What Tencent Executive Says about Weixin O2O Business

Dai Zhikang became the head of Tencent’s lifestyle e-commerce division after Comsenz, a startup he founded, was acquired by Tencent in 2010. His team released Weixin membership card in mid-2012, a loyalty program for users to subscribe to merchants’ Weixin accounts and for businesses to do CRM.

Unlike other low-key Tencent executives, Dai occasionally accepted interviews. On the latest one, he talked about the online-to-offline service, or O2O, his team was building on top of Weixin.

It doesn’t feel it’s such a big deal as expected, for Tencent’s senior management didn’t give orders about it, if what Dai said is true. Now half his team are still working on Discuz!, a BBS service – Comsenz’s major business, while the rest are building the online-to-offline services. Based in Beijing, Dai flies regularly to Guangzhou, where Weixin development team is based, to talk to Zhang Xiaolong, or Allen Zhang, to see what his team can do with Weixin.

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