Edward Long on ride-hailing
From Meituan Dianping's SVP on Expansion, Travel Business · · BloombergTelevision
“We have ten or fifteen pilot projects including the car-hailing business; it's very important for companies like us as a disruptive innovator to be sensitive to growing market trends and make innovations on our platform.”
On , Edward Long, Cofounder at Meituan, spoke about ride-hailing during Meituan Dianping's SVP on Expansion, Travel Business on BloombergTelevision.
About Edward Long
In a November 2017 interview, Meituan Dianping senior vice president Shaohui Chen discussed the company's market position, expansion plans, and business strategy. Chen stated that the company held a 60% market share in food delivery and was growing month by month, attributing this to a platform strategy that offers services beyond delivery, including restaurant bookings, movie tickets, and hotel reservations. He noted that the company had over 290 million active consumers and four million active merchants, and that the industries it operates in still had low online penetration rates. Chen also mentioned that Meituan was running ten to fifteen pilot projects, including a car-hailing business, describing it as important for the company to be sensitive to market trends and innovate on its platform. Regarding an initial public offering, Chen said that an IPO was "a natural result of business growth" and that the company had no timetable, but was managing itself like a public company due to having a large portion of public shareholders. On the topic of payment services, Chen stated that Meituan was not competing in the payment market but had its own payment solutions while maintaining an open strategy with third-party players. He also addressed content quality, saying it was a top priority and that the company had invested heavily in technology and offline resources to optimize content.