Growth Dragons Weekly: Alibaba Bets on Instant Commerce, Xiaomi Sells 298,000 SUVs, Pop Mart's Surprise Move into Home Appliances
What happened in China this week:
Alibaba Unifies Ele.me and Fliggy with E-Commerce – Gunning for Meituan in Instant Commerce
HK Approves Brokers to Offer Crypto Trading – Guotai Junan Stock Soars 160%
Xiaomi Sells 289,000 SUVs in 1 Hour – Launches AI Glasses to Expand Smart Mobility Play
Pop Mart Expands to Jewelry, Films—and Now Possibly Home Appliances?
Eacon Files for IPO – World’s #1 in L4 Autonomous Mining Tech
#1 Alibaba Unifies Ele.me and Fliggy with E-Commerce – Gunning for Meituan in Instant Commerce
Alibaba is shaking things up again—this time by merging Ele.me (its food delivery arm) and Fliggy (its travel platform) into its core e-commerce business. The move is more than just housekeeping. It signals a deeper shift in strategy: Alibaba is no longer just an e-commerce giant. It wants to become a comprehensive consumer platform, integrating everything from groceries and gadgets to hotels and holidays—delivered instantly.
CEO Eddie Wu called this a restructuring to “optimize for users,” but the subtext is clear: Alibaba wants tighter synergies and sharper focus on what really moves the needle—AI, cloud, and its main profit engine: e-commerce.
Ele.me and Fliggy will now report directly to Jiang Fan, the same person running Tmall and Taobao, as well as the group’s international businesses. This gives the E-commerce Business Group more firepower and control, unifying previously siloed operations under one roof.
Previously, Ele.me sat within the Local Services Group (with Amap), and Fliggy was on its own. Bringing them together under e-commerce isn’t just a restructure—it’s a competitive play. Alibaba wants to blur the lines between food delivery, retail, travel, and even offline-to-store. This is exactly what Meituan has been doing successfully.
In fact, Alibaba’s version of instant commerce quietly launched in April via Taobao, riding on Ele.me’s delivery network. The results are promising: daily orders jumped from 10 million in week one to 60 million by June. For context, Meituan handles 90 million a day. JD.com’s similar service does 25 million. So Alibaba’s already halfway to Meituan—and it’s just getting started.
But scale doesn’t mean profit. Penetration is growing, but margins remain razor-thin. Competing in this space means playing the long game—subsidies, logistics burn, and relentless execution.
Still, if Alibaba can consolidate demand and logistics, and cross-sell travel, food, and physical goods through one super-app interface, it might finally catch up with Meituan—and even go beyond.