ByteDance ramps up competition with Meituan in local services by enlisting couriers as delivery partners
- Douyin’s food delivery push follows the group buying service it launched in early 2021, which offered live streaming and video promotions to merchants
- China’s food delivery sector is dominated by Meituan, with a market share of about 70 per cent, while Alibaba’s Ele.me accounts for most of the remainder
Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, has teamed up with major courier firms to fill a gap in its local services strategy in a bid to mount a stronger challenge to industry giant Meituan.
With more than 600 million daily active users in China, the popular short video platform has tried to convert eyeballs into revenue and profits for parent company ByteDance, but success in the local services market has been limited by a lack of offline delivery resources.
To address that, Beijing-based Douyin has partnered with some of China’s major delivery service providers, including JD.com’s Dada Nexus and SF Express’ SFTC, giving it access to millions of couriers and the ability to make “one-hour deliveries” to consumers, according to company statements.
The food delivery service follows the group buying service Douyin launched in early 2021, where merchants from the restaurant, hotel and travel industry were invited to use the platform for live streaming and video promotions.
The offer came after a series of snap lockdowns under Beijing’s strict “zero Covid” policy confined consumers to their homes, and forced merchants to devise their own door-to-door delivery programmes to maintain business.