China Instant Retail: From Subsidy War to Duopoly

After a year of heavy subsidies and shifting share, the old market structure may not be coming back.

I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on China instant retail/quick commerce this week…

Now that Meituan, Alibaba, and JD have all reported, I wanted to try and get a clean read on where market share actually sits today. Not the perfect answer, because that doesn’t really exist here, but a reasonable estimate using the best public data we have.

The annoying part is that none of these companies make this easy. Meituan stopped giving clean food delivery GTV years ago. Alibaba gives the best disclosure, but even that revenue line is net of subsidies. JD basically buries the whole thing inside New Businesses.

So this is not me pretending I have the number nailed to the decimal. I don’t. Nobody does. But after going through the filings, earnings calls, management comments, and sell-side estimates, I do think the rough picture is pretty clear.

The short version: the last eighteen months have been brutal for Meituan, with Alibaba and JD both in full attack mode.