Chinese on-demand food delivery platform Ele.me is banking on fresh food e-commerce and developing its new Exianda project to help its customers buy fresh vegetables from home.

The company will cooperate with local vegetable markets to run the project, in an attempt to help groceries improve their digital operations, and let consumers and small restaurants buy their food more efficiently.

Xiong Bin, vice-president of Ele.me said they will also build an open digital platform for supermarkets and retail chains by offering a digital supply chain, logistics, distribution, finance and retail. It has inked in-depth cooperation with Carrefour, RT-Mart, Bailian and Wumart.

Xiong added the growth of orders for fresh products from third- and fourth-tier cities has surpassed that from first- and second-tier cities, showing huge potential.

Statistics from Ele.me revealed fresh product delivery is increasing and the transaction volume jumped 10-fold in the past year. More than 33 percent of consumers who buy fresh vegetables through the app are from the younger generation, with their ages ranging from 25 to 29.

The number of middle-aged and elderly Chinese customers who buy fresh vegetables on Ele.me has increased by more than 500 percent in 2018, compared with the same period of the previous year. The average value of an order placed on Ele.me for vegetables is about 60 yuan, according to the platform.

So far, the fresh food delivery of Ele.me has expanded into 400 cities from 100 in March.

Data from consulting firm iResearch shows China's fresh food e-commerce trading volume exceeded 200 billion yuan ($28.4 billion) last year, and the number is expected to soar to 705.4 billion in 2022, representing huge market potential.

The rapidly growing number of China's high-income consumers has become a key driver of premium brands and other high-quality food products.