Meituan.com (美團網), a Chinese group-discount Web site backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴), raised US$700 million from unidentified investors, with chief executive Wang Xing (王興) saying the firm is now worth US$7 billion.
Transaction volumes are expected to increase to 100 billion yuan (US$16.1 billion) this year, and rise to 1 trillion yuan in 2020, Wang said on Sunday at a news conference in Beijing. At the end of last year, the figure was 46 billion yuan, he said.
“We will focus on developing business areas that many people use frequently,” Wang said, listing hotels, food delivery and movie tickets.
While Wang reaffirmed Meituan’s plan to undertake an initial public offering some day, he said the company was not focused on one in the next two years.
Meituan, which has about 20 million active daily mobile users and is part-owned by Alibaba, is tapping China’s surging middle class consumers, who are seeking deals for entertainment and restaurants.
About 90 percent of the platform’s transactions are done through Meituan’s mobile applications. The company competes against Dianping.com (大眾點評網), a Yelp Inc-like Web site backed by Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊), Asia’s No. 2 Internet company.
Meituan has operations in about 1,000 cities, up from from 300 a year ago, Wang said on Sunday. Sales reached 1.9 billion yuan last year, he said.
The company, which began offering its services in March 2010, attracted US$12 million from Sequoia Capital Operations that same year, and a further US$50 million in an investment led by Alibaba and Sequoia in July 2011.
Chicago-based Groupon has a market value of about US$4.9 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
E-commerce spending by Chinese consumers will reach 3.3 trillion yuan by this year, according to a Bain & Co report from August 2013.
China had more than 630 million Web users as of June last year. Beijing-based Meituan offers local business-search services that include consumer-generated reviews. Users can also buy coupons and get group discounts.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last