PDD halts development of local services offering to avoid head-on competition with Meituan and Ele.me, report says
- PDD had planned to launch local services offering in February 2024 under its community group-buying unit Duoduo Maicai, report says
- Chinese Big Tech firms including Meituan, Alibaba and TikTok owner ByteDance have jostled for supremacy in local services market
E-commerce giant PDD Holdings has halted work on its local life services offering, avoiding head-to-head rivalry with Meituan, Alibaba Group Holding and ByteDance, whose Douyin short video app has also dipped a toe into the sector.
PDD has “completely halted [development of] the local services business”, according to Chinese media outlet LatePost. PDD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
PDD, whose market cap overtook Alibaba in November after the firm beat revenue estimates, had planned to launch the service – which facilitates in-store orders including hotel reservations and movie tickets – in February 2024 under its community group-buying unit Duoduo Maicai, LatePost reported. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
PDD had leveraged Duoduo Maicai’s business development team of around 3,000 people to sign up bricks-and-mortar outlets, such as restaurants and tourist attractions, the report said.
However, PDD’s management has not been completely satisfied with the performance of Duoduo Maicai, which was established in 2020 in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. It enables residents in a community to purchase groceries and other daily essentials in bulk, bringing prices down.
