Priceline help Meituan-Dianping raise $4 billion

Meituan-Dianping, China’s largest service-focused e-commerce platform, today announced it has raised $4 billion in a new Series C financing round. 

This latest funding round was led by Tencent and includes new investor The Priceline Group and other key investors including Sequoia Capital, GIC, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Trustbridge Partners, Coatue Management, IDG Capital, Tiger Global Management, and China-UAE Investment Cooperation Fund.

Wang Xing, CEO of Meituan-Dianping, stated: “Meituan-Dianping is leading a major transformation of China’s traditional services industry by creating a powerful new e-commerce ecosystem that covers customers’ whole day lifestyle scenarios. We pride ourselves on being a global pioneer that is creating one-stop service offerings under a unified platform. Customers are able to access various types of services, from restaurant reservations to on-demand delivery, hotel and travel bookings, and entertainment, all through a single mobile application. The strong support from a number of innovative and strategic global investors in this financing round is strong validation of our business model and strategy.”

“Meituan-Dianping presently has the largest service-focused e-commerce platform in China but even so, numerous parts of our diversified business are in early stages of growth and the opportunities for further expansion are enormous. We look forward to investing wisely to build out our platform and offerings and to fully leverage AI-based and analytics-driven technology, for the benefit of our consumers and merchant partners,” continued Wang Xing.

Meituan-Dianping’s market focus

With this new funding, Meituan-Dianping will further strengthen the already market-leading positions of its four business groups: In-Store Dining, Lifestyle & Entertainment, On-Demand Delivery, and Travel & Leisure. As part of its long-term strategy, the Company will continue to invest in cutting-edge technology to create innovative solutions and drive further efficiencies for local businesses, all to better serve the very large active buying consumer base in China. The Company will also focus on expanding into key target verticals with high potential and that complement the Company’s existing services.

Tencent has been a critical long-term strategic partner to Meituan-Dianping and will continue to help the Company invest thoughtfully, expand the business, and remain the industry leader in China. In addition to welcoming The Priceline Group as a new investor in the current funding round, Meituan Travel, Meituan-Dianping’s travel and leisure platform, has entered into a new strategic partnership agreement with Agoda.com, a global online accommodation reservation company under The Priceline Group, to create a mutually beneficial commercial relationship between both companies.

Martin Lau, President of Tencent, commented: “We are glad to continue providing Meituan-Dianping with both strategic and financial support as it fulfills its vision of transforming China’s food and lifestyle services industry. The Company is executing smoothly and at scale across multiple categories, is providing convenience and value to consumers, and is contributing to a healthy and diversified China Internet ecosystem.”

Todd Henrich, global Head of Corporate Development of The Priceline Group (fronted in US advertising by William Shatner, pictured above, since 1997), said: “We are excited to support Meituan-Dianping, the well-recognized leader in China’s local services industry. Our commercial relationship between Agoda.com and Meituan-Dianping will help each company benefit from the other’s expertise and capitalize on the opportunities presented by China’s exceptionally large travel market.”

Since the 2015 strategic cooperation that created Meituan-Dianping, the Company has built a unique one-stop services platform dedicated to meeting consumers’ evolving needs while empowering merchants and brands through online and offline integration.

Using innovative technology, the Company connects more than 280 million annual active buying consumers with more than five million annual active local merchants across China, all of whom have access to an extremely wide variety of services and product categories via Meituan-Dianping’s diversified platform.

Wang Xing concluded, “We are very grateful for the confidence that both our long-standing and new investors have in Meituan-Dianping and we look forward to working together to further build on our many important successes to date.”