About Wang Huiwen
In a November 2017 interview, Wang Huiwen, senior vice president at Meituan Dianping, discussed the company's expansion strategy and its position relative to larger tech firms. He stated that the market remains "so big and still so early in the online penetration race," noting that the industries Meituan operates in have only a 5% online penetration rate. He said the platform has over 290 million active consumers and 4 million active merchants, providing a foundation for serving younger generations. Wang confirmed the company is exploring pilot projects including car-sharing, describing Meituan as a "disruptive innovator" that needs to be sensitive to market trends.
Regarding competition, Wang said Meituan has a 60% market share in food delivery and is growing, attributing this to a platform strategy that encourages cross-purchasing across services like restaurants, movie tickets, and hotel bookings. He described the travel business as differentiated by targeting a larger base of leisure travelers. On payments, Wang said Meituan has its own solutions but maintains an open strategy with third-party players. He acknowledged increased government scrutiny of fake reviews and artificial sales, stating that content integrity is a priority with investments in technology and offline efforts. When asked about an IPO, Wang said it would be "a natural result of business growth" and that the company has no timetable but manages itself like a public company.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Wang Huiwen's recent appearances.
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Transcript (19 segments)
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Interviewer0:10
The likes of tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent, how does a second-tier player like Meituan fit in?
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Wang Huiwen0:17
I think there are lucky things that the market is still so big and still so early in the online penetration race. The seven industries we are operating in still only have a 5% online penetration rate, compared to Alibaba's physical commerce, which now has only a 20% online penetration rate. And we are seeing the trend catching up. For the several industries we operate in, we have over 290 million active consumers that push through our platforms and connect to over 4 million active merchants. So these phenomenal numbers will provide a strong foundation for a platform like us.
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Interviewer1:12
Business is that for you?
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Wang Huiwen1:16
So still we have 10 or 15 pilot projects, including the car-hailing business, information within a group. So we think it's very important for companies like us, as a disruptive innovator in this space, to be able to still be very sensitive to the growing trend of the market and able to make innovations on our platform. So we not only transfer the existing business models online in categories, but continue to see from a consumer perspective what other services we can add into the platform to increase the thickness of the consumers and merchants. That's how we think about how we should expand to new businesses.
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Interviewer2:10
What about after their merger, which you know we are very differentiated strategy here?
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Wang Huiwen2:13
So we are covered about five times bigger consumer base in the city, most of whom are later business leisure travelers. So compared to business travelers or business trips, and also we are having a much more broad offering for these travelers. So when they go out to have fun and entertainment, they can enjoy movie tickets and restaurant business, and last but not least, the hotel booking business that we are able to offer, that can really enclose the kind of lifecycle of the consumers.
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Interviewer2:45
Priceline, one of your backers as well, what kind of opportunities are there to collaborate?
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Wang Huiwen2:48
So China stands for their incremental business for the whole global travel business, and one game-playing actually brings the most...
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Interviewer3:11
Viable business like food delivery right now, is it just time to bury the hatchet and maybe merge with Alibaba's Ele.me?
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Wang Huiwen3:17
So we have already 60% market share today and still growing our market share month by month. And the main reason is still sticking to our platform strategy, because consumers come to our platform not just for the delivery, they can come for restaurants, for movie tickets, or other local services. And when they cross-purchase in other categories, that actually becomes more sticky on our platform compared to vertical players. So that's really the power of the platform we are building.
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Interviewer3:46
How did you beat out the likes of Baidu? I mean, given the fact that Baidu has a much bigger cash position than you and they also have the strength when it comes to AI.
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Wang Huiwen3:54
I think this is the beauty of the innovation. The young...
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Interviewer4:10
Traditional Baidu, you know, purely online technology, and we have the people running across the whole country that serve their merchants and consumers. Today we have over 2 million active riders each day to help us deliver those orders.
Payments is my next move. A question here: Tencent and Alibaba, they all have good payments networks. Are you in the market to buy?
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Wang Huiwen4:34
We are not really in the payment market. Payment is a very important step of our closed-loop 2016 here, the last step of the customer data. We work actually with Tencent and all the other third-party payment solutions, because consumers come to us for transactions and payment is just the last step. But we try to fit them, so we have our own payment solutions, but we...
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Interviewer5:11
About this right now, again, what's the strategy to fix it?
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Wang Huiwen5:15
Pleasantries always a number one priority. So we'll make sure the quality and the content is really getting to a standard that we are emphasizing. So we have invested heavily both on the technology side and on the offline side to continue to optimize the content.
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Interviewer5:34
Last question here: IPO plans. We have to ask you, should we expect an IPO soon?
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Wang Huiwen5:41
IPO is more a natural result of the business growth. So we don't have a timetable, but we are actually managing the company more like a public one, because we have a big portion of public shareholders as well. They may come from... come for us.
