E-commerce group Alibaba and its financial services affiliate Ant Financial have invested $1.25bn in China-based online food ordering platform Ele.me, they confirmed yesterday.
Alibaba provided $900m of the funding while Ant Financial put up the other $350m. Ele.me’s valuation has not been officially disclosed but a report in December 2015 stated Alibaba was set to pay $1.25bn for a 27.7% stake in the company.
Ele.me runs an online platform used to order food for delivery from local restaurants, operating in an increasingly busy sector in China.
In addition to the funding, Ele.me has agreed a partnership with Alibaba that will involve it integrating with Alibaba subsidiary Taobao and Alipay, an online payment platform overseen by Ant.
Ant will also provide financial services to Ele.me’s network of local restaurants, as well as cloud computing and location services, it told Tech in Asia. Ele.me will supply operational support to Koubei, a competitor owned by Alibaba.
The round increased Ele.me’s overall funding to about $2.35bn, and follows a $630m series F round in August 2015 that valued it at more than $3bn, as well as an undisclosed amount invested by ride hailing platform Didi Kuaidi in November.
Internet company Tencent, retailer Hualian Group, e-commerce company JD.com, Citic Private Equity, China Media Capital, Gopher Asset , Horizon Ventures, Slender West Lake Investment and Sequoia Capital made up the series F consortium.
Ele.me’s existing investors also include GSR Ventures, Matrix Partners and Dianping, the local services review platform that provided $80m for the company in 2014 before taking part in a $350m round in January 2015 alongside JD, Tencent, Sequoia and Citic PE.