Only from the MAU of Meituan takeout APP ele.me APP surpassed this data dimension, and can not draw the conclusion that Meituan takeout was overtaken. After all, there is still a big gap between the two sides in the core data such as market share, number of active merchants, unit volume, income and so on. Meituan still has an advantage in takeout business.

Recently, the topic of # ele.me 's monthly active users against Super Meituan takeout has attracted attention, which has immediately aroused the enthusiasm of onlookers about whether Meituan has lost his main battlefield.

The cause of the incident is a set of data released by mobile Internet company big data QuestMobile: ele.me APP surpassed Meituan takeout APP in MAU (the number of monthly active users) in October, and this is the first time in nearly two years that the number of monthly active users of ele.me is higher than that of Meituan takeout on APP. Outsiders see this information as a sign that ele.me counterattacked Meituan takeout and even overtook at the corner.

Indeed, since the beginning of this year, ele.me has made frequent moves in the takeout business: on July 10th, CEO Wang lei announced that ele.me had upgraded from a catering takeout platform to a life service platform, from "delivery" to "giving away everything"; in august, ele.me adopted the "10 billion subsidy" as a regular subsidy; on October 14, the "10 billion subsidy" was expanded from the original 24 cities to 124 cities Recently, ele.me announced that it has settled in nearly 1000 university canteens.

In contrast, in the face of the menacing attack of ele.me, Meituan seems to have no intention to fight. At the end of August, Meituan launched a "food supplement of 10 billion yuan", but the activity lasted five days and then announced that it was stopped. This year, Meituan identified community group buying as a first-level strategic project to undertake Meituan's next revenue growth point.

Meituan, who focuses on the new business, is really overtaken by ele.me in the takeout business? Under ele.me 's ambitious attack, will the actual pattern of the takeout battlefield be shaken? Deep burning to find out.

Meituan's takeout throne is unstable?

Before talking about ele.me surpassing Meituan takeout, we must make it clear that before October this year, Meituan takeout was higher than ele.me in both MAU and market share.

Let's take a look at these sets of data.

In the fourth quarter of 2019, according to a report by third-party data agency DCCI, Meituan takeout had the highest utilization rate among users, with Meituan takeout and ele.me accounting for 67.1% and 32.2%, respectively. According to founder Securities (8.870,-0.08,-0.89%), in terms of market share, Meituan takeout and ele.me had a market share of 67.3% and 26.9% respectively in the first quarter of this year.

Founder Securities Research News pointed out that in the second half of 2019, from the business side's point of view, Meituan led ele.me in terms of merchant penetration, DAU, and exclusive takeout merchants. Meituan had enough C-end traffic to attract merchants, so merchants were more willing to choose Meituan as the exclusive takeout platform.

According to Trustdata's "2020 Q3 China Mobile Limited Internet Industry Development Analysis report", from January to September 2020, the difference between Meituan and ele.me users gradually widened to 12.607 million, and the average daily startup times and monthly revisit days of Meituan takeout users were higher than ele.me.

So the question is, Meituan takeout was ahead of ele.me in the past, but why was it suddenly surpassed by ele.me in October this year?

According to QuestMobile, the MAU of Meituan takeout APP was surpassed by ele.me APP in October this year. In addition to the QuestMobile data, deep burning asked another data organization, Aurora Mobile Limited, for the MAU data of Meituan takeout APP and ele.me APP. Statistics show that on the app side alone, not only in October, but for most of the past two years, the number of monthly active users of ele.me was higher than Meituan takeout.

The problem lies in the statistical caliber. In fact, as far as the takeout business is concerned, APP is not the only traffic entrance for ele.me and Meituan takeout.

The traffic sources of Meituan takeout are Meituan takeout APP, Meituan APP, Dianping APP, Wechat, while ele.me APP, word-of-mouth APP, Alipay APP, Taobao APP. With Meituan and BABA's support for each entrance is different, the contribution of each entrance will also fluctuate.

In other words, Meituan's takeout order comes not only from Meituan takeout APP, but also from Meituan APP and other channels. The same is true of ele.me.

In the past, Meituan's strategy was to create a "super APP", concentrating all the business traffic such as takeout, wine travel, cycling and so on on Meituan APP. The most typical example is mobike. After Meituan bought mobike in 2018, he soon abandoned mobike APP. Users scanning the code to ride a bike must use Meituan APP. Later, Meituan simply pinched the Wechat entrance, leaving only Meituan APP as the only entrance.

