Funding to Strengthen Company's Core Business Groups and Enable Continued Investment in AI-based Technology and Innovation to Lead Services Industry E-Commerce Transformation

BEIJING, Oct. 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Meituan-Dianping, China's largest service-focused e-commerce platform, today announced it has raised $4 billion in a new Series C financing round. This latest funding round was led by Tencent and includes new investor The Priceline Group and other key investors including Sequoia Capital, GIC, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Trustbridge Partners, Coatue Management, IDG Capital, Tiger Global Management, and China-UAE Investment Cooperation Fund.  

Wang Xing, CEO of Meituan-Dianping, stated: "Meituan-Dianping is leading a major transformation of China's traditional services industry by creating a powerful new e-commerce ecosystem that covers customers' whole day lifestyle scenarios. We pride ourselves on being a global pioneer that is creating one-stop service offerings under a unified platform. Customers are able to access various types of services, from restaurant reservations to on-demand delivery, hotel and travel bookings, and entertainment, all through a single mobile application. The strong support from a number of innovative and strategic global investors in this financing round is strong validation of our business model and strategy."

"Meituan-Dianping presently has the largest service-focused e-commerce platform in China, but even so, numerous parts of our diversified business are in early stages of growth and the opportunities for further expansion are enormous. We look forward to investing wisely to build out our platform and offerings and to fully leverage AI-based and analytics-driven technology, for the benefit of our consumers and merchant partners," continued Wang Xing.  

With this new funding, Meituan-Dianping will further strengthen the already market-leading positions of its four business groups: In-Store Dining, Lifestyle & Entertainment, On-Demand Delivery, and Travel & Leisure. As part of its long-term strategy, the Company will continue to invest in cutting-edge technology to create innovative solutions and drive further efficiencies for local businesses, all to better serve the very large active buying consumer base in China. The Company will also focus on expanding into key target verticals with high potential and that complement the Company's existing services.

Tencent has been a critical long-term strategic partner to Meituan-Dianping and will continue to help the Company invest thoughtfully, expand the business, and remain the industry leader in China.  In addition to welcoming The Priceline Group as a new investor in the current funding round, Meituan Travel, Meituan-Dianping's travel and leisure platform, has entered into a new strategic partnership agreement with Agoda.com, a global online accommodation reservation company under The Priceline Group, to create a mutually beneficial commercial relationship between both companies.

Martin Lau, President of Tencent, commented: "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."

Todd Henrich, global Head of Corporate Development of The Priceline Group, said: "We are excited to support Meituan-Dianping, the well-recognized leader in China's local services industry. Our commercial relationship between Agoda.com and Meituan-Dianping will help each company benefit from the other's expertise and capitalize on the opportunities presented by China's exceptionally large travel market."

Since the 2015 strategic cooperation that created Meituan-Dianping, the Company has built a unique one-stop services platform dedicated to meeting consumers' evolving needs while empowering merchants and brands through online and offline integration. Using innovative technology, the Company connects more than 280 million annual active buying consumers with more than five million annual active local merchants across China, all of whom have access to an extremely wide variety of services and product categories via Meituan-Dianping's diversified platform.

During the last year in particular, Meituan-Dianping has reached a number of important milestones and achieved many important records in the industry:

• Cemented its leadership position in its dining and delivery related business groups, reaching 86% market share for In-Store Dining and 61% market share for On-Demand Delivery.
• Became the first online delivery platform globally to process a record 16 million single day on-demand delivery orders.
• Enhanced its Travel & Leisure business group with the launch of Meituan Travel, a consolidated platform which has already broken records. It has become China's second largest hotel reservation platform, reaching 36% market share in less than a year and a record 1.47 million hotel room nights sold on a single day.
• Significantly grew its Lifestyle & Entertainment business group and launched Co-Line Marketing, the first fully integrated online and offline programmatic marketing platform, with geo-localized consumer profiles to help merchants precisely reach their target customers.  
• Successfully entered into new verticals, including new retail and B&B accommodation.

Wang Xing concluded, "We are very grateful for the confidence that both our long-standing and new investors have in Meituan-Dianping and we look forward to working together to further build on our many important successes to date."

About Meituan-Dianping

Meituan-Dianping is China's largest service-focused e-commerce platform, connecting more than 280 million young annual active buying consumers with more than five million annual active local merchants across 2800 cities in China, from tier one cities to minority counties, processing 21 million orders on a single day.

Under its "We Help People Eat Better, Live Better" mission, the Company offers a one-stop daily life services platform aiming to improve overall way of life for consumers through its dominant leadership in more than 200 service and product categories. Meituan-Dianping leverages its platform strategy to drive constant product upgrades through technology innovation and empowering local businesses by boosting industry efficiency through digital, internet and mobile solutions.

Meituan-Dianping is the industry leader across its four major business groups: In-Store Dining, the largest and most comprehensive online dining platform in China; Lifestyle & Entertainment (previously "In-Store Others"), the online market leader across multiple verticals, including weddings, beauty, mom & kids, KTV, renovation, and other leisure and entertainment services; On-Demand Delivery, the world's largest and most efficient delivery platform; and Travel & Leisure, with offerings covering accommodation, domestic travel, outbound travel, and transportation.

About Tencent

Tencent uses technology to enrich the lives of Internet users. Our social products Weixin and QQ link our users to a rich digital content catalogue including games, video, music and books. Our proprietary targeting technology helps advertisers reach out to hundreds of millions of consumers in China. Our infrastructure services including payment, security, cloud and artificial intelligence create differentiated offerings and support our partners' business growth. Tencent invests heavily in people and innovation, enabling us to evolve with the Internet. Tencent was founded in Shenzhen, China, in 1998. Shares of Tencent (00700.hk) are traded on the Main Board of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong.

About The Priceline Group

The Priceline Group (NASDAQ: PCLN) is the world leader in online travel and related services, provided to customers and partners in over 220 countries through six primary brands - Booking.com, priceline.com, KAYAK, agoda.com, rentalcars.com, and OpenTable. The Priceline Group's mission is to help people experience the world. For more information, visit PricelineGroup.com.

For enquiries, please contact:

Meituan-Dianpin
Jane Zuo
Investor Relations
Email: zuozhen@meituan.com

FTI Consulting
Marie Peterson                                                              Cara O'Brien
Phone: +86 21 2315 1131                                             Phone: +852 3768 4537
Email: marie.peterson@fticonsulting.com                     Email: cara.obrien@fticonsulting.com

SOURCE Meituan-Dianping