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This article covers key updates from the first Taobao Flash Sale Urban Knights Festival, where the Orange Care Program was officially upgraded to version 2.0. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Core industry and scale data: From January to March this year, Taobao Flash Sale’s overall order volume reached 2.7 times that of the same period last year, with non-food retail orders hitting 3 times the year-ago level. The platform counts over 10 million annual active knights, and has created more than 1 million new jobs since the start of the year, establishing urban delivery as an important new employment direction.

2. Benefits for delivery knights: The original Orange Care Program has already provided free work uniforms for over 1 million knights, offered social insurance subsidies covering all directly operated cities across China, served more than 4 million knight visits in total, and supported nearly 300 knights to attend college for free. The upgrade adds targeted protections for disabled knights and female knights. Female knights now enjoy benefits including the right to reject consecutive heavy orders, no-fee cancellation of night orders, female critical illness insurance, and anti-harassment mechanisms, all available to anyone interested in becoming an urban knight.

This article outlines growth trends and actionable opportunities for brands in the instant retail space, with key insights as follows:

1. Consumption trends and channel opportunities: The instant retail track is growing rapidly, with Alibaba’s instant retail revenue up 57% year-over-year and Taobao Flash Sale’s non-food retail orders tripling year-over-year, signaling exploding consumer demand for instant delivery of non-food goods. Brands can enter the Taobao Flash Sale instant retail channel to capture this high-growth incremental market.

2. Brand marketing opportunities: Taobao Flash Sale has partnered with industry stakeholders to launch the Orange Benefit Alliance, a high-public-interest initiative advancing rider rights and welfare. Brands can join the alliance to co-build rider benefits, leverage the project for CSR marketing, and boost public goodwill and brand influence.

3. Operational benefits for brands: Taobao Flash Sale continues to refine its rider system and improve delivery capacity stability, enabling more consistent last-mile service for brand orders and helping brands elevate overall consumer shopping experience.

This article shares growth opportunities and favorable policy updates for online and offline sellers in instant retail, with key takeaways as follows:

1. High-growth market opportunities: Data shows Taobao Flash Sale’s overall order volume grew 2.7x year-over-year in January-March this year, with non-food retail orders growing 3x, and the overall instant retail sector recording 57% year-over-year growth. This confirms that instant retail, especially non-food instant retail, is currently a high-incremental market, and sellers can enter the space to unlock new growth.

2. Favorable operating conditions: By continuously optimizing delivery capacity building and upgrading rider protection systems to stabilize the rider workforce, Taobao Flash Sale can provide sellers with more reliable and consistent delivery services, reduce delivery-side exceptions, improve consumer satisfaction, and help sellers retain customers.

3. Co-branding and exposure opportunities: Taobao Flash Sale launched the Orange Benefit Alliance and invites caring merchants to co-build rider rights. Sellers who join gain platform exposure support, boost their store reputation through association with the public welfare initiative, and earn greater trust from consumers.

This article outlines new business opportunities and digital transformation insights for factories driven by the growth of instant retail, with key takeaways as follows:

1. New business opportunities: The rapid growth of instant retail has expanded the rider population to over 10 million annual active riders, creating stable, bulk demand for rider-related supplies such as work uniforms and delivery equipment. Factories can connect with platform and alliance demand to secure new, stable incremental orders.

2. Product development opportunities: The upgraded Orange Care Program introduces targeted services for disabled riders and female riders, creating differentiated demand for specialized rider equipment. Factories can develop and design tailored equipment for different groups to launch new niche product lines and capture segment market opportunities.

3. Digital transformation insights: Taobao Flash Sale leverages AI to optimize dispatch and achieve industry-leading operational efficiency. For factories, this means accelerating internal digital upgrades to improve production and demand matching efficiency through technology, in order to keep up with the growth of the instant retail track and unlock more cooperation opportunities.

This article outlines new industry trends and business opportunities for instant retail-related service providers, with key takeaways as follows:

1. Industry development trends: The rapid growth of instant retail has expanded the rider population to over 10 million annual active riders, with more than 1 million new jobs added each year. Demand for services related to rider protection, daily life, and career growth has continued to increase, forming a new large-scale service market.

2. Core client pain points: To deliver comprehensive rider rights covering social insurance, medical care, education, special group care and other needs, instant retail platforms cannot cover all service categories on their own. They require support from professional service providers, leaving a large unmet service gap in the market.

3. Market entry opportunities: Taobao Flash Sale has partnered with industry stakeholders to launch the Orange Benefit Alliance to advance rider rights protection. Service providers can join the alliance, leverage their own business advantages to offer insurance, education and training, equipment supply, public welfare support and other related services, expand their customer base within the platform ecosystem, and unlock new growth curves.

This article shares Taobao Flash Sale’s practices in instant retail delivery operation and ecosystem building, offering valuable references for peer platforms, with key insights as follows:

1. Core competitiveness building: Stable delivery capacity is the core competitive advantage of the instant retail industry, and rider workforce stability directly determines delivery service quality. Platforms need to prioritize rider职业保障 and career development to improve rider retention and secure core delivery capacity. Taobao Flash Sale’s model of building a path for upward mobility for riders through the Orange Care Program is a valuable reference for peer platforms.

2. Direction for refined operations: Delivering segmented operations to meet the differentiated needs of different groups — for example, the upgrade includes optimized dispatch for disabled riders, and targeted benefits for female riders including the right to reject heavy consecutive orders, no-liability night order cancellation, critical illness insurance, and anti-harassment mechanisms — can improve satisfaction across groups and reduce labor disputes and reputational risks.

3. Ecosystem co-construction thinking: Platforms can partner with cross-industry stakeholders to form an ecosystem alliance, integrate resources to advance rider rights protection, split operational costs, improve the platform’s social reputation, access more policy support, and mitigate industry risks related to labor practices.

This article presents the latest industry developments in instant retail and new forms of employment, providing first-hand data and cases for relevant research, with key insights as follows:

1. Latest industry developments: The instant retail industry is maintaining rapid growth, with Alibaba’s instant retail revenue up 57% year-over-year in January-March this year, Taobao Flash Sale’s overall orders up 2.7x year-over-year, and non-food retail orders up 3x year-over-year. This confirms that instant retail has become a core incremental growth track for the retail industry. Meanwhile, new forms of employment have matured: urban delivery has become a stable source of employment, having created more than 1 million new jobs cumulatively, with over 10 million annual active riders nationwide.

2. New exploration of social protection for flexible employment: Taobao Flash Sale partnered with more than 20 brands to launch the Orange Care Program, and after the upgrade established the Orange Benefit Alliance with multiple stakeholders to deliver multi-dimensional protection for riders, including targeted benefits for disabled and female riders. This innovates the rights protection model for flexible employment groups, explores a path to transform flexible work into a development-oriented career, provides a typical case for research on the development of new employment forms, and offers high reference value for research on how platform enterprises fulfill social responsibilities and build sustainable flexible employment ecosystems.