Meituan is frantically injecting scattered traffic from everywhere into Meituan APP, and the brand, tone and APP are all unified. As a result, Meituan APP is almost all-inclusive, and takeout is just one of the business modules.

Therefore, only statistics on the import data of Meituan takeout and ele.me in APP cannot get the overall data of Meituan and ele.me takeout business.

According to the June 2020 data of APP and Mini Program, after weight removal, the monthly active users (MAU) of ele.me was 76.61 million and that of Meituan takeout was 144.78 million, nearly twice that of ele.me.

Deep combustion asked Meituan questions about the entry of Meituan takeout traffic and the starvation of app monthly active users, but no reply was received as of the press release.

Summing up the above information, only from the MAU of Meituan takeout APP ele.me APP surpassed this data dimension, and can not draw the conclusion that Meituan takeout was overtaken. After all, there is still a big gap between the two sides in the core data such as market share, number of active merchants, unit volume, income and so on. Meituan still has an advantage in takeout business.

Ele.me is coming fiercely

For ele.me, "the number of monthly active users is higher than Meituan takeout on APP for the first time in the past two years" can be regarded as a satisfactory report card. After all, since the beginning of this year, Ele.me 's fierce operation needs to see results.

Ele.me has taken a U-turn on subsidies this year. On August 27, ele.me launched the "10 billion subsidy" program and announced it as a regular action. In September 2019, Wang Lei said in an interview with the media that "there will be no more crazy subsidy wars in the future."

The report card is also widely associated with the role of tens of billions of subsidies. Ele.me said that from the results of the trial operation, the order growth rate of merchants participating in tens of billions of subsidies has doubled compared with the daily rate.

But subsidies can be said to be a double-edged sword for ele.me, which has stumbled on subsidies. At the beginning of 2019, when ele.me hoped to win the market share of third-and fourth-tier cities, Yunnan Dali was chosen as the first stop, setting off a frenzied subsidy war. However, as subsidies stopped and ele.me 's market share returned to a low level, businesses fell into the dilemma of "no activities, no orders". In addition, the subsidy does not come from ele.me. In the Battle of Dali, a lot of money came from agents. In April 2019, more than 20 exclusive agents of ele.me gathered at the south gate of the ancient city of Dali, holding banners to safeguard their rights, Yunnan legal network reported. The reason is that ele.me unilaterally withdrew, invested millions of yuan wasted.

Deep combustion learned from the merchants that the 10 billion subsidy from ele.me is jointly funded by the merchants and the platform, usually at 1:1 or 1:2. Ele.me 's expectation for tens of billions of subsidies is to stimulate the issuance of orders on the customer side to enhance transaction conversion, and proportional subsidies on the merchant side to get additional traffic benefits.

"takeout is a rigid demand service, and subsidies will help to boost daily live data, but when the market is mature, it is very difficult for users to change their consumption habits because of subsidies." Baidu, Inc. Takeout founder and former head of JD.com New Channel Strategy Meng Qi believes that even if you want to compete for the market with subsidies, you also need to cooperate with differentiated services, such as shorter delivery time, more merchants to choose from, and so on. But at present, ele.me is not obviously different from Meituan takeout in these aspects.

"consumption habit" is a word frequently mentioned by many people in the industry. In the opinion of Zhang Yi, CEO of Ai Media Consulting, the takeout market has formed a relatively stable situation. The effect of customer acquisition actions such as tens of billions of subsidies is limited compared with the consumption habits that users have established.

In addition, from Wang Lei's speech, we can see that ele.me is somewhat wavering in strategy. In addition to his attitude towards subsidies, Wang Lei has different attitudes towards market share.

Three months after the acquisition of ele.me by BABA, Wang Lei proposed that within one year, ele.me should be at least on an equal footing with Meituan takeout. "ele.me should account for at least 50% of the share" A month later, in an exclusive interview with Caijing, Wang Lei stressed again: ele.me has only one key point at present, that is, to regain market share. 50% is the watershed of competition, and after 50%, the initiative of the competition is in the hands of ele.me. Also less than a year ago, in June 2019, Wang Lei changed his tune, saying that share is less and less the focus of Ele.me 's concern, and that it depends more on the growth rate of the entire market.

