Meituan, China’s Leading Group Deals Site, Raises $700M At $7B Valuation

Meituan, a group deals site sometimes described as “the Groupon of China,” has raised $700 million at a $7 billion valuation. The company announced the funding on its Weibo page and during a press conference in Beijing on Sunday, but did not disclose its investors.

Previous backers include Alibaba Group and Sequoia Capital China. TechCrunch has contacted both to ask if they participated in this round.

Founded in 2010, Meituan is China’s largest group buying site, with 20 million daily mobile users in more than 1,000 cities. While Meituan originally focused on group discounts, like Groupon, it now also functions as a marketplace for services from local vendors, including hotels, restaurants, and entertainment venues.

In the third quarter of 2014, China’s group buying market was worth 22.96 billion RMB (about $3.74 billion), an increase of 43.6 percent from the previous quarter, according to Chinese research firm EnfoDesk. Meituan’s closest competitor is restaurant listings web site Dianping.com, which is backed by Alibaba rival Tencent.

The company raised $12 million from Sequoia soon after it launched, and then an additional $50 million from Alibaba and Sequoia in July 2011. Meituan first broke even in 2013 and expected to double its revenue in 2014 from 16 billion yuan to 40 billion yuan (about $6.4 billion) last year. CEO Wang Xing has said that Meituan is considering a U.S. initial public offering, but will wait until at least 2017 to list.

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