Two-wheelers + Four-wheelers: Didi Express Delivery's Differentiated "Errand-running" Path

Is there still room for new opportunities in the highly competitive "errand-running" market?

Didi Express Delivery is offering some new answers. Recently, 36Kr released the "WISE2025 Annual List of Business Kings' Enterprises", and Didi Express Delivery won the "Enterprise with the Most Business Potential of the Year" award.

The introduction of the award includes these two statements: "The emergence of new companies is often not due to 'opportunities', but because there are gaps within the ecosystem of a relatively mature industry." And, "Their existence and growth respond to a certain long-neglected rationality: a lower level of complexity, a more natural way of use, a more transparent experience path, or a value structure that better suits the current social rhythm."

Didi is not a "new company", but for a service like "Didi Express Delivery", which was officially launched in June 2023, what's worth noting behind the award is that in the seemingly settled instant delivery market, the "latecomers" are finding their own positions in a unique way.

01  Combining "Two-Wheelers" and "Four-Wheelers" to Build a Differentiated Delivery System

The instant delivery market has long been dominated by two-wheeled electric vehicles, and this model is highly efficient in high-frequency scenarios such as food delivery and small-item urgent delivery. However, with the advent of the "everything-to-home" era, relying solely on two-wheelers has started to show limitations - items that require higher transportation stability, are large in size, or need long-distance delivery often cannot match a satisfactory service experience.

During a survey in 2022, the Didi Freight team found that for some high-quality small items with high transportation requirements, due to the specifications of the items themselves and weather conditions, traditional errand-running services could hardly meet all the needs. Meanwhile, frequent cases on social media such as "taking a taxi to deliver keys" and "ordering a ride-hailing service to deliver documents" also reflected the market's demand for a more reliable delivery method.

These findings led to the pilot exploration of the Didi Freight team in the small-item urgent delivery service: In June 2023, "Didi Express Delivery" was officially launched, connecting to leading service providers in the errand-running industry through an aggregated platform. In September 2024, it further expanded service options by adding four-wheeled vehicle express delivery services, which quickly covered more than 360 cities across the country.

The combination of "two-wheelers" and "four-wheelers" is not simply an addition in quantity but a reasonable match based on different scenario requirements. Two-wheelers are convenient, flexible, and less likely to get stuck in traffic, continuing to play their economic and efficient advantages. Four-wheelers are more stable and less affected by the weather, providing higher-quality services for specific scenarios such as "large, urgent, long-distance, and valuable" items.

A Didi Express Delivery driver is delivering flowers and cakes.

The operation case of the Dounan Flower Market in Kunming verifies the flexibility of this model. As an important fresh-cut flower trading market in Asia, merchants here need to transport a large number of flowers from planting bases to the trading market every day and then distribute them to various places in the urban area. Flowers are typical "fragile items", requiring fast, stable, low-loss, and safe transportation from picking to shipping. The higher the quality of the flowers, the higher the transportation requirements.

In the past, merchants in the Dounan Flower Market had to maintain their own vehicles for delivery, which was overwhelmed during the peak season and wasted during the off-season. Now, the delivery and express delivery services under Didi Freight provide a more "public" resource and more efficient solution. A leading flower merchant in Kunming said, "Now I often use Didi to order a truck or a car to deliver flowers. There are many vehicle models to choose from, the response speed is fast, and most importantly, there is less jolting and the cargo loss can be reduced."

More importantly, this delivery collaboration also optimizes the efficiency of the entire chain. After completing the transportation from the base to the market, drivers can often continue to undertake the delivery tasks from the market to flower shops, forming a virtuous cycle of resources.

According to the relevant person in charge of Didi Express Delivery, as of now, in the Didi Express Delivery business, for delivery orders involving items such as cakes, flowers, documents, and fresh produce, about 50% of users actively choose car services. This ratio also shows that in specific scenarios, users are indeed willing to pay corresponding fees for a more stable and safe delivery experience.

02  Forming Professional Service Capabilities around "Small Scenarios"

After having a differentiated delivery foundation, the challenge for Didi Express Delivery lies in how to transform the advantages of four-wheelers into professional service capabilities.

