After a couple of years of explosive growth and gladiatorial competition, the manic production of new O2O models cooled off. Many overnight O2O unicorns died once the subsidy-fueled growth ended. But the innovators and gladiators who survived—like Wang Xing’s Meituan Dianping—multiplied their already billion-dollar valuations by fundamentally reshaping urban China’s service sector. By late 2017, Meituan Dianping was valued at $30 billion, and Didi Chuxing hit a valuation of $57.6 billion, surpassing that of Uber itself.
