Group buying pioneer's entry into China met with集体唱衰from local bigwigs

A recruitment email sent by the vice president of Groupon, the pioneer of group-buying website, has caught the attention of Chinese local group-buying tycoons. Recently, the information about Groupon's secret plan to enter China was confirmed by Du Yinan, CEO of 24券. However, compared with the domestic group-buying websites which extended olive branches several months ago, the local tycoons now generally downplay the impact of Groupon's entry into China.

Since last March, group-buying websites in China have quickly increased to more than 1700, and a number of independent group-buying websites with considerable strength have emerged, such as Meituan.com and Nuomi.com. Internet giants including Taobao, Tencent, Baidu, and traditional enterprises like China Telecom[4.47 -1.11%] have also joined the battle.

As for the news about Groupon's entry into China, it has never stopped. In October last year, Groupon met with several domestic group-buying websites, including F团. The news about these enterprises cooperating with or even being acquired by Groupon appeared frequently in the media. But the rumors between these enterprises and Groupon ended up with nothing.

Analyst Su Huiyan from Analysys International believed that the development prospect of China's local life service market has enough attraction. She predicted that Groupon had failed to communicate with Chinese local group-buying websites in the early stage, and now the exposure of recruitment information might mean that Groupon would build its own team to enter the Chinese market.

The news about Groupon's entry into China has already aroused the discussion among local group-buying tycoons, but their attitude is collectively "to downplay" it, and they claimed that the competitive pressure was not great. (Zhang Xuwang)