The War of a Thousand Groupons

Digitally China

In the latest Digitally China we’re looking back on history. Meituan-Dianping is China’s clear market leader within group buying, offline discovery and online-offline services today. But it wasn’t that clear a few years back. In fact, the opposite was true, with the American giant Groupon entering China backed by a powerful partner in Tencent. In a hyper-competitive environment, there were suddenly thousands of group-buying services all fighting for the position that Meituan has today.

For a sense of what that time was like, we interviewed Tim He, who was a senior executive of Gaopeng, the Chinese subsidiary of Groupon when they entered the market. Tim, who took a break from Harvard to go back to China to take on the daunting task of trying to win in such an enormous, sprawling market, takes us through some of the incredible stories from that exciting period.

As a seasoned investor at one of Europe’s most renowned venture firms, Kinnevik, Tim also reflects on learnings from the Chinese technology sector as well as the success factors behind today's “super apps” of China.

Topics covered in this episode

• How Groupon entered the Chinese market
• The group-buying industry
• How to operate in a market with thousands of competitors
• What lessons can you learn from China that are applicable for Western markets?
• The success factors behind super app companies such as Meituan-Dianping, Alipay and more

Guests:

· Tim He, investor at Kinnevik and previous senior executive of Gaopeng, the Chinese Groupon.

Host: Tom Xiong

Producer: Jacob Lovén & Katarina Andersson

Digitally China is a subjective but independent depiction of the tech scene in China. Audio clips used in the podcast have not been distorted nor taken out of context and are included for commentary and educational purposes and thus shall be considered “Fair Use”. Digitally China is powered by RADII (www.radiichina.com), an independent media platform exploring China from all angles.

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