Short video app Kuaishou and food delivery giant Meituan announced a strategic partnership to connect their platforms on Monday.
Why it matters: With the deal, Kuaishou and Meituan will work closer to fend off their common rival Douyin, the TikTok’s Chinese version, which is accelerating its foray into Meituan’s home turf of local lifestyle services.
- Tencent, which owns a 21.6% stake in Kuaishou, is also a major investor in Meituan.
- Kuaishou has adopted an open attitude towards external partnerships in driving growth, especially towards companies in Tencent’s portfolio. In 2020, the short video app also signed a cooperation deal with Tencent-backed online retailer JD.com.
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Details: Kuaishou announced the partnership with Meituan at its Ecological Opening Conference held on Monday. The new deal between the two companies allows Kuaishou users to access Meituan’s lifestyle services, such as ordering food, through a newly launched Meituan mini-program without leaving the short video app.
- Meituan’s mini-program on Kuaishou currently only supports its core food delivery features, allowing users to browse restaurant listings, place orders, and access after-sales services. Users can also redeem vouchers and make reservations through the mini-program.
- In a Monday statement (in Chinese), the food delivery giant said that it plans to expand offerings in the mini-program to include more categories such as booking hotels, homestays, travel attractions, and beauty salons.
- In the tie-up, Kuaishou is giving Meituan access to its large user base (573 million monthly active users in China in Q3 this year). In return, it hopes to gain higher user retention by integrating daily services.
- The short-video company also launched its “one-stop open platform” at the Monday event. The new platform incorporates a series of features such as mini-programs, service accounts, point of interest interfaces, and various tools that help merchants and service providers to manage their branding, marketing, and supply chains.
Context: Kuaishou is China’s second-largest short video platform by daily active users, behind only ByteDance’s Douyin.
- Listed this February in Hong Kong, the company has seen significant stock price volatility over the past few months due to weaker-than-expected earnings guidance and regulatory concerns.
- Kuaishou reportedly began a new round of layoffs in December, one month after co-founder Su Hua stepped down as CEO.
Update: The article is updated with Kuaishou’s Chinese user number.