Meituan, a leading Chinese group-buying service, generated RMB46 billion (around US$7.4 bn) in gross merchandise volume in 2014, a 180% year-on-year increase.
More than 90% of the total volume was from mobile devices, up from around 50% in the previous year.
The company claims its market share now exceeds 60%, up from around 50% in 2013. The number of cities Meituan covers has reached 1000. It claims to be the largest group-buying service in 778 cities.
Registered users have reached 200 million.
The company says its goal for this year is to reach RMB100 billion in gross merchandise volume.
Meituan and Dianping, another major player in China’s group-buying market, are both reportedly planning for US IPO. There were rumors last month that both companies had raised massive new rounds of funding.
While Meituan has been developing separate local lifestyle apps, such as CatEye (our translation) for movie ticket booking and a food delivery app, Dianping has been strengthening its existing platform. It invested in four restaurant management software developers and the public WiFi provider Wiwide in 2014. The company also recently launched a mobile advertising program, hoping that advertising and marketing rather than transaction commissions will become its major revenue source (source in Chinese).
As of the third quarter of 2014, Dianping, including rating and reviews and group-buying, had 170 million monthly active users, 10 million merchants, and 42 million ratings & reviews.
Editing by Mike Cormack (@bucketoftongues)
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