Chapter 726: Fire and Smoke
In late autumn, with yellow leaves flying everywhere, Kuaidi is developing rapidly in Tianjin and surrounding cities, while Didi has quickly captured about half of the market share in Jiangcheng and Yuzhou.
Various advertising leaflets were distributed everywhere, and the subsidy confrontation between different regions was full of gunpowder.
In this small-scale market battle, both sides seem to have gained an advantage, but neither side seems to have gained an advantage.
However, Chen Chuanxing's reputation in the circle has obviously risen. During October, the head of SoftBank China visited Kuaidi Technology's Hangzhou headquarters many times, and Hillhouse Capital also followed.
This shows that foreign capital is already eager to enter China's taxi market, and they are all optimistic about Kuaidi.
In contrast, Bibi has fallen into a situation where its presence is not strong in the entire taxi-hailing alliance.
After all, in the eyes of capital, a CEO in the start-up phase does not need to be too calm, but must be decisive.
In other words, daring to think and act is more favored than being cautious, because prudence is what comes after the market is unified. In the current stage of business war, one cannot win the crown without being ruthless.
Therefore, capital is more optimistic about Kuaidi, or to be more precise, more optimistic about Chen Chuanxing, which makes Cheng Wei's "calmness" become a derogatory term.
Liu Qing felt a bit disappointed with him. She really didn't understand why Cheng Wei was so cautious every time he mentioned Jiang Qin.
Perhaps she was used to the way things were done in capitalist society. In her opinion, all the vigor and decisiveness that Jiang Qin had shown in the past were nothing to be afraid of when faced with real money.
This feeling became even stronger when Liu Qing met Jiang Qin in person and had a few words with him at an investor conference in October.
Events like the Investor Conference are held once or twice every year. Liu Qing attended as usual, but she didn't expect to see Jiang Qin at the scene.
Out of incomprehension of Cheng Wei's cautiousness, Liu Qing took the initiative to greet Jiang Qin.
She wanted to use her own contacts to re-evaluate this man who was almost hyped up as a god in the domestic market.
"Hello, Mr. Jiang. I'm Liu Qing, the joint CEO of Kuaidi and Bibi."
Jiang Qin glanced at her and said, "Oh, I know. Your father and I know each other."
Liu Qing smiled slightly: "I haven't been back to China for long, but I have heard a lot about President Jiang and I admire him very much."
"Nothing."
Jiang Qin said modestly: "It's just that I have too much free time in college, so I took a part-time job..."
Liu Qing was stunned for a moment and thought to herself, I thought he would be humble, but he was thrown into disarray all of a sudden.
However, Jiang Qin's attention was not on him. Instead, he looked around the venue with his eyes wandering.
"Boss Jiang is looking for someone? Is it a friend you have an appointment with?"
"No, let me see who is more suitable to attend the Hundred Days Banquet..."
Jiang Qin muttered something, his expression suddenly froze, and then he turned to look at Liu Qing who was standing in front of him.
At noon, it started to drizzle. Liu Qing left the investor conference and came to the headquarters of Bibi to meet Cheng Wei.
"I've met Jiang Qin. He's very ordinary."
"No matter where you are, there is nothing extraordinary about how you speak or what you do."
"I have met many outstanding CEOs in the United States, and without exception, they all have elite qualities, but I don't feel that from Jiang Qin."
"And all he talks about is family matters, either his daughter or his wife. I'm not trying to belittle him. I just want to tell you not to over-mythologize your opponents. The market is changing rapidly and you only get one chance."
After listening to Liu Qing's words, Cheng Wei was silent for a long time and began to feel irritated and uneasy.
Kuaidi is about to take over the Tianjin market, and it is estimated that it will be able to take advantage of the situation to enter the Kyoto market before the Spring Festival. If Bibi does not take action, it will really have no chance.
Seeing that he was hesitant, Liu Qing decided to give him some space. However, when she was leaving, she remembered something and said, "Mr. Cheng, lend me 10,000 yuan."
"Um?"
"I like a pair of high heels, but I have no money left in my card."
Cheng Wei took out his phone and transferred 10,000 yuan to her, but he couldn't help but look a little confused, thinking who is Liu Qing? How could she not even have 10,000 yuan? Liu Qing took the money and said goodbye to him without any further explanation. She didn't expect to have to give gifts when attending the investor conference, and she didn't expect that someone would actually carry a POS machine with them...
It was raining outside the window and thunder could be heard faintly through the clouds.
Cheng Wei watched Liu Qing leave, then paced back and forth in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, thinking about Liu Qing's words.
There is no firm alliance in the real market. Everyone comes together because of the trend of interests. The same is true for Kuaidi and Bibi.
