Koubei offers value-added service to attract offline businesses

Koubei, the online-to-offline (O2O) e-commerce platform backed by Alibaba Group, launched a value-added service package on Wednesday to help brick-and-mortar business secure more customers online.


The plan, which is free of charge for three years, is Koubei's latest effort to win offline businesses in the cutthroat competition in China's O2O market.


With the service package, restaurants, supermarkets, hair salons and other offline businesses can easily find their potential customers and interact with them online after setting up a virtual front on Koubei.


Koubei even launched a new feature to allow businesses owners to interact with customers in real time in a live TV show-like stream video service.


Koubei, which is a joint venture between Alibaba and it finance arm Ant Financial, said it can leverage its parent companies resources, such as big data, huge number of active users and risk control, and empower offline businesses.


Koubei was revived by Alibaba and Ant Financial in June last year with a total investment of $1 billion. Koubei is seen as Alibaba's O2O vehicle to take on the current market leader Tencent-backed Meituan-Dianping.


The article transsshipment from China Daily