Dianping’s mobile app had had 150 million users as of the end of June. Users are from 2300 cities and have contributed more than 36 million reviews, according to the company.
Monthly active users reached 130 million in the second quarter, an 86% year-over-year growth, shortly after Tencent bought a stake in Dianping and integrated its group-buying service onto WeChat. Dianping expects WeChat, which has users across China, to help the service expand from first- and second-tier cities to lower tier cities.
Long Wei, co-founder of Dianping, said the number of users who paid with WeChat Payment had catched up that with Alipay, the payment solution by Alibaba. Alibaba is aware of the threat from WeChat in mobile commerce that has blocked access to Taobao webpages within WeChat.
Over 80% of views now are from mobile. It was 60% in early 2013 and would took only one quarter to reach 70%.
It is expected the company will file for a U.S. IPO soon. Zhang Tao, CEO and co-founder of the company, said last year that he expected Dianping to be at a valuation of more than $10 billion at IPO. Having been in ratings and reviews business, the company began adding services to support online transactions or tap into certain businesses where there are more revenue sources. Services for food delivery and wedding have been launched and the company is working on an online travel platform, hoping to become China’s Tripadvisor in two years.
