BENGALURU: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said on Monday it would buy the remaining shares of Ele.me, a major platform in China’s food delivery market, as it competes with Tencent Holdings Ltd services for offline consumers.

Ele.me, which roughly translates as “Hungry?”, is part of a fast-growing and competitive e-commerce market in China driven by consumers eager to use smartphones to make purchases from groceries to cinema tickets.

For Alibaba, the latest acquisition enlarges the e-commerce firm’s food delivery empire, which also includes delivery platform Koubei, as it competes with Meituan Dianping, backed by Tencent Holdings Ltd.

Published in Dawn, April 3rd, 2018