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"Right now Baidu has over fifty billion (yuan) in cash on its
books," said CEO Robin Li in a press release. "We're going to
take 20 billion of that and do Nuomi right."
Baidu, China's third-biggest Internet company, has been vying
with larger rivals - e-commerce titan Alibaba Group Holding Ltd
and social networking firm Tencent Holdings Ltd - in booming
online-to-offline (O2O) services, which have traced the growth
of smartphone use.
Such services let users connect with nearby, everyday activities
such as calling taxis, finding deals at local restaurants and
booking cinema tickets through their smartphones.
But Baidu is seen by analysts and industry observers as lagging
its competition. In private-ride hailing services it has
invested in U.S. company Uber Technologies Inc, which in China
is bumping up against the dominant player, taxi-calling app Didi
Kuaidi, backed by Alibaba and Tencent.
Baidu also said it would launch a "Membership Plus" strategy for
the group-buying service, akin to Groupon Inc, letting merchants
using Nuomi build their own marketing platforms to "increase
user retention rates and consumption frequency".
Baidu last week priced a public offering of $1.25 billion in
notes.
(Reporting by Paul Carsten; Editing by Miral Fahmy and Edmund
Klamann)
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