One morning he opens his Groupon e-mail to find a deal for $20 worth of food from Eatsa Pizza for only $10. Listen to the latest Digitally China episode below or find it (and previous episodes) on iTunes here.Our adventure begins when local consumer Bob visits and signs up to receive daily e-mails featuring deals in his city. The success factors behind super app companies such as Meituan-Dianping, Alipay and more.What lessons can you learn from China that are applicable for Western markets?.How to operate in a market with thousands of competitors.Tim, who took a break from Harvard to go back to China to take on the daunting task of trying to win in such an enormous, sprawling market, takes us through some of the incredible stories from that exciting period.Īs a seasoned investor at one of Europe’s most renowned venture firms, Kinnevik, Tim also reflects on learnings from the Chinese technology sector as well as the success factors behind today’s “super apps” of China. In a hyper-competitive environment, there were suddenly thousands of group-buying services all fighting for the position that Meituan has today.įor a sense of what that time was like, we interviewed Tim He, who was a senior executive of Gaopeng, the Chinese subsidiary of Groupon when they entered the market. In fact, the opposite was true, with the American giant Groupon entering China backed by a powerful partner in Tencent. But it wasn’t that clear a few years back. Meituan-Dianping is China’s clear market leader within group buying, offline discovery and online-offline services today.

In the latest Digitally China we’re looking back on a particularly crazy chapter in Chinese internet history. Scroll down to listen to the latest episode on Spotify.

Find previous episodes of Digitally China here and subscribe on iTunes here. On each episode, the team will tackle a different timely tech-related topic, providing key insights on all you need to know about the fast-changing nature of innovation in China. Digitally China is a bi-weekly podcast from RADII hosted by Tom Xiong and Eva Xiao, and produced by Jacob Loven.

Groupons app