With help from Tencent and Baidu, China’s shopping mall king just ventured into ecommerce

Hanjie Wanda Square mall in Wuhan, China. (Photo: Unstudio)

Nearly a year after three giant Chinese companies teamed up to take on Alibaba, the newly-minted ecommerce store finally and quietly launched this week. The site, Ffan, is the result of a billion-dollar joint venture between Tencent, Baidu, and Wanda Group, a conglomerate best known for its chain of movie theatres and malls.

The joint venture started with US$814 million in its pocket in August 2014, with Wanda holding a 70 percent stake, and Tencent and Baidu splitting the remainder evenly. In January, it secured venture capital funding to the tune of US$161 million.

Local commerce

The new estore is designed to take on Alibaba’s ecommerce dominance, with a focus on helping people buy local products and services. That’s why visitors to Ffan can choose their city to see local deals.

Baidu declined to comment on today’s launch and Tencent has yet to reply to Tech in Asia’s inquiry.

Hanjie Wanda Square mall in Wuhan, China. (Photo: Unstudio)

At first glance, Ffan looks odd and rather bare. The only two product categories on the top navigation bar are “food” and “movie tickets.” Browsing through the city-specific food section reveals that most of the products are from retailers at Wanda’s shopping malls across the country. Indeed, users can browse through the Ffan site or accompanying mobile app according to their nearest mall.

Wanda – a private company which boasted assets of RMB 534.1 billion yuan (US$85.6 billion) in 2014 – has reportedly been plotting a leap from offline retail to ecommerce for several years, but today’s launch doesn’t reveal much that should worry Alibaba or arch-rival JD right now. It’s not a general ecommerce store like Alibaba’s Tmall or JD, and the offerings are slim.

Sill, Wanda has the reach – across malls, cinemas, hotels, resorts, theme parks, and several other areas – to challenge Alibaba in terms of the fast-growing interest on the web for local, on-demand products and services.

See: In big O2O push, Alibaba puts on-demand services into mobile wallet app