LOGISTICS
LOGISTICS
Alibaba to acquire full ownership of Ele. me
CHINESE multinational conglomerate Alibaba Group announced last month that the company will acquire all outstanding shares that it does not already own in Ele. me, an online delivery and local services platform in China, in a transaction that implies the enterprise value of Ele. me at US $ 9.5 billion.
Alibaba and its affiliate Ant Small and Micro Financial Services Group currently own approximately 43 % of the outstanding voting shares of Ele. me.
This acquisition will deepen Ele. me’ s integration into Alibaba’ s ecosystem and advance Alibaba’ s New Retail strategy to provide a seamless online and offline consumer experience in the local services sector, according to the company.
Daniel Zhang, CEO of Alibaba Group, said:“ We are excited for Ele. me to become a part of the Alibaba ecosystem. Under the leadership of its founder and management team, Ele. me has achieved leading market share in China’ s online food delivery and local services sector. Our shared belief that New Retail will create more value for customers and merchants has brought us together. Looking forward, Ele. me can leverage Alibaba’ s infrastructure in commerce and find new synergies with Alibaba’ s diverse businesses to add further momentum to the New Retail initiative.”
Ele. me’ s fast local delivery service will build on its core expertise in food delivery to provide consumers with a wider range of products and services on-demand. This expansion of offerings will allow Ele. me to efficiently utilise its large delivery force that currently fulfils orders in cities across China, the company said.
Ele. me also complements Koubei, Alibaba’ s affiliated local services platform and provides extended synergies. By combining Ele. me’ s online home delivery services with Koubei’ s consumer acquisition and engagement capability for a range of restaurants and service establishments, Alibaba will be able to offer an integrated experience to online and offline consumers.
Zhang Xuhao, founder of Ele. me, said:“ This acquisition shows that we have built Ele. me into one of China’ s most valuable Internet businesses. Our customers, merchants and partners will benefit from our further integration into the Alibaba family. We share the same strategic vision that New Retail has a bright future and being part of Alibaba’ s ecosystem will take Ele. me’ s growth to a new level.”
Ele. me will continue to operate in its own brand and work closely with its existing partners and merchants. Alibaba said it will lend its full support to Ele. me including access to its New Retail infrastructure, product offerings and technology expertise.
Upon completion of the acquisition, Zhang Xuhao will become chairman of Ele. me and a special advisor to Alibaba’ s CEO on New Retail strategy. Wang Lei, vice-president of Alibaba Group, will become chief executive of Ele. me. ra
Courier service platform BBT completes Series A financing
START-UP crowdsourcing logistics and delivery platform BBT has announced the completion of a Series A round of financing that raised“ several tens of millions of USD”, with leading entrepreneurs from Hong Kong as the top investors in the round.
Through the financing, BBT hopes to expand into crowdsourcing-based logistics and delivery markets in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, by further leveraging big data and professional technology support platforms.
“ After completing the financing, we, in addition to continuing to strengthen services for the mainland market, plan to speed up our entry into Hong Kong’ s takeaway delivery, express delivery and logistics markets, by leveraging the existing technology, data and experience that we accumulated as we built the business in mainland China,” said KK Chiu, CEO of BBT.“ We plan to grow our business further, with the next targets being Taiwan, the Philippines and tiertwo cities in mainland China.”
Zipline’ s new drone flies farther, faster and with more cargo
LAST month, automated logistics company Zipline unveiled what it cited to be“ the fastest commercial delivery drone on earth”.
The new aircraft is part of a complete redesign of Zipline’ s logistics system, which dramatically improves the system’ s launch, autonomous flight and landing capabilities. The improvements will decrease the amount of time between Zipline’ s receipt of an order and launch of a fulfilment flight from 10 minutes to one, increase the number of daily delivery flights that each Zipline distribution centre can make from 50 to 500, and expand the radius of each distribution centre to serve populations of up to 10 million people.
Zipline’ s new delivery-vehicle is an autonomous fixed-wing style airplane. The plane is capable of flying at a top speed of 128km / h and a cruising speed of 101km / h— 21km / h faster than the previous generation of aircraft— with a round trip range of 160 km carrying up to 1.75kg of cargo. The new plane is capable of flying four times faster than the average quadcopter drone and can serve an area 200 times as large, according to the company.
“ Our first-generation aircraft and logistics system allowed us to create the first and only drone delivery service in the world, which is helping to save lives in Rwanda every day,” said Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo.“ We’ ve taken everything Zipline has learnt making thousands of lifecritical deliveries and flying hundreds of thousands of kilometres and redesigned our entire system and operation from top to bottom. The new aircraft and distribution centre system we’ re unveiling will help Zipline scale to meet the needs of countries around the world— including the US.”
Zipline’ s mission is to bring life-saving medicine to the most difficult to reach places in the world. The Silicon Valleybased company operates the world’ s first and only national scale drone delivery system, making thousands of deliveries per year. ra
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