Meituan
More info
- Founded
- 2010
- Founder
- Wang Xing
- Type
- Super-app (local services)
China's dominant app for food delivery and local services, built by serial entrepreneur Wang Xing out of a Groupon clone.
Meituan (美团) was founded in 2010 by Wang Xing as one of hundreds of Chinese Groupon clones in the "war of a thousand group-buying sites." It survived through persistence and in 2015 merged with the review site Dianping. The result was a super-app for local services: food delivery, restaurant booking, hotels, tickets and bike-sharing in one.
Scooter-riding delivery couriers became an everyday sight in Chinese cities, and the company listed in Hong Kong in 2018. Meituan competes with Alibaba and ByteDance for the same everyday transactions, and like them has felt both antitrust fines and squeezed margins in a business where the profit per delivery is minimal.