Meituan-Dianping, the world’s largest O2O e-commerce platform, seems to get off to a solid start with its newly launched ride-hailing services in the city of Nanjing and Shanghai.
WANG Xin, founder and CEO of the company, revealed while speaking at a local forum on March 24 that Meituan had gobbled up a market share of over 30% in cities it has officially launched its ride-hailing service, referring to Nanjing and Shanghai.
Just 4 days ago, Meituan kicked off the service in Shanghai. And the second day after the launch, on March 22, Meituan saw its rides surged 66% from the first day to 250k.
According to Didi Chuxing, China’s largest ride-hailing company by market share, it handles 20 million rides per day across China.
In comparison with Didi’s daunting daily rides number, Meituan’s 250K might not seem to be that much. However, it’s very impressive to see that Meituan managed to challenge the monopoly and grabbed one-third market share in each city it has officially launched.
Didi should be worried that if Meituan keeps the momentum.
Local media, citing people close to Meituan, said that the Beijing-based company has appropriated a war chest of US$ 1 billion for its ride-hailing business, with no upper limit.
Didi hasn’t given out any responses yet, but CHENG Wei, the founder and CEO of Didi Chuxing, once told Chinese financial media Caijing: “If you want war, you will get war. Meituan may not be the weakest (competitor), but it may not be the strongest either.”