Following the popularity of the Yao Shen movie, Shui Di Chi has once again entered the public eye.

Coupled with the fact that Luo Fan asked the Medicine God crew to film a real case of a leukemia patient in advance this time, this two-pronged approach has led to countless netizens joining in to donate.

In just one week, the number of registered users of Shuidichiou has increased by more than 10 million, and the number of users of Xingyuan Pay has also increased by several million.

Luo Fan is very satisfied with this. It is already very good that Shuidichou can expand at this speed.

Not to mention that this time Shuidichi has also driven a wave of Xingyuan Pay users. To be honest, this effect has exceeded Luo Fan's expectations.

The situation of Shuidichou and Xingyuan Payment was so good that Luo Fan no longer paid much attention to it. Instead, he focused his attention on the domestic online ride-hailing market.

As Uber expands its presence in the European market and its superiors turn a blind eye to the entry of civilian vehicles into the commercial sector, Baidu Taxi takes the lead to complete its expansion.

This has given major capitals great confidence in the domestic ride-hailing market, and many companies have begun to look for suitable ride-hailing investments.

However, although the online car-hailing platform is also an offline business, it is a very asset-light model because all cars belong to the car owners.

Therefore, the operating cost of online car-hailing is, in a sense, lighter than those of previous group buying websites, and it is much simpler to operate.

After all, group buying partners are stores, and the cost of opening a store is not small, which is greatly restricted by space and money.

But online car-hailing is different. A van can be used as an online car-hailing car, and a Mercedes-Benz or BMW can also be used as an online car-hailing car. There are no money constraints or space constraints, and you can drive anywhere on four wheels.

Therefore, it is very simple to establish an online ride-hailing platform. As long as there are a certain number of drivers and you spend money to promote your platform, a new technology company will be born. If you are lucky, you can also get some policy support. Next,

Just waiting for venture capital investment.

However, everything has two sides, and an overly simple model will inevitably lead to the birth of a large number of online ride-hailing platforms.

In this case, competition will become fierce, and small-scale money-burning wars often occur.

Just as 4G networks and various high-end mobile phones have become popular, the payment industry has also developed rapidly.

Various giants intending to expand in the field of payment naturally also saw the importance of the online ride-hailing industry to payment, so they all began to invest in the online ride-hailing field.

Kuaidi is an online ride-hailing platform born in Hangzhou.

KuaiDi appeared earlier than Didi in the previous life, and KuaiDi appeared earlier than Baidu Taxi in this life.

Its founder came from Alibaba and was originally a middle-level leader of Alibaba.

As major capitals paid attention to the online ride-hailing industry, Kuaidi immediately received Alibaba's angel round and A-round investment.

Didi in the imperial capital also received US$15 million from Penguin and subsequently expanded rapidly.

The big moves by Alibaba and Penguin indicate that online ride-hailing platforms have attracted capital attention.

At this time, there is no need for Baidu Taxi to keep a low profile anymore. Xingyuan and Baidu announced at the same time that they will jointly invest 25 million yuan in Baidu Taxi. At the same time, Baidu Taxi has also begun to officially promote Baidu Taxi in daily headlines.

In cities where Baidu's taxi business is located, all users can follow Baidu's official account on Star Chat and book a taxi directly from Star Chat.

In just a few days, the online ride-hailing industry has sprung up one after another like mushrooms after a rain.

Everyone in the Internet industry knows this industry.

With the entry of various capitals, the online ride-hailing industry has also become a new battlefield.

However, currently, because the cities of each company are not very overlapping, competition will only occur in some cities, but across the country.

The only relatively large one, Baidu Taxi, has not reached the point where its business can cover the whole country.

Just as the online ride-hailing companies supported by major capitals began to fight, at Xingyuan's headquarters in Shanghai, Cao Shuai hurried to Luo Fan's office. He opened the door and said in a serious tone: "Boss, something happened."

"What's wrong?" Luo Fan asked.

"Boss, when I went to work this morning, I noticed that many people were taking taxis on the road, and there were far fewer people taking the bus. I stopped the car and asked, only to find out that a taxi-hailing platform called Bumblebee has appeared in Shanghai in the past few days.

.

After I arrived at the company, I immediately conducted an investigation on them and found that this company currently only provides subsidies in Shanghai, and the subsidies are very, very strong.

This makes their market share in Shanghai very close to that of Baidu Taxi."

"Bumblebee?" After listening to Cao Shuai's words, Luo Fan fell into deep thought.

Luo Fan was already an old employee of an Internet company at the time, so he naturally paid attention to the online ride-hailing war that followed.

Luo Fan remembered that this company called Bumblebee also appeared in his previous life.

This company is also a weirdo in a sense.

They were completely different from other online ride-hailing companies at the time. Other online ride-hailing companies, including Baidu Taxi, Kuaidi, Didi, etc., which had received investment from giants, were desperately expanding their territories and making crazy arrangements in major cities across the country.

There are offices in every big city. No matter how much market share we have in these cities, we must first cover the business scope.

