The 'Marriage' of Rivals: How Wang Xing Masterminded the Meituan-Dianping Merger to Dominate the O2O World

Prologue: The "Unstoppable" War

After crawling out from the carnage of the "Thousand Groupon War," Wang Xing thought he could finally catch his breath.

But he soon found himself on an even more brutal battlefield.

Although most group-buying websites had gone bankrupt, the survivors were all "monster-level" opponents. The most powerful among them was the Shanghai-based "Dianping."

Dianping was China's earliest "local life information" platform, boasting a massive amount of high-quality restaurant reviews and merchant data, with extremely high user stickiness. Although it entered the group-buying war a bit late, its strong brand and traffic advantages quickly made it Meituan's fiercest competitor.

Starting in 2013, Meituan and Dianping engaged in an all-out, brutal "brawl" across every O2O (Online-to-Offline) segment, including food delivery, movie tickets, and hotel bookings.

If you launched a "10 yuan off for every 20 spent" coupon today, I would dare to launch a "12 yuan off for every 20 spent" tomorrow. If you spent 500 million to sign the most cinemas, I would dare to spend 800 million to sign even more.

Both sides were out for blood, with the proxy war of two giants—Alibaba (investing in Meituan) and Tencent (investing in Dianping)—raging behind them. The entire O2O industry became a huge capital black hole, with tens of billions of funds poured into this seemingly endless "subsidy" war, vanishing into thin air.

"We were like two cars speeding towards each other head-on; neither dared to hit the brakes, because whoever braked first would lose," said Dianping's founder Zhang Tao years later, describing the situation.

Act I: The Investors' "Secret Plot"

The first to feel anxious about this "suicidal" war were the investors behind both companies.

They watched as their money was consumed meaninglessly, with the two companies' losses setting new records every month.

"This war must be stopped!"—this became the consensus among all investors.

In 2015, at a critical juncture in a new round of financing for Meituan and Dianping, a common investor—Neil Shen of Sequoia Capital—began to secretly "broker" a deal between them.

He approached Wang Xing and Zhang Tao separately and proposed a bold idea: a merger.

At the time, this suggestion was akin to "asking a tiger for its skin."

Wang Xing and Zhang Tao were entrepreneurs with completely different styles. Wang Xing had a typical "engineer" personality—rational, ruthless, a believer in "data" and "efficiency," with an almost obsessive desire for war. Zhang Tao, on the other hand, was more like a "product manager"—gentle, refined, and focused on "user experience" and "corporate culture."

The temperaments of the two companies were therefore starkly different. Meituan was like a well-disciplined "army," with extremely strong execution and a combative spirit. Dianping was more like a "school," with a relaxed atmosphere full of idealism.

The difficulty of merging two companies with such different cultures, styles, and founders was imaginable.

Act II: The 21-Day "Lightning" Negotiation

However, in the face of capital's will and market pressure, personal feelings had to take a backseat.

Both Wang Xing and Zhang Tao knew very well that if the fight continued, the result would likely be mutual destruction, allowing a "third party" like Baidu Nuomi to reap the benefits.

After a brief hesitation and intense internal discussions, the CEOs of both companies agreed to come to the negotiating table.

The negotiation process was full of drama. It is said that in the initial meetings, the teams were still full of hostility and mistrust, and even had heated arguments in the conference room.

Wang Xing showed the extremely tough and rational side of his personality. He insisted that in the new company, Meituan's team must hold the dominant position, and he himself must be the sole CEO.

His reasoning was simple: on the O2O battlefield, which requires "strong execution," there must be a unified and powerful leadership core to lead the company to victory in the battles to come.

In the end, after a grueling 21-day "tug-of-war," Zhang Tao, who valued "users" and "products" more, made a huge concession.

On October 8, 2015, the last day of the National Day holiday, Meituan and Dianping jointly announced that they had formally reached a strategic merger. The new company would be called "Meituan-Dianping." Wang Xing would be the CEO, and Zhang Tao would be the chairman.

This merger of the century, which shocked the Chinese internet, was finally settled.

Epilogue: The Birth of a New "Empire"

The merger of Meituan and Dianping became the most important "watershed" in the Chinese O2O market.

It completely ended the industry's years-long, brutal "cash-burning" war, bringing the market back to a more rational track focused on "efficiency" and "experience."

The new merged company, "Meituan-Dianping," became the undisputed "super-giant" in this field. It integrated Meituan's powerful "offline execution capabilities" with Dianping's massive "online data," building a "moat" that was difficult for any competitor to overcome.

Through this complex capital operation, Wang Xing ultimately won the "endgame" of the entire O2O war. He proved that he was not only an excellent product manager and entrepreneur but also a "strategist" who understood how to "judge the hour and size up the situation" and make good use of capital.

As for his "opponent" Zhang Tao, although he chose to "let go," his magnanimity also demonstrated the vision and wisdom of an entrepreneur.

This merger had no absolute "winner" or "loser." It was more like a business version of "historical inevitability"—when an emerging market moves from savage growth to maturity, ending internal strife and moving towards integration is often the wisest and ultimate destiny for all participants.