Meituan

Since April, mainland Chinese consumers have been spoiled for choice, as instant commerce competition brought dazzling promotional subsidies and speedy deliveries right to their doorsteps. Instant commerce – a turbocharged combination of online shopping and swift dispatch – had already made a typical lunchbox order cost around US$1 or US$2, which covered the food and the delivery fee. On-demand delivery giant Meituan’s “Grouping for Good Meals” campaign, for example, offered a four-dish set meal...

Alibaba's mapping app Amap is moving away from its traditional focus on navigation and encroaching into rival Meituan's local-lifestyle territory...

Alibaba Group Holding on Wednesday launched an artificial intelligence-powered ranking feature on its online mapping service Amap, as the tech giant doubles down on AI applications and deepens its rivalry with food delivery leader Meituan. Amap Street Stars, a ranking featured on the app’s homepage, used AI algorithms to rank offline destinations including restaurants, hotels and tourist attractions, to “advance Amap’s role as the gateway for lifestyle services”, Alibaba said at the launch event...

Alibaba Group Holding has fired another shot at on-demand delivery giant Meituan, with a campaign that brings merchants from its Tmall business-to-consumer shopping platform onto its Taobao Instant Commerce site. The campaign – dubbed “Jishigou”, which translates to instant purchase in Chinese – has seen more than 260 brands on Alibaba’s Tmall premium retail platform join its instant commerce service, the company said on Tuesday. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. Taobao Shangou,...

Meituan CEO Wang Xing is rallying employees around the firm’s instant commerce efforts, overseas expansion and greater social security for delivery workers, more than a week after reporting a sharp fall in second-quarter earnings amid a bruising price war with Alibaba Group Holding and JD.com. In his all-hands letter to staff over the weekend that was widely shared online, Wang said Meituan had served more than 770 million users over the past 12 months through the 14.5 million merchants on its...

On-demand local services giant Meituan has become the latest Chinese Big Tech company to release an open-source large language model (LLM) to market, more than two years after it acquired mainland AI start-up Light Year for US$281 million. Beijing-based Meituan, the long-standing leader of China’s food delivery market, on Monday released and open-sourced its own LLM, called LongCat-Flash-Chat, via artificial intelligence developer platforms Hugging Face and GitHub, as well as the model’s...

Meituan warned of major losses this quarter while waging a price-based battle with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and JD.com Inc., the most striking...

Chinese on-demand local services giant Meituan said its second-quarter earnings fell sharply, as it faced off against Alibaba Group Holding and JD.com in a costly delivery price war. Meituan’s management, however, said on Wednesday’s earnings call that the company would not be “greatly affected by a short-term price war”, highlighting its operational efficiency. Still, the management said the company would continue to prioritise growth over profitability in instant commerce. They also projected...

Alibaba Group Holding and its fintech affiliate Ant Group, both co-founded by Jack Ma, have joined forces to create an army of delivery service workers to defeat Meituan in the instant commerce market. A total of 22 businesses operated by Alibaba and Ant, including domestic online marketplaces Taobao and Tmall, Ant’s Alipay payment service and Alibaba Cloud, have pledged to improve the conditions of millions of delivery riders. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. Alibaba’s move to pool...

After Meituan stopped its subsidies, Alibaba topped the daily delivery volume on Friday and Saturday, LatePost reported.

The daily delivery volume of Alibaba Group Holding briefly surpassed rival Meituan last week after it offered free drinks to customers who ordered through its on-demand service amid the industry’s cutthroat competition, according to a report by the technology media outlet LatePost. Orders on Alibaba’s instant commerce channel Taobao Shangou topped 100 million on Thursday, 20 million fewer than Meituan. After Meituan stopped its promotion on Friday and Saturday, Taobao’s orders overtook...

Chinese consumers were lapping up offers of free drinks and discounted meals from food delivery giants Alibaba Group Holding and Meituan. “This is one...

Shanghai delivery rider Xie Yu was halfway through his shift on Thursday when he realised he would end up with nearly 100 orders for the whole day, double his average number. The reason for the huge spike? Chinese consumers were lapping up offers of free drinks and discounted meals from food delivery giants Alibaba Group Holding and Meituan. “This is one of the craziest days I’ve experienced since I became a rider,” said Xie, 39, who has worked for both Alibaba’s Ele.me and Meituan over the past...

Alibaba, which operates Taobao and Ele.me, owns the South China Morning Post. Alibaba's Hong Kong-listed shares gained 1 per cent on Friday while...

Meituan and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. vowed Friday to curb “disorderly competition” and cease the price-based rivalry that's threatened to...

China’s top three on-demand delivery service operators – Alibaba Group Holding, Meituan and JD.com – have publicly announced an “anti-involution” commitment, signalling a truce in their brutal price war. On Friday, the three companies vowed to engage in “rational” competition and resist offering excessive subsidies, according to separate statements published two weeks after China’s market regulator urged them to stop engaging in excessive competition, known locally as “involution”. Alibaba,...

Meituan and JD.com are taking China’s delivery war to another level, as the two instant commerce rivals have started building thousands of central kitchens in strategic locations to speed up fulfilment of online food orders. On-demand local delivery giant Meituan is expected to continue leading the market through its launch of 1,200 so-called Raccoon Restaurants over the next three years, a plan it revealed early last month. These facilities are designed as food court-like hubs that host various...

ByteDance's Douyin, the Chinese counterpart of TikTok, is set to heat up competition in China's instant commerce sector against Alibaba Group...

ByteDance’s Douyin, the Chinese counterpart of TikTok, is set to heat up competition in China’s instant commerce sector against Alibaba Group Holding, JD.com and Meituan with the merger of its online shopping platform and instant delivery service, according to a report by Chinese tech news website 36Kr on Wednesday. Douyin Supermarket, akin to TikTok Shop, is integrating with Douyin Hourly Delivery, which leverages precise mapping and location services to ensure rapid deliveries to consumers,...

Prosus NV has started selling down its stake in Meituan, a holding valued at more than $4 billion, after the Chinese food-delivery app announced plans to start expanding in some of Prosus’ territories such as Brazil, people familiar with the matter said.

Competition escalated further after Alibaba's Ele.me announced subsidies last month. There's been growing discussion about “RMB 0 purchase” promotions...