Following several months of speculation and manoeuvre, e-commerce titan Alibaba has agreed to buy China’s largest food delivery company Ele.me for $9.5 billion, the Financial Times reports, in a market shakeup that will leave Alibaba contending for market dominance against fellow tech giant Tencent.
Ele.me, with a fleet of 3 million couriers serving 1.3 million merchants across China, will be a significant addition to the Alibaba business model as it aggressively hunts online market share from rival websites.
Taken together, Tencent and Alibaba already have a combined worth of over $1 trillion.
Speaking on the how the acquisition can work for Ele.me, chief executive Daniel Zhang said “Ele.me can leverage Alibaba’s infrastructure in commerce and find new synergies with Alibaba’s diverse businesses to add further momentum to the new retail initiative.”