Chinese food delivery giant Meituan Dianping has announced the establishment of “Meituan University,” a joint vocational education project aimed at providing digital skill training to workers and merchants in the on-demand service sector, as the demand and standards for labor are increasing, according to Meituan’s press release.
The new education center will be formed by eight colleges offering training sessions on life service categories, including catering, food delivery, beauty, recreation, fitness and hotel management.
In the next decade, Meituan University aims to team up with 1000 vocational schools nationwide and reach over 100 million people, said Mu Rongjun, the co-founder, also senior vice president at Meituan.
The move is part of Meituan’s effort to support digitalization upgrades of small-and-medium-sized vendors on its platform. The food delivery giant also seeks to provide blue-collar workers with better online-service skills required by employers.
The number of Meituan’s transacting users grew 18.4% year on year, up to 422.6 million in the second quarter of 2019, faster than the growth of merchants, the firm’s quarterly financial report showed.
The company is now the third most valuable internet company in China with a market capitalization of HKD 509 billion (USD 65 billion), trailing only after Alibaba and Tencent.