World’s greatest delivery empires play the game of thrones

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This piece from Bloomberg offers a fascinating insight into China’s gargantuan food delivery market. “He’s a very scary person,” says one investor of Wang Xing, chief executive of Meituan, one of the largest players in China’s $35bn food delivery market. The strength of this market is illustrated by the fact that in the capital, it is often cheaper to order in than cook at home. What makes the market so interesting is not that it’s highly efficient – according to this piece, it isn’t – but rather the behind-the-scenes fighting between Wang’s Meituan and Jack Ma’s Alibaba. Such is the ferocity of the hostilities, that it more resembles Game of Thrones than the normally prosaic world of supply chains.