Meituan-Dianping, the world’s largest O2O platform, explained for the first time its investments strategy in overseas markets.
The Chinese lifestyle e-commerce major invested in Indonesia’s Go-Jek and India’s food delivery startup Swiggy earlier this year.
“Through the two investments, we want to not only take full advantage of Chinese capital but also to introduce Chinese internet market expertise overseas,” said WANG Xing, founder and CEO of Meituan-Dianping on April 23 at a conference in China.
WANG expects to serve 1 billion customers on daily basis by leveraging on technological innovation, the merger of online and offline services, and usage of artificial intelligence technologies. And he believes that he could instill the company’s proven practice into Southeast Asia markets.
Starting from a ride-hailing startup, Go-Jek has developed into a comprehensive platform that offers digital payment, takeaway deliveries, e-commerce and logistics services, while Swiggy operates India’s largest food delivery platform.
Meituan’s food delivery arm is China’s second largest and the company has accumulated a considerate amount of experience in how to operate and scale up the business, which could be tapped by its overseas investees, such as India’s Swiggy.
New stage of China internet economy
WANG thinks China has entered a new phase of the digital economy, as digitalization, intelligentization, and internetization are improving the efficiency in lots of industries. At the same time, WNAG reckons that the new phase of the digital economy is bringing opportunities for China to take its innovations and experience overseas.
“As a participant and witness of the development of the internet economy in China, I felt all the more that internet economy in China is stepping into a new stage after it was first introduced to the country 20 years ago,” said WANG.
Meituan-Dianping wants to be involved more closely in the real economy and many aspects of people’s lives. What Meituan-Dianping is doing now is to merge its internet platform with offline restaurants, hotels, travel experiences, films, retail, the real economy and other services.
The fundamental standard for the development of the digital economy is whether customers’ needs are satisfied, said WANG.
WANG also thinks Mobike is a good example of how internet platform could help improve a traditional industry. As a real “created in China” startup, the bike-sharing startup provided the world’s first bike fits for the sharing economy. In a sense, Mobike also constructs the world’s largest IoT (Internet of things) platform.
“China’s e-commerce platforms are ways ahead of the world, providing unique opportunities for innovations in the country’s internet industry,” WANG said at the conference.
Read more: Meituan Acquires Bike-sharing Startup Mobike to Keep Diversifying Business
