"I originally thought of driving tigers and swallowing wolves. Ali entered the market and could restrain Xingyuan. Now Xingyuan has left directly. For us, the situation is actually no different from before, or even worse." Mr. Dai said.

"Mr. Dai, I don't think we have to be too anxious. Although Alibaba has acquired the shares held by Xingyuan, they cannot surpass us in terms of voting rights. However, without Xingyuan's traffic support, we can only rely on Alipay. This is the biggest problem for us, which is equivalent to handing over the initiative to Alipay."

"Doesn't it mean that we can't escape the fate of being controlled?" said another executive.

After hearing this, David was silent for a moment and said, "No, we still have a chance! Our only way now is to grow bigger quickly.

If we can do this like Meituan, even if there is big capital behind it, we also have the right to make decisions and can form interdependence with the giants."

As Mr. Dai said, a large part of Meituan's shares are in the hands of Penguin, and Meituan wants to compete with Baidu Takeaway, and it also relies heavily on Penguin's traffic entrance.

But similarly, Penguin's payment promotion also relies on Meituan. Both parties have formed a tacit understanding. Even Penguin, a major shareholder, will not be able to use its own voting rights and is completely free-range to Meituan.

Penguin’s only requirement for Meituan is that Meituan must unconditionally support Penguin’s payment.

Meituan was able to do this entirely because of its own market share.

"Mr. Dai, it may not be that simple for us to continue to expand our market share.

As far as I know, Mobike just completed its financing not long ago. Based on Mobike's valuation, I estimate that the financing should be between 300 million meters.

In addition to Mobike, there are more than a dozen shared bicycle brands of all sizes and big and small, and they have also occupied some of the market."

"I know, so we have to hurry up. If these shared bicycles also get the money for the A-round financing, we will be even more passive." Mr. Dai said.

"Who do we want to raise funds?"

"As far as I know, the relationship between Mr. Sun, the major shareholder of Alibaba, is not as harmonious as it seems. We might as well go to him to ask."

......

Luo Fan didn't care what Mr. Dai thought. He just wanted to pull out of the quagmire ofo as quickly as possible.

Under Luo Fan's urging, Xingyuan took 12 days to evacuate from ofo.

Xingyuan's departure has not had a big impact on ofo, but it is not small either.

Now there are too many users of Star Chat. After ofo cannot use Star Chat to scan the QR code, many users have given up using ofo.

In addition, Baidu taxi has received another wave of subsidies. If you have a taxi, isn’t it more fragrant than riding a bicycle by himself?

Xingyuan’s subsidy this time is mainly for travel within 5km, especially within 3km. Currently, it is a subsidy for a single user once a day.

As soon as Baidu Taxi subsidy activity was launched, Kuaidi was confused and was afraid that Baidu Taxi would seize the market again, so he decisively chose to follow up. The subsidy was exactly the same as Baidu Taxi at that time.

Because Baidu Taxi and Kuaidi are the biggest competitors.

When Internet companies really can't kill their opponents, they can only stop tacitly.

But as long as one side takes action, the other side will follow up immediately, unless everyone has already agreed to cut leeks together.

For example, Meituan Takeout and Baidu Takeout today.

But it is obvious that Baidu Taxi and Kuaidi have not yet formed this tacit understanding.

So Baidu took a taxi, no matter whether Kuaidie was willing or not, they could only keep up.

After learning Kuaidi's action, Luo Fan smiled and said, "It's better for them to enter the market, so we can save no subsidy money."

Xingyuan subsidizes Baidu taxi money this time to crack down on the shared bicycle field. If Kuaidi also participates, the more people participate, the greater the impact on the shared bicycle market when the subsidies are not upgraded.

Of course, this impact is temporary, because it cannot change the user's habits.

As long as the online car-hailing prices recover in the future, people may still tend to share bicycles.

But Luo Fan's purpose is to influence the shared bicycle industry in the short term, because this will seriously consume the assets of ofo and Mobike. If they want to raise funds again, the data will become ugly because the market is hit by cross-banks, which will make the financing cost even higher.

In addition, Luo Fan also has another purpose, which is to screen out shared bicycle companies that Xingyuan thinks are suitable for through this cross-bank attack.

This round of subsidies lasted for two weeks.

Two weeks later, Xingyuan's investment department acquired a shared bicycle called Health Bike. The reason for acquiring this shared bicycle is very simple. The company's car is the most comfortable riding on the market. Their company is also a very socially responsible company. There are many employees of disabled people and employees of difficult families in the company.

Before the acquisition, Cao Shuai conducted a detailed evaluation of the company.

The company was established at the beginning of this year. Under the storm, it was easy to complete an angel round financing of 150 million Huaxia coins.

They then used the funds to make arrangements in all first-tier cities across the country.

Then in April this year, he received a second round of B financing of 300 million Huaxia coins.

After getting the money, they made another round of expansion, covering hundreds of cities.

However, under the current Internet money-burning war, hundreds of millions of funds are just a drop in the ocean.

In the era of mobile Internet, if any industry wants to rise, it must be supported by big capital.

Because big capital will not only give money, but also flow and resources.

Ofo and Mobike can rise because one is Xingyuan and the other is Penguin.

Therefore, ofo and Mobike have the strongest funds among all bicycle sharing companies.