But Bumblebee is different. After they got the results, they only did online ride-hailing business in Shanghai. After receiving venture capital funding, they did not expand to other cities. Instead, they chose to stick to Shanghai and spent all their funds in Shanghai.

superior.

Because all the funds were invested in one city, their investment in Shanghai was much higher than that of other peers, and their development in Shanghai was naturally very fast.

But later, because the business scope of Bumblebee was too narrow, it failed to create a brand effect. After Didi started to develop, it was acquired.

Unexpectedly, this company would still appear in this life.

"Brother, why did you suddenly mention this company?" Luo Fan asked.

"I want to apply for another fund to defeat the Hornet in Shanghai," Cao Shuai said.

"Brother, do you want to attack this company alone in Shanghai?"

"That's right, Shanghai is Xingyuan's headquarters. How can we allow others to snore and sleep next to the couch? If other companies' mobile phones fall on Shanghai, it would be a shame for us at Xingyuan."

"is it so serious?"

"Of course!"

"Then what exactly do you want to do?"

"I estimate that the limelight funds obtained by this Bumblebee are about 2 to 3 million yuan. I need an additional 5 million yuan of funds here. I will defeat them in one fell swoop!" Cao Shuai said in a serious tone.

Luo Fan heard this and immediately understood Cao Shuai's thoughts.

Although Baidu Taxi is jointly operated by Xingyuan and Baidu, Luo Fan directly focused on Baidu Taxi and focused on Shanghai.

Moreover, the previous 2,500 was Xingyuan and Baidu’s budget for Baidu Taxi in the next period of time. This budget will be spent on more than a dozen cities and the development of new cities.

Therefore, Baidu Taxi’s investment in Shanghai and Shanghai is definitely not as high as that of Bumblebee.

Cao Shuai wants 5 million yuan because he wants to overwhelm Bumblebee in terms of funds, and then use the traffic support of Daily Toutiao to defeat Bumblebee in one fell swoop.

"Okay, I agree. I will notify the finance department and give you the money this afternoon.

But brother, since we are going to do it, we have to do it beautifully. Brother, I will give you half a month. After half a month, I want the Bumblebee acquisition case to be on my desk.

The market of a Bumblebee or a city is not actually important, but the company can come up with this method. In fact, the most fundamental purpose is follow-up financing.

If they can suppress Baidu Taxi or Kuaidi in Shanghai, it will be a good PPT.

This team is smart and could absorb Baidu Taxi if possible."

Luo Fan feels that having one more competitor in the online ride-hailing industry means that more money will need to be spent to compete with each other in the future. For those who are capable, Luo Fan would rather recruit them and make them partners.

And now there are actually a lot of big capital on the market looking for capable online ride-hailing companies to invest.

Although acquiring a Hornet will definitely not stop the other party's plan, at least it should not let those big capital invest in online ride-hailing companies in Shanghai.

In this way, it can avoid the first round of regional money-burning war between Baidu Taxi and those big capitals, which can save some money and a lot of development time.

Now for Baidu Taxi, which is ahead of most online taxis, time is of the essence.

Cao Shuai smiled and said: "Don't worry, boss, I will definitely deal with the hornet within half a month."

…

Five million US dollars is a large amount of money for any online ride-hailing company currently on the market.

The same applies even to Kuaidi, which received investment from Alibaba, or Didi, which received investment from Penguin.

Even with the support of giants behind it, such a large sum of money is of great significance.

Because investment is not just about money, it often equals more equity and voting rights. When expanding in the market, every financing must be done with caution.

Bumblebee's strategy of focusing on Shanghai is indeed beyond everyone's expectations. No one expected that in this Internet era that only looks at the number of users and the number of cities it operates, there will be a company that focuses exclusively on one city.

You know, no matter whether it was the previous group buying war or the subsequent takeout war, no one would play this way.

However, because of this, the Shanghai market, Baidu Taxi, Kuaidi, and Didi were all overwhelmed.

Kuaidi and Didi have adopted a wait-and-see attitude. They will not gather funds to compete head-on with a young company. With the money and time, they might as well occupy a few other blank markets.

Moreover, these two companies also feel that Baidu Taxi will not easily give up its territory in Shanghai. On the one hand, this is because Shanghai is the headquarters of Xingyuan and has extraordinary strategic significance.

On the other hand, Baidu Taxi will not really make Bumblebee bigger. Once the other party receives capital injections from other large capitals, the amount of money burned in the future may be more than ten times the current amount.

This is exactly what happened. After receiving the 5 million yuan, Cao Shuai personally took over the operation of Baidu Taxi Hailing in Shanghai. The first thing he did after taking office was to immediately start updating the online taxi hailing market in Shanghai.

Big subsidies.

Xingyuan's senior executives took action personally, and software such as Daily Toutiao naturally cooperated fully.

With strong subsidies and pervasive publicity, the traffic diversion effect is very powerful, especially the discount of only 0.1 yuan for taking a taxi for the first time, which can attract almost all people in need to take a taxi.

After the first use, there will be other discounts in the future, such as a taxi ride for 3 yuan, which will be changed to 5-6 yuan later, and the increase will be little by little, allowing users to enjoy very big discounts.
To be continued...