China’s leading urban lifestyle O2O platform Dianping's recently released 2014 business performance data showing RMB2 billion registered revenue from group buying transactions per month and rapid growth in other vertical businesses including hotel, travel, cinema and bridal services.
Its group buying business has been grown by leaps and bounds, with transaction volume doubling and the number of collaborating merchants increasing five times within the year. The market share of group buying transactions in the third- and fourth-tier cities in Dianping's network has also increased seven fold.
Monthly orders for marketing services (including advertising and bridal ads) have exceeded RMB100 million per month. The number of orders has increased three times in December compared to the beginning of the year and transactions for O2O advertising products have reached the multi-million RMB level in the last three months.
Reservations revenue increased 15 times and accumulated sales revenue from online bookings is projected to reach RMB15 million. The number of listed merchants increased to 30,000, three times more than the start of the year. Reservations in first- and second-tier cities made up over 90% of total bookings with an average of 60% of reservations made online.
The turnover of its hotel reservation business was five times higher and the hotel network expanded 10 fold within the year to cover 500,000 hotels in 200 popular international destinations and 350 Chinese cities. Order volume was six times more than the beginning of the year. Listed overseas merchants increased 10 fold and overseas users increased four times.
Cinema ticket sales volume was 30 times higher than the beginning of the year and 2,000 listed cinemas offered online seat selection. Dianping has the largest network of listed cinemas in 300 cities in China. CEO Tao Zhang also co-produced the film “Fleet of Time”, which had over RMB300 million at the box office within five days of its release, propelling it to the top 10 2D films ranking of 2014.
Mr. Zhang said: “Dianping really took off this year. The key to rapid growth in the volatile O2O business is improved efficiency”.
He said the catalyst for the Dianping’s meteoric rise was the large group of talent it attracted from famous internet firms like Microsoft, Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu this year. (Translation by David)
