Rappi building habit through frequency

Frequency is the clearest proof that Rappi is turning a low loyalty delivery app into a habit product. In on-demand, installs can be bought with coupons, but repeat orders show that users keep coming back across food, grocery, pharmacy, travel, and payments. That matters because every extra order makes the courier network denser, lowers delivery cost per order, and gives Rappi more chances to sell higher margin products like ads, subscriptions, and fintech.

• Rappi’s cohort curve is unusually strong for on-demand. Monthly purchase frequency rises from 2 orders in year 1 to 6 in year 3 and 11 in year 5, and more than 90% of customers buy from at least two categories. That suggests growth is coming from deeper wallet share, not just new downloads.
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• The strategic logic is similar to Meituan and Swiggy. Start with high frequency categories like food and convenience, then use that traffic to pull users into lower frequency but higher margin businesses. Meituan did this with hotels and local services, while Swiggy is trying to do it with grocery and other urban services.
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• This is also why Rappi keeps adding products that are not pure delivery. Its card and payments products give users another reason to open the app, earn rewards, check balances, and transact between orders. That raises retention and also improves economics by reducing payment fees and giving bank partners better data for underwriting.
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The next phase is a race to turn frequency into local monopoly like behavior. If Rappi keeps stacking more weekly use cases into one app, it can make each city more efficient, each customer more valuable, and each merchant relationship harder to displace, which is how on-demand markets usually tip toward a small number of durable winners.