Alibaba Group said combined daily orders for its on-demand delivery services in China reached 80 million, in the latest sign of growth for the country’s quickly growing “instant commerce” sector.

The figure applied to orders for Taobao Instant Commerce, a service launched in April that offers delivery of items within 60 minutes, combined with its food delivery service Ele.me.

Daily active users on Taobao Instant Commerce reached 200 million, up from 40 million in late May, a month after launch.

Instant commerce

Alibaba’s offering competes with so-called on-demand services from Meituan and JD.com.

Meituan, which is better established than Alibaba in on-demand commerce, said on Saturday its daily transaction volume covering food and retail goods reached an all-time high of 120 million orders, briefly crashing its servers in some regions.

China’s tech giants have been building on-demand retail services that make use of their existing food-delivery infrastructure to quickly deliver items.

Alibaba’s Taobao Instant Commerce was founded in late April to compete with Meituan’s Instashopping and JD.com’s food delivery service.

The Taobao service reached 10 million daily orders within its first week and 40 million after a month.

After another month it had reached 60 million daily orders, but reached 80 million after only a further 12 days.

The rapid growth of Taobao Instant Commerce has expanded the total size of China’s instant delivery sector from around 100 million daily orders in May to 200 million now, Alibaba said.

Rapid growth

On 2 July the company announced a 50 billion yuan ($6.9bn, £5.1bn) subsidy programme that is planned to last 12 months, including vouchers, free-order cards and subsidised price-fixed items, alongside store subsidies, product-level discounts delivery subsidies and commission waivers.

The company has been investing heavily in on-demand commerce as a way of expanding beyond its established base in conventional e-commerce.

Jeffries analysts said in a research note that synergies between food delivery, instant commerce and traditional commerce would be the “next focus” for Alibaba.

Alibaba also has extensive operations in areas including AI and cloud data centres, and is [working with Apple](https://www.silicon.co.uk/mobility/smartphones/apple-to-integrate-alibabas-ai-into-iphones-in-china-599714 to launch iPhone AI features in China.