Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, China’s e-commerce giant, announced on Monday that it was acquiring the remaining shares of the country’s leading food-delivery firm Ele.me.
Alibaba and affiliate Ant Small & Micro Financial Services Group Co Ltd currently own approximately 43 percent of Ele.me, and the latest deal will value the startup a $9.5 billion, said Alibaba in a statement.
Alibaba did not say how much it was paying for the remaining stake.
The deal is the latest salvo in the intensifying turf battle between tech heavyweights Alibaba and Tencent in the fast-growing Chinese markets for online food ordering and digital payments.
Ele.me, which means "Are you hungry?", said it operated in 2,000 Chinese cities and had 260 million users as of mid-2017, employing an army of three million scooter-borne delivery drivers.
The statement by Alibaba, an e-commerce leader through its hugely popular Taobao online shopping platform, implied that it would expand Ele.me's delivery business beyond mere meals.
"Ele.me’s fast local delivery service will build on its core expertise in food delivery to provide consumers with a wider range of products and services on demand," Alibaba said.
"This expansion of offerings will allow Ele.me to efficiently utilize its large delivery force that currently fulfills orders in cities across China."
Ele.me has been competing fiercely with its main rival Meituan, which is backed by Tencent, the Chinese social media, messaging and online payments heavyweight.
In August Ele.me bought major rival Baidu deliveries from Baidu Inc. For Alibaba, the latest acquisition enlarges the e-commerce firm’s food delivery empire, which also includes delivery platform Koubei, as it competes with Meituan Dianping.
Users of meal-ordering platforms tripled in two years to 343 million in 2017, the China Internet Network Information Center said. The vast majority use mobile apps.
Alibaba has been trying to integrate its online e-commerce services with offline bricks-and-mortar services to ensure growth momentum.
