Meituan: Food + Platform

The Chinese food delivery powerhouse and its ongoing evolution into a SuperApp

My name is Mikal — I’m an early-stage tech investor and I was born in Asia, grew up in Africa and now live in the US. Every week I break down a fast-growing business in an emerging market in my newsletter Emergent to understand its product, market and growth strategy.

This week I’m breaking down Meituan.

Meituan is a Chinese “SuperApp,” the leader in the food delivery segment and China’s third most valuable internet company ($250 billlion market capitalization). Meituan is a pioneer in the food delivery industry globally and remains the most innovative company in the sector. Its expansion from food delivery into other higher-value categories is a model being emulated worldwide by the likes of DoorDash, Getir and Deliveroo. Today, Meituan offers everything from in-person booking for restaurants to food delivery and airline ticket purchases.

Founded in 2010, Meituan has grown at extraordinary speed in the last decade:

• It generates annual revenues of almost $14 billion today
• Serves an impressive 500 million customers across China
• Has 6.5 million merchants on the platform
• Delivers over 34 million food orders per day across China
• Generating annual profits of over $600 million

Even in 2020, where many of Meituan’s business lines were adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, it still managed to grow its overall revenue by 9% in the first half of 2020.

Products

Meituan is a highly complex business and a unique animal, merging elements of Yelp, Groupon, Uber, Doordash and Expedia’s products all together in a single app (see this 5-minute explainer video of the Meituan product). Meituan originally started as essentially the “Groupon for China” in 2010. However, Meituan was not alone in chasing this vision. At the time over 5,000 similar startups were started in China attempting to replicate the Groupon business model. This intensely competitive environment…