Chinese food delivery-to-ticketing platform Meituan Dianping increased the registered capital of its cloud computing subsidiary by 8,600% on December 25, according to corporate intelligence information platform Tianyancha.com (in Chinese).
Why it matters: The change underlines Meituan’s push into the cloud computing market. Chinese tech giants previously focused on consumer-facing businesses are moving quickly to enterprise-facing services. Cloud computing is a major component of this.
- Meituan’s push to cloud computing business is reminiscent of Alibaba and Tencent’s shift to enterprise-faced services.
- The lifestyle services unicorn announced in January that it would invest RMB 11 billion (around $1.7 billion) this year to help merchants upgrade their operations and drive the growth of China’s “Delivery Economy,” a term that refers to the country’s on-demand services boom.
Details: The company’s commercial and business registration change shows that its registered capital increased 8,600% to RMB 870 million from RMB 10 million.
- Meituan founder Wang Xing was replaced by Liu Minjuan as supervisor of the subsidiary.
- Mu Rongjun, Meituan’s co-founder who owns 2.5% of the parent company, remains as executive chairman and manager of the cloud arm.
- Mu Rongjun holds a dominating 95% stake in the subsidiary, while Wang Xing, who holds a minority 5% stake, is the ultimate beneficial owner of the firm.
- A Meituan spokeswoman declined to comment on the change.
Meituan to invest $1.7 billion in push to digitize merchant partners
Context: Founded in June 2015, Meituan’s Beijing-based cloud computing arm is mainly engaged in data processing, technology consulting, infrastructure software services, application software services, software and equipment sales, and telecommunication.
- The Hong Kong-listed parent group recorded a huge turnaround in 2019. It recorded a second quarterly profit with revenues increasing by 44.1% to RMB 27.5 billion from RMB 19.1 billion for the same period of 2018.
- Alibaba rolled out in January the “A100” program. The program is designed to help companies embrace digital transformation as more tech giants are shifting to enterprise-facing services.
- Tencent upgraded its organizational structure to focus on enterprise services and cloud computing last year.