Spend 10 billion to set up a new company, what does Ele.me want to do

Ele.me established a new company in Shenzhen

It's been a long time since I've heard from Ele.me.

When Meituan and Douyin were fighting, Ele.me seemed quiet.

The latest news is just a rumor that Douyin and Ali are negotiating to acquire Ele.me, but Ali has refuted the rumors on this matter.

But now, Ele.me has also made a big move. Tianyancha shows that on January 2, Shenzhen Lazas Network Technology Co., Ltd. was established, and the legal representative is Chen Changxiao.

The company is wholly owned by Lazas Network Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., the operating entity of Ele.me, with a registered capital of 10 billion yuan. The business scope includes software development, network technology services, information system integration services, electronic product sales, etc.

Source: Tianyancha

10 billion yuan, this amount is not small. From the scope of business, we can see that Ele.me focuses on investment in technology research and development, which will undoubtedly further accelerate the pace of its technological transformation.

At the same time, through this move, it can also be found that Ele.me is expanding its business territory to further consolidate its market position and increase its competitive advantage.

On June 20, Ele.me held the 2023 Summer Merchant Conference. At the conference, Ele.me announced the establishment of an open platform department, and started from supporting good stores and good products, increasing investment in Sunshine series merchants, focusing on strengthening platform investment in merchant partners, and supporting the needs of new business merchants for technology access and development.

It can be seen that Ele.me starts from the merchant side, and provides technical empowerment for merchants to enrich the business formats on the Ele.me platform and help merchants provide better services for consumers.

In addition, Ele.me has also launched corresponding incentive plans, marketing methods, logistics guarantees, etc. for various types of merchants.

For example, for newly settled takeaway stores, Ele.me has launched the "Seedlings Program" to provide merchants with traffic support, large-scale promotion subsidies, training guidance, etc.;

For chain brands, Ele.me has launched a "joint business plan" to give priority to providing brands with various head marketing traffic resources and IP co-branding activities.

For small and medium-sized businesses, Ele.me has also launched the "Small and Medium-sized Merchant Growth Plan" to allow small and medium-sized businesses to get more support traffic and commercial traffic.

According to Alibaba's results for the second quarter of fiscal 2024, as of September 30, 2023, driven by the businesses of Ele.me and AutoNavi, Alibaba Local Life Group continued to maintain a strong growth momentum, with user acquisition and retention continuing to improve, and annual active consumers continuing to grow quarter-on-quarter.

Among them, Ele.me catering takeaway orders and instant retail orders both achieved double-digit growth.

In the environment of local life, Ele.me is taking the initiative to change and reinvent itself.

Ele.me is catching up

Counting the development process of Ele.me, it is not easy.

Since the first year of takeaway in 2013, the takeaway industry has been surging. As some platforms withdrew from the market, by 2016, a three-legged takeaway market pattern of Baidu Takeaway, Ele.me, and Meituan Takeaway was finally formed.

According to the research report on China's food delivery industry released by iiMedia Consulting, in Q1 2017, Ele.me occupied the first place with 7.26% of the distribution of active app users, followed by Meituan Takeaway and Baidu Takeaway, respectively.

In August of the same year, Ele.me officially acquired Baidu Takeaway. As a result, Ele.me's market share has increased from about 30% in 2016 to 54% of the highest level in 2017, ranking first in the market.

In April 2018, founder Zhang Xuhao sold Ele.me to Alibaba for a high price of 66.5 billion yuan. That acquisition was the largest acquisition in China's Internet history at the time.

In a media interview at the time, Zhang Xuhao bluntly said, "With Ali, we can win." At that time, Zhang Xuhao was very confident.

Zhang Xuhao, founder of Ele.me

But the result was not as expected, Ele.me gradually fell behind after reaching the peak of market share, but Meituan bucked the trend and successfully counterattacked.

According to the "2020 Q2 China Food Delivery Industry Development Analysis Report" released by Trustdata, as of the second quarter of 2020, Meituan's food delivery market share has reached 68.2%, while Ele.me accounts for only 25.4%, far behind Meituan. Even in the first half of 2022, Ele.me's market share continued to drop to 15%.

