Alibaba Group announced encouraging early results for its "instant commerce" service, Taobao Shangou. The platform, which delivers everything from smartphones to milk tea in under an hour, attracted over 100 million non-food orders from new users within the first two weeks of the Singles' Day shopping festival. This suggests the company's strategy of using subsidies to gain traction against competitors like Meituan and JD.com is yielding results. The growth is seen as a key driver for the company's e-commerce sales amidst a landscape of intense competition and sluggish consumer spending. Major brands like Huawei, which saw nearly 200,000 new customers in a week through the service, are leveraging the platform's fast delivery to boost sales. The strong performance during the major shopping festival could help alleviate concerns about the long-term profitability and sustainability of the high-investment, subsidy-heavy instant delivery model.