In fact, the gap in market share between ele.me and Meituan takeout is becoming more and more obvious. According to Analysys, ele.me 's share in the takeout market was 48.8% in the third quarter of 2017. According to the 2020 Q2 China takeout Industry Development Analysis report released by Trustdata in August this year, Meituan's market share increased from 63.4% to 68.2% from the first quarter of 2019 to the second quarter of 2020, while the share of ele.me (excluding ele.me) decreased by 2.1 points to 25.4%.

Ele.me, which is no longer the primary pursuit of market share, its profit performance is also weaker than Meituan. In 2019, the profit of Meituan's takeout operation changed from a negative value of 11.1 billion yuan in 2018 to a positive value of 2.7 billion yuan, successfully achieving its first annual profit. Wu Yuefeng, manager of Beijing Capital Fund, pointed out in an article in September this year, "the company (Meituan) revealed that for the whole year, the gross profit per unit is about 20 cents, and this figure is now expanded to about 50 cents per order." It is generally expected that ele.me has not yet achieved every gross profit to become a regular employee. In response, ele.me responded that according to BABA's financial report in the second quarter of this year, ele.me achieved a profit per order in the second quarter (UE,UnitEconomics: hereinafter abbreviated UE) to become a regular employee.

The second half of the takeout battle

Industry insiders generally believe that the takeout market, ele.me and Meituan takeout will become a stable pattern. As a high-frequency, high-flow and low-margin business, catering takeout is essentially a low-frequency business. For the giants, the flow entrance of takeout is the front line of the battlefield of local life.

On July 10, ele.me announced a comprehensive upgrade, upgrading from a catering takeout platform to a life service platform that meets all the immediate needs of users, while inviting Wang Yibo as the brand spokesman, the intention of diverting + supporting local life is obvious.

At the BABA investor conference in 2020, Wang Lei announced that ele.me and BABA group had been fully integrated, not only in terms of users and traffic, but also in Ariyun, such as ele.me 's product technology. On Singles Day this year, ele.me made more transactions with the help of BABA's traffic. Wang Lei said that this year's double 11, ele.me 's fastest growing business has grown by 550%, and has become a digital tool for offline stores in the form of card coupons, live streaming and so on.

On this battlefield, ele.me is light and Meituan is heavy. BABA does not hesitate to provide traffic support to ele.me, but he may not be able to help ele.me in some hard-core skills. Founder Securities Research News pointed out that BABA's always light assets, light operation mode may not necessarily be suitable for local life services. Meituan's success may prove that "re-operation" and carefully polishing every link (ground push) is the key. In addition, BABA's strategic core has always been e-commerce, while BABA's ecological plates are facing huge competition, ele.me access to resources and energy may not be concentrated.

In addition, BABA's low-frequency e-commerce genes do not match the high-frequency local life. Meituan's chain from takeout to local life is smoother. Meituan's financial report shows that revenue in the second quarter of 2020 reached 24.72 billion yuan, of which catering takeout revenue reached 14.54 billion yuan, accounting for about 60% of Meituan's total income.

Meng Qi believes that through the takeout business, Meituan and ele.me have built up the infrastructure needed for local life, such as logistics, supplier resources, and so on, and the platform has been able to hone its performance ability. In addition to takeout, Meituan is also gradually building mature warehousing, urban distribution, and full-category supply chain capabilities through fast donkey, community group buying and other businesses. "once this capability is built, it will be able to achieve the same-day delivery of local life goods. To achieve its layout in e-commerce. The first to be hit is the enterprises like Box Horse, and the second to be hit is the basic business of e-commerce. "

In addition, in the second half of takeout, sinking the market is also an important variable. Ele.me has announced that during the double 11 period, takeout orders in many third-to fifth-tier cities increased by more than 100% compared with the same period last year, and takeout orders in nearly 40 prefecture-level cities increased by more than 50%. Founder Securities analysis said that in the takeout market, there are still a large number of users in third-tier cities that have not been developed, and the market potential is huge, and the potential and growth space of the sinking market may become a breakthrough for ele.me to compete for market share.

And the sinking market is the place where Meituan's family got rich. In July, Meituan tested a product called "spelling rice" in low-line cities, focusing on low-price collage, free distribution fee, free packing fee, etc., and got a discount through WeChat Mini Programs's sharing of friends, known as Meituan takeout special version. In addition, Meituan set up the selection Division on July 7 to launch the community group purchase business Meituan Optimum, focusing on the sinking market. It will take time to see what story the two will collide here.