At the same time, the number of active users and transaction volume of Ele.me are not as good as before.

During last year's World Cup, both Meituan and Ele.me took the opportunity to give themselves a wave of publicity. Meituan has carried out joint marketing with many retail brands, sponsored the unpopular team Ghana, and played homophonic stalks, earning enough eyeballs with its magical advertising words.

Ele.me also launched a number of marketing activities with many brands, and both parties ushered in a new peak of daily activity on the day of the opening ceremony. But compared with Meituan, there is a significant gap in the popularity of Ele.me. Data shows that on November 20, Meituan's daily active users were nearly 140 million, but Ele.me was only 22.941 million.

Source: Meituan

In recent years, Ele.me's presence has become less and less. Nowadays, as Douyin accelerates the layout of local life, everyone's attention will be more on Meituan and Douyin. At the same time, the entry of new players has also made Ele.me's living space even more guilty.

Ele.me must take action and seek new breakthroughs.

From September 20 to 22, the two platforms, Douyin and Ele.me, joined forces with the Starbucks brand to launch a joint marketing campaign. According to the data, the special live broadcast of this cooperation has contributed to more than 10 million transactions, setting a new peak in the light food takeaway category of the Ele.me Douyin Mini Program.

This year, with the explosion of instant retail, Ele.me has also closely followed the market changes and continued to increase its investment in the instant retail business.

On November 17, Ele.me held an instant e-commerce brand merchant conference in Shanghai, announcing the launch of the "Double Hundred Plan": working with 100 retail brands to achieve 100% growth in two years.

Chen Weiye, COO of Ele.me, said at the meeting that instant e-commerce is an important strategic choice for Ele.me. Facing this track, the company will be firm, long-term and continuous investment.

During the Double 11 period, the number of participating merchants of Ele.me increased by 50% year-on-year. On November 11, more than 90% of the cooperative brands' trading volume exceeded the historical peak, and the turnover of nearly 100 brands increased by more than 100% compared with last year.

Ele.me is speeding up its pace and catching up with Meituan, Douyin and other friends.

But at present, it is an indisputable fact that Ele.me is still facing the double attack of Meituan and Douyin.

What's next, how should Ele.me go?

Is the end of the takeaway market just-in-time retail?

Judging from this year, it seems that all major platforms are seizing the wave of instant retail.

For example, in August this year, Meituan announced that it had reached a cooperation with SF Express in the same city, flash delivery, and UU errands to increase the instant delivery industry. In October, Meituan's Meituan Maicai was upgraded to Little Elephant Supermarket, expanding from the past fresh food category to more supermarket categories.

In addition to Ele.me, Alibaba's instant retail business also includes Hema and Tmall supermarket......

According to the "Instant Retail Industry Development Report" released by the Ministry of Commerce, in recent years, instant retail has maintained an average annual growth rate of more than 50%, and it is expected that in 2025, the scale of the instant retail market will reach three times that of 2022.

From a macro perspective, instant retail has become a must for major platforms, which is not only driven by market demand and market size, but also by competitive pressure and technical support.

In the field of instant retail, although major platforms have entered the game. But in terms of advantages, takeaway platforms such as Meituan and Ele.me are more able to develop rapidly.

After all, it's not easy to do instant retail well. Not only do you need to ensure immediate fulfillment, but you also need to have an abundant product supply.

In this way, Meituan and Ele.me undoubtedly have innate conditions. At present, the three giants of Meituan, Ele.me, and JD.com occupy most of the market share.

For Ele.me, when the takeaway market is facing growth problems, seizing the opportunity of instant retail can bring more market opportunities to the platform.

However, compared with Meituan, there is a certain gap between Ele.me in terms of traffic scale and operational capabilities. Therefore, Ele.me also needs to improve and optimize its own capabilities in brand marketing and promotion, product category richness, logistics and distribution, user experience and other links.

Overall, if you want to break through in instant retail, Ele.me may need more time.

Author | Zhou Wenjun