Tencent and Alibaba might no longer be the only companies reigning over China internet industry. New competitor is surging up. Meituan-Dianping is ready to beat out the previous dominators.
The company came out as a Chinese version of Groupon. It offers review and booking service with discounts for restaurants and karaokes. Then it expanded to food delivery before offering hotel rooms, movie tickets and the others through its superapp.
Similar to Tencent’s WeChat, Meituan has recorded a huge amount of MAU.
Despite Alibaba’s huge share in China e-commerce market, Meituan-Dianping able to surpass the giant tech. According to data provider Trustdata, Meituan gets a hold of 65% share in China food delivery market this second quarter. While it only holds 47% last year.
And Alibaba’s food delivery subsidiary, Ele.me only has 27% of the share.
China’s food delivery market is very huge. It is estimated to be around $84 billion this year. A $53 billion away from last year’s estimation.
How Meituan-Dianping beats out Alibaba
Though it seems so, Alibaba is not being idle and let Meituan grows big. It has been bleeding out millions of dollars for meal coupons and discounts. Yet the market prefers Meituan for its smarter solutions.
Meituan has been very aggressive in joining exclusive partnerships with restaurants. It also managed to form a more cost and time effective system. By matching order data and making batch deliveries at one time, people can’t help but stick loyal to the app.
However, Alibaba has confirmed that it has no intention of putting off the fight. Instead of bleeding out on marketing, Ele.me is to focus on growing revenue. It will target smaller cities that haven’t had Meituan at service.
Apart from the food delivery service, Meituan-Dianping’s hotel booking service is also growing big. The company recorded more bookings made on its app than C-Trip. And C-Trip is the biggest traveling tech company in China, currently.
Meituan wins by displaying only hotels that are on discounts or having available vouchers.
