After the recent acquisition of Lazada, Alibaba Group (China) continues to waste press paper when it announced its investment of $ 900 million in a food delivery startup (start-up) project called Ele. .me of China.
According to the latest report from TechCrunch, Chinese food delivery service Ele.me will receive a huge investment of up to $ 900 million from Alibaba Group, plus an additional 125 million from Ant Financial, a finance company affiliated with Alibaba. Therefore, Ele.me’s newest private equity capital will be worth more than $ 2.34 billion.
Founded in 2008, Ele.me was first headquartered in Shanghai, China and offers service that allows take-away food / drink from non-service stores. After officially investing in Ele.me, Alibaba is said to hold a 27.7% stake in the company. Ele.me is currently valued at around $ 4.5 billion.
Besides Ele.me, there are many other startups in China that offer similar services including Deliveroo, JustEat, Take Eat Easy, Hungry House, and Delivery Hero. However, most of them are having financial problems.
It is because companies are too focused on building huge networks to capture the market, but “forgot” the basics of economics, explains Edison. it seems like focusing on potential individuals or organizations.
Besides, the biggest problem facing every food delivery startup is the cost of labor in the developed markets they are pursuing.
Analysts also said that the acquisition of Ele.me shares will help reinforce Alibaba’s O2O strategy even more. O2O means online-to-offline or offline-to-online, which is a type of business that convinces customers online to spend more money in offline businesses and vice versa, persuading customers to shop in person. hand transactions on the network more.
Recently, Alibaba also spent $ 1 billion to own shares and dominate Lazada. The deal is expected to help brands and distributors around the world doing business on Alibaba’s platform more easily access Southeast Asia’s consumer market.