Meituan (Chinese: 美团; pinyin: Měituán, literally "beautiful group"; formerly Meituan–Dianping, literally "beautiful group–reviews") is a Chinese shopping platform for locally found consumer products and retail services including entertainment, dining, delivery, travel and other services.[2] The company is headquartered in Beijing and was founded in 2010 by Wang Xing.

Meituan
Meituan logo with name in English
Type of businessPublic
Available inChinese
Traded as
FoundedMay 2010 (2010-05)
HeadquartersBeijing, China
No. of locations1000
Area servedChina
Founder(s)Wang Xing
Key peopleWang Xing, Fu Lihui, Mu Rongjun, Liang Foxing, Chen Mei Wah
IndustryInternet company
ServicesVoucher selling
RevenueIncrease CN¥179.128 billion (US$27.77 billion, 2021)[1]
Employees46,662 (until April 30, 2018)
SubsidiariesDianPing
Mobike
Shanghai Han Tao Information Consultation Co. Ltd.
Chongqing Sankuai Micro-credit Co., Ltd
Inspire Elite Investments Limited
Beijing Kuxun Interactive Technology Co., Ltd.
Mobike (Beijing) Information Technology Co., Ltd
BeyondHost Technology
Hucheng Information Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.
Beijing Kuxun Interation Technology Co. Ltd
Beijing Sankuai Cloud Computing Technology Co., Ltd.
Meituan Corp
Tianjin Wanlong Technology Co., Ltd
Qiandai (Beijing) Information Technology Co. Ltd.
Inspired Elite Investment Limited
Haizi Xuesha
Tianjin Xiaoyi Technology Co., Ltd
Sankuai Cloud Online (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd
Shanghai Sankuai Zhisong Technology Co., Ltd
Shenzhen Sankuai Online Technology Co., Ltd,
Tianjin Sankuai Technology Co. Ltd.
Xiamen Sankuai Online Technology Co., Ltd
Shanghai Juzuo Technology Co., Ltd
URLwww.meituan.com Edit this at Wikidata
AdvertisingYes
LaunchedMarch 29, 2009; 15 years ago (2009-03-29)
Current statusActive
Meituan
Simplified Chinese美团
Traditional Chinese美團
Literal meaningbeautiful group
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinMěituán
Yue: Cantonese
Yale RomanizationMéihtyùhn

The company operates different apps and websites for different services. The Meituan site offers deals of the day by selling vouchers on local services and entertainment. By May 2014, the company had 5,000 employees.[3] In 2015, Meituan merged with Dazhong Dianping and changed its name to "Meituan-Dianping".[4] dianping.com (大众点评网 Dàzhòng diǎnpíng wǎng, literally "public reviews net") hosts consumer reviews of restaurants, similar to Yelp and TripAdvisor,[5] and also offers group buying similar to Groupon. Meituan-Dianping is one of the world's largest online and on-demand delivery platforms.[6] It has over 290 million monthly active users and 600 million registered users as of April 2018.[7] In Q2 2021, GTV of Meituan food delivery business increased by 59.5% year over year. The daily average number of food delivery transactions increased by 58.9% year over year to 38.9 million.[8]

Company

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Meituan.com is a group-discount website that sells vouchers from merchants for deals, subject to a minimum number of buyers who demand a discount, from which Meituan generates commissions.[3] Meituan.com generates most of its revenue from mobile application services. The company has partnering agreements with over 400,000 local Chinese businesses. Meituan accounts for the largest market share by revenue, followed by LaShou and 55tuan.[3][9]

History

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Piloted in Shanghai and Beijing, Meituan had rapidly expanded to second-tier and third-tier cities, totalling 200 million users in 2015. Meituan.com became a dominating company in China after a rapid consolidation of the deal-of-the-day companies. Earlier estimates show that there were 2000 voucher selling companies in the mid-2000s and due to intense competition in the industry only a few have emerged as dominant players.[10] In 2014 it accounted for 60% of the market share of deal-of-the-day group-buying websites in China. The company received initial funding of $12 million from Sequoia Capital. In May 2014, global growth equity firm General Atlantic led a $300 million Series C funding round with two other investors.[11][12][13][14] On October 8, 2015, Meituan and Dianping, a Chinese group buying site, became one company.[15] On January 19, 2016, Meituan Dianping announced that it has raised more than $3.3 billion.[16] On September 20, 2018, Meituan Dianping debuted on the Hong Kong stock exchange at an IPO price of HK$69 per share.[17]

The company was renamed from "Meituan Dianping" to Meituan with effect from September 30, 2020.[18]

 
Meituan autonomous delivery vehicle

In April 2021, Meituan raised $9.98 billion in additional financing via the sale of $3 billion in convertible bonds and $7 billion in equities.[19] The funds will be used to expand into China's groceries space as well as to develop autonomous technologies in the drone and delivery space.[20] The same month, the State Administration of Market Regulation announced an investigation into Meituan for alleged anticompetitive practices.[21][22] By May 2021, increased regulatory scrutiny led to almost $40 billion being wiped from the company's overall value.[23] Ultimately, Meituan accepted a fine without making any appeal and stated that it would comply with regulatory requirements in the future.[24]: 57 

In May 2023, Meituan's Hong Kong takeaway platform "KeeTa" officially launched its services, with the first service pilot located in Mongkok and Tai Kok Tsui, marking the first time that Meituan has offered its services outside of Mainland China.[25]

