In Chinese, the word “mei” means beautiful, and the word “tuan” means together. When Wang Xing decided to build a platform that brought local consumers and merchants together, he merged the idea of beauty and togetherness into what would become a multi-billion dollar shopping platform called Meituan. In 2010, Meituan became available in cities and communities throughout China. Headquartered in Beijing, Meituan quickly became the leading e-commerce service provider in China. It is colloquially known as “The Company” and allows people to connect with local restaurants, supermarkets, shops, hotels, bicycle rentals, and more instantly.

One of the biggest aspects of Meituan is the delivery services they provide. Customers can place an order for a meal or personal items to be delivered to their chosen location. Meituan employs hundreds of delivery riders to complete these orders in as little as 30 minutes. Orders can be placed on demand or to arrive at a future time. Enabling rapid delivery is Meituan’s sophisticated delivery logistics platform combined with enough delivery riders to get the job done. In 2017, Meituan began exploring new ways to deliver products to customers using drones.

Meituan developed a logistic and hardware platform that uses aerial and ground drones for last mile delivery options. Specialized ground drones can be loaded with larger packages, while aerial ones can carry smaller ones. A delivery rider is dispatched to the merchant to collect the order. The rider then goes to a coordinating drone hub. The package is safely placed in the cargo case of the drone to complete the delivery while the rider moves on to the next scheduled order. The drones bring the package directly to the customer or a designated drop off locker. The customer unlocks their order with a secure QR code through the Meituan app.

The heightened restrictions of COVID-19 proved to be an excellent opportunity for Meituan to truly test its drone delivery options. The company began making last mile drone deliveries of meals, groceries, personal merchandise, and medications throughout Shenzhen’s Nanshan District. Utilizing a network of drones, cloud-based dispatching, and ground support infrastructure from drone landing and charging ports has been key in Meituan’s success. Since June 2021, Meituan has carried out more than 200,000 drone test flights that led to the completion of over 2,500 drone deliveries in an urban environment.

Meituan was excited to participate in the 2021 World Artificial Intelligence Forum held in Shanghai on July 8th. This year the forum was focused on a post pandemic way of moving forward that would be seeing the world embrace urban digital transformation. At the conference, Meituan had the opportunity to wow the world with the progress they have made using drones in cityscapes. Puzhong Wang, Meituan Senior Vice President, shared the company’s drone progress. “Low-altitude logistics networks in urban areas will present an important growth opportunity for innovation and technology over the coming 10 to 20 years,” he said. “Our efforts reflect Meituan’s hopes to use inclusive technology and innovation to help people live better.” Meanwhile, Meituan’s head of drone delivery, Yinian Mao said, “This network would enable us to adapt to different delivery scenarios across residential communities, shopping malls, office buildings, etc. We envision a collaborative, integrated network where our drones and delivery riders can work seamlessly together to deliver orders.” Meituan’s motto is to help people eat better and live better. With drones, Meituan is doing just that, combining the beauty of technology and togetherness to the betterment of urban living.

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