{"id":15549,"date":"2018-04-06T06:55:48","date_gmt":"2018-04-06T13:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/?p=15549"},"modified":"2018-04-06T06:55:48","modified_gmt":"2018-04-06T13:55:48","slug":"alibaba-fully-acquires-food-delivery-platform-ele-me-in-9-5-billion-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/alibaba-fully-acquires-food-delivery-platform-ele-me-in-9-5-billion-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Cartoon of the Week: Alibaba fully acquires food delivery platform Ele.me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Chinese e-commerce giant <strong>Alibaba<\/strong> has been eyeing Chinese leading online delivery platform <strong>Ele.me<\/strong> for several months now, until deciding to fully acquire it for $9.5 billion.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The move was expected as <strong>Alibaba<\/strong> invested in <strong>Ele.me<\/strong> two years ago and this will be the latest in a string of investments and acquisitions made by <strong>Alibaba<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>If we analyse <strong>Alibaba\u2019s retail strategy<\/strong>, we\u2019d know that the e-commerce giant is aiming to expand its physical retail presence, blurring the line between online and offline retail, and dive deeper into brick-and-mortar retailing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ele.me<\/strong> (\u2018are you hungry?\u2019 in English) is one of the two most popular <strong>online food delivery platforms in China<\/strong> along with its rival Tencent-backed Meituan.<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iimedia.cn\/60449.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">local research<\/a>, Ele.me exceeded 200 billion yuan ($31.8 billion) in sales last year.<\/p>\n<p>So, <strong>Ele.me<\/strong> seems to be the best fit for <strong>Alibaba<\/strong> to leverage its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/enterprise-social-network\/\">service network<\/a> and promote its future retail experience.<\/p>\n<h2>How will these two companies work hand in hand?<\/h2>\n<p>Company executives envision a future where it will be easier for users to move (and also to spend money). They will visit store fronts but they\u2019ll place orders through their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/cartoon-week-smartphones-overthrowing-one-another-arena-mwc-2018\/\">smartphones<\/a> and their purchases will be sent to their doorsteps within 30 minutes without them having to carry any bags.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Looking forward, Ele.me can leverage <strong>Alibaba\u2019s infrastructure in commerce<\/strong> and find new synergies with <strong>Alibaba<\/strong>\u2019s diverse businesses to add further momentum to the New Retail Initiative,\u2019 says <strong>Alibaba<\/strong> chief executive <strong>Daniel Zhang<\/strong> in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>As for the roles, <strong>Wang lei<\/strong>, Alibaba\u2019s vice president, will become Ele.me\u2019s CEO, while <strong>Zhang Xuhao<\/strong>, Ele.me\u2019s founder, will step down and serve as a special adviser to <strong>Wang lei<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Will the integration of online and offline create a successful retail experience? We\u2019re curious to see what the future holds.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pinterest.com\/exoplatform\/cartoon-of-the-week\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" data-pin-do=\"embedBoard\" data-pin-scale-width=\"80\" data-pin-scale-height=\"200\" data-pin-board-width=\"400\" target=\"_blank\">Follow eXo Platform&#8217;s board Cartoon of the Week on Pinterest.<\/a><script src=\"\/\/assets.pinterest.com\/js\/pinit.js\" async=\"\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has been eyeing Chinese leading online delivery platform Ele.me for several months now, until deciding to fully acquire it for $9.5 billion.","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":15550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":[],"categories":[813],"tags":[606,817],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":15549},"pll_sync_post":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15549"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}