Meituan networking marketing

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Meituan is a Chinese O2O (online-to-offline) local life service platform. It has 600 million users and almost 4.5 million business partners that cover nearly all China. About 35 million people use the service every day. Meituan offers a one-stop "travel life" service platform for users to achieve coverage of full consumption in different places. Therefore, now there are 70 million users of hotel and travel businesses in total.[26]

In 2020, the company will achieve revenue of RMB 114.8 billion, with 511 million annual users (mainly from the takeaway business in 2020), 6.8 million active merchants, 355 million domestic hotel nights, ranking first in the industry in the amount of hotel nights, and a solid market share for Meituan takeaway, making Meituan the leading local lifestyle service platform. Meituan has become the leading local lifestyle service platform.[27]

Management and administration

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The company is headquartered in Beijing and was founded in 2010 by Wang Xing.[28] Prior to starting Meituan, Wang founded Xiaonei and Fanfou, which were based on Facebook and Twitter respectively.[10]

Further reading

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  • Lei, Ya-Wen. "Delivering Solidarity: Platform Architecture and Collective Contention in China’s Platform Economy.” American Sociological Review, (February 2021). https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122420979980.

References

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  1. ^ "ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE RESULTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED DECEMBER 31, 2021" (PDF). Retrieved March 25, 2022.
  2. ^ "Meituan Dianping - Company Profile and News". Bloomberg. Retrieved August 4, 2020.
  3. ^ a b c Chen, Lulu Yilun (May 12, 2014). "Alibaba-Backed Buying Site Meituan Considering U.S. IPO". Bloomberg News. Retrieved February 21, 2015.
  4. ^ Browning, Jonathan; Chen, Lulu Yilun (October 7, 2015). "China's Meituan Agrees to $15 Billion Dianping Merger". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved July 21, 2018.
  5. ^ Chinese local review site Dianping: A lot more than a "Yelp for China"
  6. ^ "Meituan-Dianping Becomes the First Worldwide On-Demand Delivery Platform to Process More Than 10 Million Orders and Deliveries Per Day". Archived from the original on June 15, 2017. Retrieved April 2, 2017.
  7. ^ Windsor, Richard. "Meituan-Dianping: Finally, A Chinese Tech IPO With Some Value". Forbes. Retrieved February 22, 2019.
  8. ^ "Meituan revenues up 77% in Q2 2021, exceeding 628 million paying users". China Internet Watch. August 30, 2021. Retrieved November 24, 2021.
  9. ^ Lim, Jason (December 28, 2011). "Meituan to End 2011 as China's No.1 Group Buying Site". Tech Node. Tech Node. Retrieved March 22, 2015.
  10. ^ a b Epstein, Gady (April 11, 2011). "The Cloner". The Forbes. The Forbes. Retrieved March 22, 2015.
  11. ^ Liu, Yi, and Juliana Sutanto. "Buyers' purchasing time and herd behavior on deal-of-the-day group buying websites." Electronic Markets 22.2 (2012): 83–93
  12. ^ ChinaRetailNews.com Editor (January 7, 2015). "Meituan.com Chinese Group Buying Platform Reached CNY46 Billion For 2014". ChinaRetailNews.com. Retrieved February 19, 2015. {{cite news}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  13. ^ Shu, Catherine (January 19, 2015). "Meituan, China's Leading Group Deals Site, Raises $700M At $7B Valuation". TechCrunch. Retrieved November 4, 2015.
  14. ^ Xiang, Nina. "General Atlantic Leads $300M Series C For China's Meituan.Com". Retrieved November 4, 2015.
  15. ^ "Meituan and Dianping, China's Top Group Deals Sites, Merge In Multi-Billion Dollar Deal". October 8, 2015. Retrieved January 19, 2016.
  16. ^ Clover, Charles (January 19, 2016). "Chinese online group Meituan Dianping raises $3.3bn". Financial Times. Retrieved January 19, 2016.
  17. ^ Pham, Sherisse. "China's app for everything Meituan Dianping jumps in IPO". CNNMoney. Retrieved September 27, 2018.
  18. ^ Meituan Dianping Formally Renamed To Meituan
  19. ^ "Meituan is becoming China's everyday lifestyle app; raises $10 billion to compete with Alibaba". Entrepreneurship News, Community, and Resources | BEAMSTART. Retrieved April 21, 2021.
  20. ^ Chiu, Joanne (April 20, 2021). "China's Meituan Amasses $10 Billion War Chest for Drones and Driverless Cars". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved April 21, 2021.
  21. ^ "China opens antitrust probe into food delivery service Meituan". South China Morning Post. April 26, 2021. Retrieved May 2, 2021.
  22. ^ Zhong, Raymond (April 26, 2021). "China opens an inquiry into Meituan, a takeout-delivery titan". The New York Times. Retrieved May 2, 2021.
  23. ^ Kharpal, Arjun (May 12, 2021). "China tech crackdown turns to food delivery giant Meituan as $38.96 billion is wiped off value". CNBC. Retrieved May 13, 2021.
  24. ^ Zhang, Angela Huyue (2024). High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780197682258.
  25. ^ am730 (May 19, 2023). "美團外賣平台「KeeTa」傳下周一推行服務 首試點於旺角大角咀". am730 (in Chinese). Retrieved November 30, 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  26. ^ "Meituan-Dianping Hotel & Travel Business Group – ITB China". www.itb-china.com. Retrieved May 10, 2017.[permanent dead link]
  27. ^ "MEITUAN ANNUAL REPORT 2020" (PDF). Meituan Annual Report 2020.
  28. ^ Su, Wiki (January 15, 2015). "Meituan.com Receives $700M Series D Financing". China Money Network. Retrieved February 19, 2015.
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  • Official website  
  • Business data for Meituan: