Turf Wars and Mergers in China's Food Delivery Market

We dive into the history behind Meituan, the juggernaut Chinese "super-app" which dominates China's services economy, offering consumers everything from food delivery, restaurant reviews, travel booking, bike-sharing, movie ticketing, and countless other entertainment and lifestyle services all at the touch of a button. Already China's 3rd largest tech company by market cap (behind just Tencent and Alibaba), Meituan did $15 billion in net revenue in FY2019 and continues to grow rapidly. What makes it so special, and how were they able to become the market leader in such a competitive space? This story is packed with lessons that apply equally beyond China tech to high-growth company building and investing everywhere. 

Sponsors:

WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
ServiceNow: https://bit.ly/acquiredsn

More Acquired!:

• Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
• Join the Slack
• Subscribe to ACQ2
• Merch Store!

© Copyright 2015-2025 ACQ, LLC

The Meituan Playbook is available on our website at https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/meituan

Links:

• Meituan's English language walkthrough video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wxgQVjDviQ
• The Tech Buzz China podcast: https://www.techbuzzchina.com
• GGV's Evolving for the Next Billion podcast: https://nextbn.ggvc.com/podcasts/
• Bernard Leong's Analyse Asia: https://analyse.asia

 Carve Outs:

• Extraterrestrial:  https://www.amazon.com/Extraterrestrial-First-Intelligent-Beyond-Earth-ebook/dp/B081TTY4NX/
• John Luttig's newsletter: https://luttig.substack.com