The month ending on Dec. 25 was a good one for 55tuan, a Groupon clone in China, according to the company’s CEO. If true, this would make 55tuan the first daily-deals site in the Asian country to turn a profit at a large scale. The group-buying scene hasn’t been an easy one to thrive in: in May, there were more than 6,000 such sites in China, and now there are about 2,000 left, thanks to a dry well of financing and scarce profits. 55tuan, which operates in 130 cities and has about 10,000 merchant partners, made a pivot last year that expanded the company’s focus beyond daily deals to being an all-encompassing platform for merchants. According to Dataotuan, 55tuan held 7 percent of the Chinese daily-deals market in the third quarter, making it No. 5 overall. It remains to be seen if its profitability will help 55tuan make progress on its previously expressed hopes to go public.
Back in June, Groupon’s Gaopeng venture in China was combined with FTuan, a local player backed by Tencent Holdings. This was a move to bolster Groupon’s foothold in the Chinese market.
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