Tencent Acquires a Struggling Smaller Rival to Boost E-Commerce Efforts

We’re seeing a lot of struggling Chinese e-commerce sites these days, with a number of smaller e-tailers imploding under the weight of costs in the B2C sector. Some have failed spectacularly; others reached the exit. Luckily for the team at 500CCC.com – or “500City” as it’s called in Chinese – they’ve been acquired by China’s biggest web company, Tencent (HKG:0700).

The acquisition has been confirmed by 500CCC executives, but the financial terms of the deal haven’t been revealed. The site remains operational, but rumors in the industry for months have suggested that the site was close to collapse.

500CCC has two offices, one in Beijing and one in Guangzhou.

What is Tencent’s interest in the gadget e-tailer 500CCC? Well, China’s social media and gaming giant is also doubling down on e-commerce these days, running QQ Buy (a B2C open platform), Paipai (C2C), and 51Buy, which sells only gadgets. Speculation is that the acquisition is aimed at boosting 51Buy with, initially, acquired talent – and later merging the two sites into one. So the smaller e-commerce site seems to have been rescued, though it’s unlikely its brand will go on much longer.

Just last month, the once-promising Redbaby, which sold infant’s clothing and supplies, was acquired for $66 million by Suning, a major electronics retailer that’s also pushing hard into e-commerce right now. That exit also came amidst rumors of the collapse of the site – and represented a cheap sale after hundreds of millions of dollars of VC funding had been ploughed into it over the years. Others, like Yaodian100, have vanished without trace.

[Source: Sina Tech (in Chinese); via Marbridge]