Groupon, the Chicago-based coupon website, has started an online group-buying service in China, GaoPeng.com.
The Tencent Collaboration Fund and Yunfeng Capital are other investors in Gaopeng. The website is expected to begin accepting email registrations from local consumers on 28 February, with daily deals promoting local merchants to start in March this year.
In the beginning, the service will be restricetd to Beijing and Shanghai and later expand to other cities. The GaoPeng.com website is open for local user registrations, Groupon said.
However the company is expected to face intense competition. Though China is a big market, there are already many players offering similar services in the country.
Groupon reportedly had sales of $760m in 2010. The daily deals website had rejected a $6bn takeover bid from Google in December 2010. Later Google was reported to be planning a similar service of its own.
