Three e-commerce giants battle it out in Wuxi

Didi Chuxing's food delivery platform begins an operation in orange uniforms since April in Wuxi, East China's Jiangsu province. [Photo/wxrb.com]

China's largest car-hailing platform Didi Chuxing recently made a U-turn, entering the booming food delivery market. Its food delivery platform began a trial operation on April 1 in Wuxi, East China's Jiangsu province, and the company implemented mind-bogglingly low prices to attract as many customers as possible.

A price war then began as the other two leading food delivery companies, Meituan-Dianping and Ele.me, also began providing customers with eye-popping discounts.

Unfortunately, all these discounts led to an overwhelming number of takeout orders, resulting in excessive traffic within the apps. People complained about two hour food delivery wait times, only to have their order eventually cancelled automatically.

However, local market authorities on Wednesday called an end to the price war and warned the three companies not to disturb market order.

Local market authorities in Wuxi called an end to the price war and warned the three companies not to disturb market order on April 11. [Photo/wxrb.com]

In other news, Meituan-Dianping launched ride-hailing services in Shanghai one month ago, igniting a competition with Didi Chuxing to become king of the burgeoning and cutthroat car-hailing market.

Meanwhile, Alibaba has intensified competition with Tencent, the parent company of Meituan-Dianping, by buying Ele.me for $9.5 billion (59.58 billion yuan) on April 2.

Numerous online-to-offline (O2O) leaps by Chinese e-commerce giants such as restaurant review sites, food delivery apps and car-hailing apps highlights a fundamental shift within the e-commerce industry.