Currently, Didi Express Delivery has chosen a development path of in-depth scenario-based services - starting from those niche scenarios where delivery is "not easy" and user pain points are obvious, to establish a differentiated market and a new user stickiness.

Besides flower delivery, cake delivery is another similar scenario. Cakes are exquisitely shaped and fragile, requiring extremely high stability during the delivery process. For this reason, Didi Express Delivery has formulated a standardized service process, covering multiple aspects such as pre-order preparation, communication requirements after receiving an order, operation points when picking up items, and precautions during delivery. For example, "standards for handling, placing, picking up, and delivering cakes of different sizes", "space placement requirements", and "delivery and preservation requirements in special weather". Express delivery drivers must also undergo special training and be certified as "Sweet Express Delivery Drivers" before they can accept orders.

This process not only ensures service quality but also brings real business growth. Since the launch of the exclusive certification and special training for express delivery drivers, the number of cake delivery orders of Didi Express Delivery has increased by 127.9% compared with the beginning of this year, and the number of flower delivery orders has increased by 121.6%. The damage rate has also been significantly reduced by 50% compared with the beginning of this year.

In the expansion of Didi Express Delivery's business boundaries, pet-specific delivery is another key area. Facing the rapidly growing market demand, Didi Express Delivery has launched "Pet-Specific Delivery" services in many cities such as Chengdu, Hangzhou, Chongqing, and Xiamen, and has formulated a series of standards for the particularity of pet transportation: from giving priority to selecting "pet owners" with pet-raising experience as drivers, to cleaning and disinfecting the vehicle before and after each transportation, and keeping the air conditioner on throughout the journey to ensure a suitable temperature.

Since its launch in Chengdu at the end of November 2024, Didi Express Delivery's pet-specific delivery service has cooperated with 1,200 local pet merchants, helping merchants save labor costs and expand their service radius. A local pet owner said about the experience, "Previously, I was most worried about whether my pet would be scared or get heatstroke during transportation. Now I can see the real-time transportation progress and receive photos to confirm my pet's status, which makes me much more at ease."

A Didi Express Delivery driver is delivering a pet.

Besides these professional delivery scenarios, Didi Express Delivery has also found an entry point in more non-standard scenarios.

To address the pain points of travel, the platform has launched a luggage delivery service in popular tourist cities such as Beijing, Chengdu, and Shanghai. Tourists can directly send their luggage to the airport or railway station after checking out, or send their luggage to the hotel upon arrival, thus getting rid of the burden of luggage and arranging their itineraries more freely.

Since the handover and temporary storage links in luggage delivery are prone to experience problems, Didi Express Delivery has formulated a service process for luggage-specific delivery and a training system for express delivery drivers, covering information verification after receiving an order, luggage handover with hotels, handling and placement, and contact with users after arrival. In addition, Didi Express Delivery has also reached cooperation with hotel groups such as InterContinental Hotels Group and railway stations, bringing more direct convenience to users by connecting upstream and downstream and cooperating with partners.

Flowers, cakes, pets, luggage, etc. are supported by a complete guarantee system. The platform not only provides special skill training, order insurance, and work safety liability insurance for express delivery drivers but also provides order insurance with a maximum compensation of 7 times the freight for users. High-value items can also purchase additional insurance.

This two-way guarantee mechanism not only improves service stability but also gradually accumulates more user trust.

A Didi Express Delivery driver is delivering luggage.

Now, Didi Express Delivery has formed a "unique" service capability in multiple niche scenarios, providing new development ideas for the entire instant delivery industry - while pursuing efficiency, in-depth cultivation of service quality can also create unique market value.

The relevant person in charge of Didi Express Delivery said that in the future, they will continue to deepen their efforts in the already opened scenarios such as flowers, pets, and luggage, and at the same time, try more "challenging" categories such as snow equipment and clothing, and cooperate with more merchants and platforms with urgent delivery needs to provide better urgent errand-running services for urban residents and merchants.