Meituan’s Keeta is aggressively planning its entry to Brazil, while expanding to Kuwait, Qatar and UAE, after becoming #2 in Saudi Arabia.
Lately we’ve often been asked: “Will Keeta expand to Singapore — or Southeast Asia more broadly?”
Amusingly, these rumours resurface almost every year – often triggered by someone spotting a delivery rider with a Meituan bag in Singapore.
In almost every case, it turned out to be someone delivering for a local platform who bought the Meituan delivery bag from Taobao.
There are two Keeta entities already registered in Singapore: Keeta Pte. Limited and Keeta Technologies Pte. Ltd.
Keeta Pte. Limited was incorporated in Feb 2024, with Meituan Co-founder Mu Rongjun and CEO of Keeta Tong Qiu as directors. The sole shareholder is Cayman-registered Meituan.
Keeta Technologies Pte. Ltd, meanwhile, was incorporated in Sept 2016. Mu Rongjun and the Meituan VP in charge of strategic investments are listed as directors. The company, which has a registered capital of US$651 million and S$18 million, registers its business activity as “renting and leasing of recreational and sports goods”.
Keeta Technologies used to be the Singapore holding entity of Mobike – a leading Chinese bike sharing company that was eventually acquired by Meituan in 2018. In the heat of the Chinese venture capital craze, Mobike had raised more than US$1.5 billion capital prior to the acquisition. “Gone forever are the good old days,” one prominent Chinese venture capitalist lamented to us – reflecting on the peak-era exuberance of Chinese capital.
Both Keeta entities in Singapore seem to be holding, not operating, companies.
Is Singapore a relevant and attractive market for Meituan? Well, the market is small. Momentum Works Food Delivery Platforms in Southeast Asia report estimates Singapore’s food delivery GMV in 2024 to be US$2.6 billion – or about 4 days of Meituan’s GMV in China. But then Indonesia, the largest market in Southeast Asia, was only about 2 times bigger at US$5.4 billion.
We suspect that any market that has volume and density (in terms of population and spending power) is probably under Meituan’s radar. There are some exceptions – for example, India, which has banned most Chinese internet companies, and Japan, where omnipresent convenience stores fulfill everything.
For the rest, it is a matter of prioritisation probably based on factors including organisational resources and the destination government’s relationship with China (e.g. Brazil = good, for now at least).
Southeast Asia would fall under this radar, especially in a couple of countries it is relatively easy to reassemble Meituan’s operating ecosystem of service providers and franchises.
And in each market – Keeta’s ambition would be in retail, not just food delivery.
The entry into Brazil and the ongoing quick commerce subsidy war in China would certainly suck in a lot of organisational attention. But unless Meituan suffers a strategic setback at home – which seems unlikely – it’s probably not a question of if, but when.
How do you make of this by the way?
The post Will Meituan’s Keeta come to Singapore, or Southeast Asia? first appeared on The Low Down - Momentum Works.
