meters, which is also the advantage of building roads in the sky."

Another problem is that Meituan chose Saudi Arabia as the first stop for its overseas food delivery service, which means that the first overseas application scenario for drone delivery should have been in Saudi Arabia. Why start the trial from Dubai this time? The reason may be related to the policy openness.

As we understand, the overall openness of the UAE in the low-altitude economy is higher than that of Saudi Arabia, and Dubai has a stronger advantage - Dubai has its own Civil Aviation Authority DCAA, and in 2021, it launched "the Dubai Programme to Enable Drone Transportation". In addition, DCAA and the local DFF organization (Dubai Future Foundation) are also launching positive measures such as the "BVLOS Drone Delivery Program". Considering that the infrastructure and laws and regulations related to drones are not yet perfect, the policy environment should be a major influencing factor for the subsequent expansion of the drone business.

The above-mentioned insider close to Meituan revealed that at the commercial level, the main form of Keeta Drone in the future is still to collaborate with the Keeta platform, and the two are bound together. Mao Yinian once mentioned internally, "Where Keeta is, we are there." The ideal state of this business in the short term of 3 to 5 years is to cover about ten percent of the Keeta delivery orders.

In terms of the "last mile" delivery problem, from the domestic pilot situation, the general process of drone delivery for food delivery is: after the delivery person picks up the food in the store, they go to the nearest takeoff site to load it onto the drone. The drone travels along the established route, lands at the community airport, and unloads it into the food pickup cabinet at the airport, and the user then completes the scan code to pick up the food.

36Kr has learned that the current situation in Dubai is similar, using an integrated automated airport for takeoff, landing, and food storage. Compared with direct delivery to the home by manpower, this form is less convenient. The above-mentioned person told 36Kr, "The internal team is exploring some technological iterations, and it is likely that in the future, it will not rely on takeoff and landing airports to cover more areas."

From a purely commercial perspective, the story of the universalization of drone delivery has always been difficult to be believed by the market, and a major reason is the high cost. However, the above-mentioned person disclosed to 36Kr that Meituan's drone delivery cost has decreased by a large proportion year by year in recent years, and the internal judgment is that "within the next three to five years, the drone delivery cost can reach a comparable level with the road delivery cost."

An insider close to Meituan also told 36Kr that in the long term, Keeta Drone needs to find a feasible path in commercialization, but at this stage, finding more scenarios where drones have advantages, improving system stability and product adaptability are still the focus of this business. The advantage is that "the labor cost in the Middle East is high, which is beneficial to the drone business. From the perspective of turning the gross profit positive, it may eventually be faster than in China."

It is certain that for Meituan's drone business today, whether in China or overseas, it is still too early to talk about how to calculate the accounts or how to affect the delivery UE.