China's two major start-ups -- Dianping and Meituan -- announced a merger Thursday, in a move to join forces to enhance respective market positions and growth prospects. Meituan.com, a group-buying site backed by Alibaba, and Dianping.com, a consumer review service funded by Tencent, will turn rivalry into the country's largest Online-to-Offline platform.
The new entity, estimated to be worth over 15 billion US dollars, will offer restaurant bookings, movie ticketing and other O2O services. It will run on a co-CEO basis, and keep the original human resource structures.
Both brands will be retained with their businesses running in parallel.