Meituan CEO No Longer Directly Hold Shares in Company’s Ride-Hailing Business Operator

According to Tianyancha App, a business information query platform, on October 31, Wang Xing, chairman and CEO of Meituan, and Mu Rongjun, executive director, both no longer shareholders of Shanghai Tutuan Technology Co., Ltd., the main operator of Meituan‘s online ride-hailing business.

Shanghai Tutuan Technology Co., Ltd. added Beijing Sankuai Technology Co., Ltd., an affiliated company of Meituan, as its sole shareholder. Wang and Mu are shareholders of the latter.

Shanghai Tutuan Technology Co., Ltd. was established in January 2017 with a registered capital of 5 million yuan ($686,709). The company has more than 90 branches in many cities, of which 80 are in operation.

Meituan Taxi, an online car-hailing platform owned by Meituan, was officially launched in February 2017 and started pilot operation in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. In March 2018, the service entered into Shanghai and started grabbing the market with huge subsidies. According to Meituan‘s annual report, in 2018, the cost of its online car-hailing business was 4.463 billion yuan, compared with 293 million yuan in 2017.

In May, 2019, Meituan Taxi launched an aggregation mode in 15 cities including Hangzhou, Chengdu, Wuhan, Shenzhen and Guangzhou, which means users can place orders from different platforms with one click. In July, 2021, Didi, a giant in the ride-hailing industry in China, underwent a security review which allowed new opportunities to emerge for its competitors. Meituan quickly launched a new version of its online ride-hailing app, and opened services in more than 100 cities.

In September 2021, Wang Xing mentioned in the conference call of the second quarter financial report that the self-operated mode can bring better experience to users by providing stable and more controllable vehicles, especially during peak hours. Meituan‘s car-hailing business once again shifted its focus to self-operated mode.

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On August 8, 2022, Meituan Taxi set up an office in Shanghai and mobilized core members from departments of technology, products, operation, transportation capacity, customer service, safety and others, focusing on many popular areas during the peak car-hailing period in Shanghai.

At present, Meituan still has many competitors, such as T3 Go and Caocao Mobility. Geely’s sub-brand has just launched its “Top Hat Travel” platform to seize the high-end online car-hailing market.