Groupon is pretty funny. I am not going to criticize it here because its business model is very fascinating indeed, but the global group purchase market it triggered has gone far too crazy. Groupon is reported to acquire uBuyiBuy, Beeconomic and Atlaspost to enter Asia, on the other hand, the rumor also says Google is willing to spend $6 billions to acquire Groupon.
We used to report that Groupon is in talk with its five Chinese clones, but till now there is no sign of any deal. Is valuation for these companies too high? or Groupon itself is still not clear about Chinese industry? We don’t have any clue yet. But today, two top Groupon clones, Lashou and Meituan, both officially said they have raised several millions dollar venture capital.
Lashou just closed its second round of funding, $10millions which is led by Tenaya Venture and Norwest Venture, together with GSR Venture and Rebate Network. Report says that the valuation for Lashou is now several hundreds millions dollars.
Wang Xin, founder of Meituan also told the public, probably for the first time, he has raised some funding from the famous Sequaia Capital. He did not tell the figure, but I heard that it’s $5millions.
Don’t tell me it’s kinda of coincidence. What message these Groupon want to deliver to the Chinese public or even to the global market? You may tell me.