Chen Shaohui joined Meituan-Dianping, a China-based e-commerce platform that raised $4bn in October’s series C round from a consortium led by Tencent, as vice-president of corporate development earlier in 2014 before his promotion to senior VP.
Previously, he has worked in corporate venturing and mergers and acquisitions at China-based media group Tencent for nearly four years after a three-year stint at two venture capital firms and then completing his MBA at Harvard.
With the $4bn raised from a syndicate led by China-based media group Tencent and US peer Priceline Group, as well as financial and government investors, Meituan-Dianping has plenty of funding to expand.
But it could be looking for more. Meituan-Dianping is considering an initial public offering in the US as soon as this year to raise at least $3bn at a $30bn valuation, five people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters in November.
And to help its expansion, Meituan-Dianping has launched a RMB3bn ($440m) corporate venturing fund with Chen as the fund’s CEO.
The first phase of the fund will aim to raise RMB1.5bn from a consortium including Meituan-Dianping, Tencent and China-based food company New Hope Group to back companies operating in the food and beverage, retail, hotel, tourism, and entertainment sectors.
Other corporate venturing deals by Meituan-Dianping last year include a RMB160m ($24.3m) series A round in China-based patient-focused crowdfunding company Shuidi.
Chen, whose colleague Wenqian Zhu was a speaker at the Global Corporate Venturing Asia Congress in September, had originally taken a 20% stake in Dianping in February 2014 while at Tencent. He then helped the restaurant-review and group-buying services provider Dianping’s $850m round in March 2015 at a $4.05bn valuation from a consortium including Tencent.
In October 2015, Dianping then merged with peer Meituan, which in January that year had raised $700m at a $7bn valuation from a syndicate led by Alibaba. With Tencent leading the post-merger C round, Alibaba has seemingly turned its attention elsewhere and invested in a separate group of on-demand service providers, including food delivery platforms Ele.me and Koubei and ticketing service Tao Piao Piao.
Martin Lau, president of Tencent, at the time of its C round said: “We are glad to continue providing Meituan-Dianping with both strategic and financial support as it fulfills its vision of transforming China’s food and lifestyle services industry. The company is executing smoothly and at scale across multiple categories, is providing convenience and value to consumers, and is contributing to a healthy and diversified China internet ecosystem.”
Meituan-Dianping’s market share is impressive. With 86% market share for in-store dining and 61% market share for on-demand delivery, launched Meituan Travel that took more than a third of the hotel reservation market in its first year and launched Co-Line Marketing, an integrated online and offline programmatic marketing platform with geo-localised consumer profiles to help merchants reach their target customer and entered new verticals, including new retail and bed and breakfast (B&B) accommodation.
Meituan-Dianping now has 280 million users and serves as a platform for about five million businesses, Reuters said, adding it had moved to compete with Alibaba and Tencent-backed peer JD.com in offline and artificial intelligence, as well as ride-hailing services such as Didi Chuxing.