If Alibaba did not want to contain group buying, Ma Yun would not have agreed to the merger of the two companies. If Uber had not been defeated by Didi, it would not have benefited Bibi.
When facing a common enemy, the stronger the enemy becomes, the closer this temporary alliance will be, but as the enemy becomes weaker, the alliance will lose its meaning.
He knew it was time to take action.
Therefore, not long after the investors' conference ended, Bibi officially entered the Jinling market and set its sights on Shanghai.
Bibi can't wait any longer. Didi obviously has no better way to deal with the situation except taking the opportunity to expand into the lower-end market. In the final battle of kings, only Kuaidi and Bibi will participate.
People in the circle were also talking about Bibi's big move.
But what they were talking about was not the beep or the fast sound, but the beep.
The taxi market was originally controlled by Uber. It was Didi that turned the tide and dragged the market into its own rhythm, thus defeating Uber.
As a result, in just half a year, Kuaidi and Bibi joined forces to eat up the fruit that should have belonged to Didi. This is really regrettable.
But think about it carefully, if all the websites had united to solve the group buying problem first and then decide the winner, maybe group buying would no longer exist now.
Jiang Qin has been very aggressive along the way and has made countless enemies, so it is not surprising that he has encountered this situation.
The market is everyone's market. If there is a company that is invincible, it will inevitably become the target of everyone's siege. This is reasonable, right? Otherwise, what will others eat?
However, what happened afterwards caused an uproar in the entire Internet business community.
The trial operation of Alipay's Yu'ebao has officially ended and has been fully opened to the outside world. As a financial product, Yu'ebao's interest rate is much higher than bank deposits, and the number of users has increased significantly in a short period of time.
At this time, I don’t know who was the first to shout it out, but the call of “deposit large money in Alipay and small money in UnionPay” is getting louder and louder in the market.
And then, another piece of news came out, which made the whole situation become even more tense.
Alibaba plans to acquire Ele.bu in full and negotiations are currently underway.
In an external interview, Alibaba stated that ecological construction in the field of life services will be the key development direction in the next stage.
At this moment, almost everyone realized that Alibaba really wanted to strike first.
Ele.buy, Koubei, Fliggy, Taopiaopiao, since the payment war, Alipay is no longer a simple payment tool, it is an aggregated version of group buying.
And now, with the full launch of Yu'ebao, Alibaba seems to be targeting its core business of group buying.
As for Dianping, which is owned by Tencent, it seems to be eyeing the market share held by group buying. WeChat Pay has also fully entered the college student market and has entered the cafeterias of college students across the country.
"Fuck, so cruel?"
"Group buying has become too strong in recent years..."
"Who says it's not true? Since 2009, Alibaba and Tencent have spent a lot of money in the O2O field, but in the end, the mature market was snatched away by group buying. It feels like you spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a dowry to marry a wife, but in the end, someone else slept with her on the wedding night!"
"Being able to force big companies into this state, group buying can go down in history."
"Jiang Qin is only 25 years old, everyone. Jiang Qin is only 25 years old. I was still selling insurance when I was 25!"
"But Alibaba and Tencent suddenly started to have a tacit understanding. Even a god can't stop them, right?"
"Damn it, in this hellish game, even if you lose you can still brag!"
In fact, neither Alibaba nor Tencent, nor their subsidiaries have said anything about targeting group buying.
There was almost an entire autumn between Kuaidi’s entry into Tianjin, Bibi’s entry into Jinling, Yu’ebao’s full opening up, and Alibaba’s proposed acquisition of Ele.me.
In the eyes of ordinary people, the big companies are just taking action again, but they don’t think about the connection between them.
In fact, most people are not very clear about the relationship between software such as Bibi, Ele.bu, Fliggy, Taopiaopiao, and Dianping and Alibaba and Tencent.
So this is not any form of cooperation, it’s just a coincidence that everyone is planning to enter the core area of group buying.
Perhaps it will not be until many years later, when this battle is completely over, and when some self-media bloggers who like to analyze business development begin to dig deep into the details, that they will understand that this was actually a sniper attack against group buying.
Only then can we use simple language and words to try to show everyone the danger at that time.
At this moment, the ones who feel the wind and waves the most are actually the group members who are in the eye of the storm.
Throughout the autumn, almost all actions taken by large factories have been aimed at group buying, which inevitably caused concerns among group buying employees.
For example, if Ele.me does not accept Alibaba’s acquisition, Pintuan’s food delivery business group will keep a close eye on this matter.
For example, Tao Piaopiao’s movie ticket subsidies have also made the performance ticket purchasing business department under the group-buying-to-store business group alert.
There is no flames of war, nor smoke of gunpowder, but for group buying, the atmosphere of war has slowly begun to spread.
(End of this chapter)
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