Ele.me, Koubei to upgrade digital solutions to 1 million merchants

Ele.me and Koubei, Alibaba Group's local services company, announced it will empower 1 million merchants on its platforms to upgrade their digital solutions and bring over 100 million visitors daily to online stores, with their commission fees remaining 3 to 5 percent lower than the average rate of the industry.

Wang Lei, president of Alibaba's local services company, said the novel coronavirus outbreak has greatly accelerated the digitalization push of the local services industry, vowing they will provide merchants with more traffic, a lower commission and better service.

The company will help more than 5,000 merchants open their official stores on Tmall, and give 1,000 premium lectures covering catering, logistics and retail within next three years to help 10 million staff engaged in these industries enhance their digital operation capacities.

It also will step up efforts to offer loans to merchants who are facing a cash crunch, and the interest rate is 50 percent lower than other on-demand food delivery and services platforms.

The catering industry has been hit hard as a big part of the population is confined indoors due to restrictions placed on large gatherings at public places like restaurants, in order to contain the spread of the virus.

Fried chicken fast-food chain Dicos, which has access to the intelligent operating system developed by Ele.me and Koubei, witnessed newly-added members surge by 300,000 during the epidemic period.