China’s Daily Deals Market Sees Three Local Winners Emerge

Updated stats for China’s fierce group-buy market seem to suggest that we can now crown a triumvirate of winners – Lashou, Meituan, and 55Tuan. That’s because the trio has finally nailed the holy grail of leading in terms of market share, number of deals sold, below average discounts, and highest revenues. To make that even better, Lashou has a higher than average deal price (where the average deal sold is 137 RMB, which is US$22).

As with the last time we looked at this sector in-depth, the stats are provided by Dataotuan. One major difference is that Tencent’s (HKG:0700) group buying portal, QQTuan, has been ignored as it’s now deemed to be more of a deals aggregator. Taobao’s Jua Hua Suan is similarly left out of these stats.

Here are a five key slides from the presentation which shows figures that go up to the end of October, which are the newest available. (Hit the source link below to see the full show):

Daily Deals Market Share

Lashou once again cements its lead as the top indie startup in this segment, with 12.7 percent of market share evaluated by revenue. Groupon’s (NASDAQ:GRPN) venture in China, Gaopeng, is still clinging on just outside of the top ten.

In fourth and fifth places are some hard-charging smaller rivals – 58Tuan, and 24Quan. The latter has been in the news for all the wrong reasons this month, so it’ll be interesting to see if that progress is sustainable:

Revenue and Deals Sold

This industry has been so painful – with lay-offs, protests, unpaid merchants, etc. – because the revenue from such deals is often so low, leaving the labour-intensive group buy sites struggling to survive on single-digit profit margins. The bad news (as seen in the final slide below) is that average revenue is still dropping, although the average deal price is trending upwards (despite a jolt downwards in October).

FTuan will be familiar to regular readers, but it seems to be sliding down in everything except the average price of its sold deals.

Getting back onto the subject of 24Quan, you’ll notice from the blue bars that its large discounts – way above average – are causing lower than average deal prices. It’s presumably a deliberate strategy to try break into the top three.