In addition, they can also access the secondary page entrances of Xingchao, QQ, WX, and other shared bicycles. Under the suppression of these two companies, it is basically impossible for them to make a comeback.

Most bike-sharing companies burned out in just a few months.

In addition, ofo and Mobike have raised funds in succession many times, now there is no capital that is willing to invest in other shared bicycle players stupidly.

As a result, the first wave of bankruptcy of shared bicycles emerged, and the same was true for healthy bicycles. They could not even refund the deposit because the deposit had long been misappropriated.

Under the pressure of a large number of online complaints and suppliers to demand debts, the person in charge of Health Bicycle chose to sell the company to Xingyuan in desperation.

Xingyuan finally acquired Health Bicycle for RMB 2 million.

2 million sounds cheap, but in fact, Xingyuan also bears about 100 million in health debt.

Xingyuan is willing to bear such a large debt because other bicycle sharing platforms on the market are also like this.

Everyone is burdened with different degrees of debt.

Of course, Luo Fan can also choose to run a shared bicycle company completely from scratch.

But if you start over, it will take nearly a year to stop you.

This is not cost-effective for Xingyuan, who has left a blank market after withdrawing from ofo.

Moreover, the fundamental problem of healthy bicycles is that the capital chain is broken. Its previous relationship chains, personnel teams, bicycle assets, etc. in more than 100 cities were also of high value. If it was formed by itself, 100 million may not be enough.

After acquiring Health Bicycle, Cao Shuai moved his headquarters to Shanghai as soon as possible, and injected 1 billion Chinese coins to use for team building and market expansion. He then changed the name of Health Bicycle to Hello Bicycle.

This name was decided by Luo Fan, and Cao Shuai also felt that the name Hello Bicycle sounds easier to remember than Healthy Bicycle.

After all preparations were finished, Xingyuan began to use its own resources to promote Hello Bicycle. At the same time, the entrance to Hello Bicycle also appeared on Xingyuan's secondary page.

With Xingyuan's operation, you can see bicycles everywhere in Shanghai.

That afternoon, Luo Fan and Cao Shuai went downstairs of the company and found a Hello bicycle for a test ride.

"This bicycle is pretty good to ride! It's much more comfortable than other cars." Luo Fan said with a smile.

"Boss, didn't you say it before! User experience is the first priority in shared bicycles, so we bought this car's tires and are all hollow tires healthy... Oh! No, now we should call Hello Bicycle.

Other brands on the market, including ofo and Mobike, are solid tires, and our hollow tires will definitely be more comfortable to ride." Cao Shuai said.

"It's easy to lose air when hollow tires are gone, right? Do you want to make air refuel?" Luo Fan asked.

Cao Shuai nodded and replied: "Yes, it's all artificial to refill, and the cost in this regard will increase.

However, this company has previously hired local families with difficulties, such as those who are not very disabled or those who cannot find jobs, which can help boost our costs on the one hand, and on the other hand, it can also serve as a positive publicity resource for our brand."

"It turns out that they hire people with disabilities and people from difficult families to do this! Not bad, it's pretty good. We should support anything that benefits society.

Cao Shuai, you add a free lunch for each of these workers in needy families every day, and the cost is controlled at about 15 yuan." Luo Fan said.

"Okay boss."

"Hello where is the promotion of bicycles?" Luo Fan continued to ask.

"Star Chat has also pushed accounts with Hellobike nearby based on the user's geographical location.

The first wave is about to let everyone know about this, and the subsequent push will be based on the previous records ofo and user habits.

We have had experience in promoting ofo before, so we should be able to make Hello bikes soon." Cao Shuai said confidently.

"Well! That's good, by the way, there is another thing. I want to completely cancel the deposit for shared bicycles. As long as this user often uses Xingchao, or has a certain balance on Xingchao, then he can use Hello Bicycle without a deposit. What do you think?" Luo Fan turned around and asked.

"If this happens, it will be a strong blow to other platforms, and it can quickly decide the outcome in the shared bicycle market." Cao Shuai said, touching his chin.

In the past life ofo, Mobike and its shared bicycles with a large number of people were also trying to waive deposits to compete for users, but it was difficult to implement them in place.

First, because the deposit is the lifeline of the shared bicycle platform, their business model is ultimately maintained by relying on huge deposits, and a deposit of more than a dozen people can support a shared bicycle.

The second is credit issue. The shared bicycle platform does not have the credibility or business data of users, and it is impossible to tell who can be exempted from deposits and who cannot.

The former is just a loss of income, while the latter is a commercial pain point. If all the deposit is exempted, what should I do if the bicycle is stolen? What should I do if it is damaged? Although it is a real-name system, can I still sue it one by one?

Elementary school students understand the principle that the law does not blame the public, let alone the big brothers on the Internet platform.

But this is not a problem for Xingyuan. Xingyuan is just playing with big data, and the user's data is still very clear.

As long as you have credibility, you can directly exempt the deposit. If it is not possible or cannot be determined, you will continue to adopt the deposit system. This is simply for Xingyuan.

"Boss, can we just do the opposite and directly guide potential users of Hellobike to Xingchao to save money. As long as there is money in the account, they will naturally use Xingchao to pay in the future." Cao Shuai said.
To be continued...