Meituan & Dazhongdianping, a prominent company in the Chinese online-to-offline (O2O) business, has recently announced its plan of setting up a university that specializes in e-commerce, Shanghai Daily reported.
To be called as Internet Plus University (IPU), the school intends to concentrate on developing business models, technology, and skills to promote China's Internet Plus Strategy.
This strategy was proposed by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in 2015, aiming to apply the Internet and other information technology in conventional industries to foster new business developments in China.
Meituan & Dazhongdianping CEO Wang Xing reiterated that the essence of the Internet Plus strategy is "improving efficiency and reducing costs across all sectors by integrating the Internet with more industries."
With this, the IPU is schemed to integrate the company's training departments to build schools that aim to train internal staff and business partners on mastering and innovating e-commerce. Wang Xing added that the online business platforms should not only focus on marketing and transactions but as well as other upstream services.
Established in 2015, Meituan & Dazhongdianping is a merger of meituan.com, a group-buying platform, and dianping.com, a review service website. The company offers a plethora of O2O services, ranging from food delivery to the sale of movie tickets. Partnering with about 4.32 million vendors, the company claimed to have more than 200 million customers since its merger.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China's online retail volume has catapulted to 2.25 trillion yuan (335.3 billion dollars) in just the first half of 2016, signifying a 28.2 percent year-on-year increase from last year.
Earlier in January, the merger has registered the world's largest O2O fund-raising campaign amounting to U.S.$ 3.3 billion.
Wang Xing, one of the firm's CEOs, previously shared that the funds they raised will be used to "explore the untapped consumption potential of Chinese consumers more and offer a better, more convenient user experience."
The company lists e-commerce giants Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings as its backers.