Podcasts

Season 1

Episode 5

Tao Zhang – The Meituan-Dianping Merge and the “Groupon War”

Interviewed by Hans Tung and Zara Zhang.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Tao Zhang, the founder of Dianping, a lifestyle services company that is often known as “the Yelp of China” but is much more than that. In 2015, Dianping merged with its rival, the group buying giant Meituan. The new company, Meituan-Dianping, is now worth $30B and the fourth most valuable startup in the world. Why did Tao want to put restaurant reviews online, before Yelp was even started? How did Tao survive the “thousand-Groupon war” the seized China’s Internet scene in the early 2010s? How do you approach a merger between two multi-billion dollar companies? How should startups in China approach strategic investments from giants like Tencent and Alibaba?

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