Rumor: Baidu Takeout Delivery Seeks USD 300-500 Mln in Funding
Caixin.com, 12/29/15
Chinese internet company Baidu's (Nasdaq: BIDU) O2O food ordering platform Baidu Takeout Delivery is reportedly seeking USD 300-500 mln in funding, according to a non-public prospectus and confirmed by several anonymous sources. The funding round is said to have begun in November and should be completed in January 2016. 40% of the funds will be used to develop the platform, and the rest of the funds will be allocated equally between product development, category expansion, and marketing. The selling point of the fundraising is to turn Baidu Takeout into an intra-city on-demand logistics platform.
Baidu Takeout is expected to reach a gross merchandise volume (GMV) of RMB 8 bln in 2015, with monthly GMV growing 30% from January to October. The company has set RMB 25 bln as the target GMV for 2016.
Baidu Takeout surpassed 1 mln daily orders in September this year, and for every 1 mln orders completed in October, 260,000 were delivered by Baidu Takeout's delivery team. The average value of orders that use Baidu Takeout Delivery's logistics network reached RMB 49, while average value of orders that do not use the network is RMB 31.
As of October, Baidu Takeout provided service in 109 cities and had 16 mln users. Monthly active users on mobile handsets numbered 11 mln. The platform has 187,000 merchants, 6% of whom account for 18% of total GMV. Among all merchants, 42% use Baidu Takeout's delivery services. The company has not disclosed how much compensation is offered to merchants, but does plan to use Baidu's deep learning technology to create a dynamic compensation system.
Baidu Takeout's target users are China's 75 mln urban white collar workers, and the company hopes to include fresh food, alcohol, daily goods, and maternity products along with restaurants on the platform. The company's target number of merchants on the platform is 500,000. For delivery, Baidu Takeout plans to continue a mixture of third-party delivery teams and crowdsourcing, with a target scale of 100,000 delivery personnel.
Keywords: Internet funding Baidu BIDU logistics fresh food alcohol GMV Baidu Takeout Delivery food O2O