As part of its aggressive investment in foreign assets, Mirae Asset Financial Group, a leading asset manager in South Korea, has created a private equity fund to buy into China's rising start-up company, Meituan-Dianping.
The 13 billion won (11 million US dollars) fund, created by Multi Asset Global Investments, a Mirae group subsidiary, has attracted a number of domestic institutional investors, according to banking sources. Details were not given.
Meituan-Dianping is the world's largest online and on-demand delivery platform known for 10 million daily orders and deliveries. Chinese and global investors have joined its pre-IPO (initial public offering).
China now boasts the world's largest social commerce market. Helen Wang, an expert on China's middle class, said in a contribution to U.S. business magazine Forbes that e-commerce in China is predominantly mobile commerce and integrated with social media such as WeChat with over 800 million active users.
WeChat as a social commerce platform has evolved quickly, becoming a central hub that facilitates customer engagement, commerce, customer relationship management (CRM), online-to-offline (O2O) and more. Wang said the most amazing part is that mobile commerce, social commerce, and entertainmerce are all merged into one.