China Ecommerce Roundup: VANCL, Rakuten, Meituan and Suning
- VANCL Loses Brand Marketing VP: Rumor has it that VANCL lost its Brand Marketing VP Yang Fang, following the resignation of its CFO Zhu Jiwen and its founding member/VP Wu Shen in last year.
VANCL postponed its scheduled IPO this year due to market turmoil. The company currently is under a lot of pressure after branching out blindly over the past few years.
2. Baidu Denies Rakuten Downsizing: Local media broke that Rakuten.cn, the JV between Baidu and Japan’s Rakuten is shedding off 50% of its over 100 strong headcount. Baidu denied the claim.
Baidu and Rakuten co-founded Rakuten.cn in 2010 with a promised investment of US$ 50 million. Rakuten.cn revealed today that the it has received the whole amount from Baidu.
3. Meituan Claims 300M Sales in March: Meituan, the Chinese daily deal site just announced reaching a record RMB 300 million in sales in this March, the first one among its peers in China.
The company posted annual sales of RMB 1.819 billion in 2011.
4. Sohu to Enhance Payment Service A hiring ad shows that Sohu, the news portal slash gaming vendor will be stepping its toes into payment solution business. People familiar with the matter said that Sohu is working on some kind of virtual currency resembles Tencent’s Q coin as well as its own online payment system that similar to Tencent’s Tenpay or Alibaba’s Alipay, the largest 3rd party online payment service provider in China.
Sohu already has its own virtual currency that could be used through some of its offerings like 17173.com, VIP Mail and so on. It seems that Sohu wants to extend its adoption into other forefronts.
5. Suning to Launch Price War and Travel Booking Service: Suning, the black horse of Chinese B2C sites announced today to launch a price war over April 18 – April 20. And travel booking will be added as the latest addition to its services.
Eyeing the flourishing of China’s online travel agencies, 360buy also made available its travel booking effort lately.