Group buying website Burning money time to come again

Recently, from a variety of sources said that the United States network has completed a new round of financing, financing amounts as high as 700 million U.S. dollars, leading the investment side for Sequoia Capital. After the completion of the financing, the United States network valuation at least more than 5 billion U.S. dollars.

In response to the incident, the United States network related people in the "China Business newspaper," the reporter said, "The news has not been confirmed, once there is a clear message, will issue a notice." ”

In fact, the United States Group has also been a number of financing. It was launched in 2010, the same year won the Sequoia Capital a round of 12 million U.S. dollars investment, July 2011, Alibaba and Sequoia Capital of the B round of 50 million U.S. dollars investment. May 2014 received 300 million U.S. dollars in C-round financing, the Agency for the Pan-Atlantic capital, the U.S. group C-round financing of the valuation of about 4 billion U.S. dollars.

Insiders believe that the link between the online and offline O2O market prospects, after Ali group listing also demonstrated this. As the leading enterprise of China's O2O, the United States Regiment has been placed high expectations. And now the rush to get financing, on the one hand, is that the United States to expand new business is badly in need of money, on the other hand for the next long-term development sufficient funds.

Since 2014, focused on group buying business of the United States to reposition themselves, to "eat and drink big platform" as the core, began to more vertical lines of business to expand the direction.

The specific approach is: in the group buying business to cut into more market segments, including film tickets and hotel business, but also began to kill the league outside the purchase of services, such as the 2014 end of the line by the vice President Wang Huiwen led the take-away business.

But it is not just the United States that aims to target these segments. Some analysts told reporters, "the film votes in the United States, the advantages of the group is relatively large." Hotel business, although the United States quickly became the third largest hotel distribution platform, but the United States Regiment's hotel resources are basically concentrated in the budget hotels, will not be much progress in the short term. And the experience of group buying hotel is far from the reservation, although some advantages, but the future is not easy to say, in addition to where the old opponents, began to sink Ctrip will become a larger obstacle, and it is difficult to the past. ”

In addition, the analyst pointed out, "the takeaway is the main competitor of the United States is hungry, Baidu Takeout and Amoy Point, which again with and hungry is the fight between the most intense." Are you hungry? There is a public comment on the support, itself in this field for many years, relative to the United States and the group still has some advantages, the outcome here is difficult to say, but the U.S. regiment in this market investment is very large, the future is very uncertain. ”

At present, group purchase is still the main business of the United States, and from the whole group buying industry, experienced the Thousand Regiment war, malicious competition, capital Duanliang, layoffs and other conditions, the return to the giant hegemony of the situation, surviving several giants life is not easy. It is widely believed that this is largely due to group buying business model restrictions, and even the originator of Groupon also suffered a net loss of earnings year-on-year expansion of the dilemma.

The group said in an interview earlier, "Although we were the first to learn about Groupon, we realized early on that it was just a service electric business platform, and that the American Regiment was the Middle channel, like Wal-Mart and Amazon, a relatively low margin, and Groupon looked more like an advertising form, Business with it for the first time may be a loss of money, similar to advertising, early loss of money, the effect of the subsequent slowly come out. So its buckle point is 40%, very high. And we think that the U.S. regiment is a large-scale trading platform, O2O is a trillion market, but the United States regiment in the middle of the Commission will not be very high, may be a long time is always under 10%, may be low when the 3%~5%, high in 6%~8%, are single-digit amplitude, So we're very different from Groupon. From frugality into extravagance, from extravagance to frugality, if you can get 40% commission, it is likely that all aspects of the cost is easily high, it is always easy to spend money, but once the formation of high cost structure, and then face the market competition, the need for commission decline when it is very difficult. Therefore, we are very early to determine the United States Regiment's gross margin is relatively low, to all aspects of expenditure matching, and constantly find ways to improve efficiency and reduce costs. ”

As for the listing matters, the U.S. group said frankly, "the listing for the United States is only a future node, when the time is ripe natural will be listed, now for this matter we are not worried." ”