Chinese food delivery startup Ele.me gobbles up $350M funding from Tencent, other backers

(Update on January 27: The funding round was confirmed today to be worth US$350 million, with the investment contributed by CITIC, Tencent, JD, Dianping, and Sequoia China. Tencent binds a lot of this together as it owns a 15 percent stake in JD and a 20 percent stake in the Yelp-like Dianping. This move could result in Ele.me’s food ordering service being integrated into Dianping and/or Tencent’s WeChat messaging app. The headline has been amended with the new information. The original article from January 13 is unchanged below.)

Chinese online food takeout service Ele.me – the name means “are you hungry?” in Mandarin – has raised yet another round of funding, reportedly netting a sum “in the hundreds of millions” of RMB.

The specific sum the site raised and exactly who has invested have not been disclosed, but sources told Techweb the round was led by one of China’s biggest tech companies.

This latest round is the largest in a string of large investments Ele.me has seen over the past couple of years. In late 2013, the company raised a series C round worth US$25 million, and Chinese tech company Dianping led a series D round last year that gave Ele.me another US$80 million cash infusion.

Ele.me was founded by Shanghai university students in 2009. In the years since it has grown from a tiny staff to a team of more than 2,000, with coverage in more than 200 Chinese cities and a focus on delivering to students. The site allows users to input their addresses and order meals from a variety of restaurants in their area.

(Source: Techweb)