Chinese food delivery company Meituan quickly denied a media report that came out on Wednesday that claimed the firm is set to shut down its partner app Dazhong Dianping in order to direct all of Dianping’s users to Meituan.
Meituan and Dazhong Dianping, once rivals, famously merged in 2015, becoming known as Meituan-Dianping. However, both still run their own apps.
In its statement, Meituan ruled out the possibility that these two apps will be merged into one, confirming that Dianping will still be run independently.
The online news site that published the claim, Jiemian said it had based it on insights from one current and one former Meituan employee, who said the plan had come directly from Wang Huiwen, a vice president at Meituan, who was asked by investors to grow Meituan’s user base.
According to Jiemian‘s sources, the idea was to have Dianping’s core assets, including user-generated restaurant reviews, to be displayed on the Meituan app and to direct users of Dianping’s food delivery and hotel bookings to the Meituan app.
Back in late January, Wang Huiwen also announced that Mobike, the bike-sharing startup it acquired at US$2.7 billion would be renamed Meituan Bike and the Meituan app would become the only login interface for Mobike app users.
Editor: Nadine Freischlad