Hot money floods mainland's online-to-offline food-delivery sector

A few days before Lunar New Year, start-up entrepreneur Qu Bo perked up when he learned his online-to-offline (O2O) food-delivery project, Order a Duck, was valued by investors at 120 million yuan (HK$150 million), more than double what it was six months ago.

There is only one dish in Qu's catering business: roast duck. His company cooks and delivers the ready-to-eat bird to customers who order online. Each duck is sold for 128 yuan.

Originally a white-collar worker at China's largest online search engine company, Baidu, Qu quit his job a year ago and established his own company, hoping to cash in on the booming O2O business that has swept the mainland's catering industry since last year.

"There were already investors approaching us two weeks after we sold our first duck in May. But I refused as I had no idea about the capital market at that time," said the 30-year-old.

The young businessman had no reason to reject it again when investors valued the small business at 50 million yuan two months later and injected 6 million yuan to help Qu open his first brick-and-mortar store in Beijing's central business district.

Last month, Qu's team completed a second round of fundraising.