The delivery Luo Fan was thinking of here did not mean takeout, but group buying.

At present, the group buying market is booming, and a large amount of capital has begun to be raised. The rest are still insisting on doing group buying, and there are only a few large ones left.

At present, it seems that the only three companies on the market that have relatively high potential are Dianping, Lashou, and Wowo Tuan. As for Meituan, they are still very weak and cannot compete with these three companies.

In fact, not to mention Meituan, Penguin also suffered a big setback in the group buying market some time ago.

About half a year ago, the group buying market was like a fight between gods and goddesses.

With such a big piece of cake, even Penguin couldn't help but get rid of it himself. This time, Penguin did not find a leading company in group buying to invest like before, but started Penguin group buying business on its own.

But Penguin group buying has not taken off. The bottom line is that Penguin has no experience in this area. What they think and do is completely inconsistent with market rules, and failure is inevitable.

Among the existing large-scale group buying websites, the largest is undoubtedly Lashou.com.

Lashou.com invested RMB 550 million in advertising in 2010, with the Imperial Capital as the center spreading to surrounding areas and spreading a net-like propaganda. Lashou.com's group buying advertisements were everywhere on road signs.

Dianping's territory is in Shanghai, and the strategy they adopt is similar to that of Lashou. They all promote it near their headquarters.

The reason why they can burn so much money is actually because Dianping and Lashou raised hundreds of millions of dollars in Series A financing at the end of 2010.

Meituan only raised Series A financing some time ago, and only raised 12 million yuan. The gap with Dianping and Lashou is very large.

No matter how you look at it, Meituan at this stage looks like cannon fodder.

But as a reborn person, Luo Fan knows very well that the final winner in the group buying market is Meituan.

After the collapse of LaShou.com, Meituan swallowed up the market of LaShou.com, and then the "North-South Partition" with Dianping. Later, with the efforts of many parties, the two companies officially merged, but the name was still Meituan.

Meituan’s ability to catch up from behind has a lot to do with their CEO Wang.

Mr. Wang from Meituan, as an elite entrepreneur who has started his own business several times, has a very precise vision to avoid the first-tier cities where the group buying giants compete, and he focuses on the second- and third-tier cities.

At the same time, he focused on the local group buying business, coupled with his excellent vision and optimism about the future of the mobile Internet, he invested all the company's resources into the mobile terminal. Combining several advantages, he eventually became the largest group buying and takeout monopoly giant in later generations.

Of course, the current Meituan is still far behind. In fact, only one floor of the building where the main building is located belongs to Meituan, and the number of employees is about the same as that of Star Chat.

Xingyuan Ventures owns 17% of Meituan’s shares, and Meituan’s angel round was financed by Xingyuan Ventures.

It's a pity that Meituan's base is not in Shanghai but in the imperial capital. Li Jingyi's milk tea shop cannot be counted on Meituan. The only way to find it is through Dianping.

But Li Jingyi’s milk tea shop is too small. Even if you go to Dianping, they are definitely not willing to invest resources, so you will probably have to pay for the advertising space yourself.

Of course, Luo Fan couldn't let Li Jingyi spend money. He asked a subordinate from the news department to contact Dianping and spend money to buy a recommendation spot.

The price of a recommendation spot on Dianping is not cheap. The money Luo Fan spent was enough for Li Jingyi to open 3 or 4 more such stores.

But it’s worth it to make Li Jingyi happy. Isn’t the purpose of spending money just to make people happy?

The customer service staff of Dianping was also dumbfounded. This was the first time he heard that someone spent so much advertising money to promote a milk tea shop.

Luo Fan spent money to buy advertisements, and the effect was immediate. Li Jingyi's store business quickly improved.

In the past few days, 3,400 cups of milk tea have been sold every day. The most one company sold was 100 cups of milk tea. The store that was about to be closed down was revived, and Li Jingyi's mood was getting better and better.

Luo Fan took the opportunity to develop some new postures with Li Jingyi.

In the past, Li Jingyi would definitely not cooperate with Luo Fan, but this time the milk tea shop came back to life and the business was still booming. Li Jingyi knew that Luo Fan was helping her, so she half-heartedly cooperated with Luo Fan.

Luo Fan's mood improved now, and the money was well spent.

This morning Luo Fan came to the company humming a tune with a cheerful face.

As soon as he walked into the company door, Chen Sichu at the front desk ran over: "Mr. Luo, a guest is here."

"Who is it?"

"Mr. Wang of Meituan."

Luo Fan frowned when he heard this and asked: "Where is he now?"

"We arranged him in the reception room, and now Mr. Cao is receiving him."

Luo Fan nodded, turned around and walked towards the reception room.

Luo Fan still admires Mr. Wang of Meituan. His understanding of group buying is indeed different from ordinary people.

In fact, Meituan’s business model was not invented by Mr. Wang. It was Groupon in the United States that launched this model. However, it is Meituan that has truly minimized operating costs. It is a model that is better than others.

When Luo Fan came to the reception room, he saw that Cao Shuai was chatting with Mr. Wang from Meituan.

Luo Fan walked over with a smile on his face, and after some greetings, the two parties sat down.

Perhaps because there is no direct competitive relationship between Xingyuan and Meituan, Mr. Wang happily discussed some of Meituan’s current situation with Cao Shuai: “Mr. Cao, you don’t know that last year, there were 4,000 group buying companies of all sizes in the country.

, fighting each other.

At that time, what everyone mainly did was physical group buying, which was the same as Taobao's business. The group buying website gathered a large number of orders at one time, and then lowered the price from the suppliers to obtain profits.

There is a major problem with group buying of this kind of goods, and that is the shortage of logistics. And for this kind of thing, who can beat Alibaba?

Later, Alibaba entered into commodity group buying. Relying on Taobao's innate advantages, it defeated all group buying websites in an instant, including Penguin.

Fortunately, in the early days of Meituan, our main positioning was local life, that is, catering, movies, beauty salons, etc.

Other group buying websites are not focused enough on these, so we captured the largest market at the smallest cost.

However, even if you don’t burn money, a large initial investment still requires a lot of funds.

Meituan has only raised money twice since its establishment, once from Mr. Cao’s 5 million yuan, and the other time from the Series A financing of 12 million yuan at the end of last year.

Compared with the current development of Meituan, it is actually not enough.

The capital market doesn't understand companies like mine that are unwilling to spend a lot of money, and the company is actually in quite a difficult situation."

Hearing this, Luo Fan and Cao Shuai understood that Mr. Wang from Meituan was here to seek cooperation.
Chapter completed!