Chapter 150 Baidu and Alibaba

On the second day after Xie Jingxing arrived in Beijing, Didi announced the suspension of temporary nationwide subsidies and the indefinite extension of the long-term "10 billion subsidy" plan, with the deadline being when the subsidy plan budget was disbursed.

That is hundreds of billions of RMB. UCAR and Kuaidi both spat out blood at the same time, cursing while lowering the subsidy intensity to the same level as Didi. In fact, several key cities such as Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Beijing continued to maintain high-intensity subsidies.

On the third day, each company began to form an expert public relations team to respond to the relevant departments' solicitation for management opinions on the online car-hailing industry.

On the sixth day, December 12, Baidu held a press conference in Beijing, where Baidu's youngest vice president Li Mingyuan announced that its mobile payment brand 'Baidu Wallet' had officially entered the mobile payment field.

"It is very eye-catching for competitors to invite people all over the country to take taxis, but is this behavior that costs billions of yuan really cost-effective? Baidu still has this money in its pocket, so I don't think it is too late for us to enter the market now."

The young and energetic vice president stood on the stage, facing the camera flash, and made a fierce war declaration: You fight until both sides are defeated, and then Baidu has the final say on how to fight next!

He smiled confidently and eloquently: "We will enter the market from the broader payment link. In terms of finance, we launched the '2 Fa Bai Zhuan' financial product this year; in terms of OO, Nuomi.com will bring you a new way of life service after the new year; in the application side, we have the largest mobile software distribution channel and more than a dozen APP products with hundreds of millions of users."

"We will use 'Baidu Wallet' as the underlying architecture to comprehensively build Baidu's product matrix and fully expand into all markets."

The press conference ended in an uproar, with reporters whispering to each other to confirm that if they heard correctly, mobile payment would be the core of Baidu's strategy next year.

Completely abandon the online car-hailing industry, punch Alibaba in financial management, kick Tencent in the application side, and tie the two together for O2O group buying.

This style is worthy of the B ranked first in BTA. The press release prepared in advance was written in vain. At least the title should be changed - Baidu has the final say on whether the group buying is chaotic or not, and Wang Xing, Zhang Tao and Xie Jingxing should all step aside.

After all, he took the travel expenses, so the protagonist in the news in the next few days can only be Mr. Li from Baidu.

"Mr. Li, we all know that Meituan and Alibaba have recently officially launched their food delivery businesses. Will this have a new impact on the O2O local lifestyle market next year? Does Baidu have any follow-up preparations?"

Li Mingyuan was surrounded by a crowd and walked leisurely out of the press conference. While waiting for the car at the door, a young reporter put a recorder to his lips.

He waved his hand to signal the bodyguard that nothing happened, and replied with a chuckle: "I am not responsible for this business, I don't know the details."

"That means Baidu will definitely follow up on the food delivery business?!" the young reporter asked excitedly with shining eyes.

Li Mingyuan seemed to have accidentally let something slip. He took out a business card and handed it to the young reporter, then performed Tai Chi in a mysterious manner and said that Baidu would hold several important press conferences in the near future.

Next time you come, you can contact him in advance to help arrange a front interview position, and then get into an old Audi A8 and leave in style.

The young reporter felt something strange when the car door opened and closed, until an old colleague who was chatting with colleagues came over with a smile and asked what was wrong.

He came back to his senses and said in a daze: "Master, the driver just now seemed to be Mr. Li, Li Yanhong."

…………

The rhythmic and frivolous blues music was playing in the car, and the driver, wearing a brand new, shiny, and neatly ironed white shirt, said, "Uber to find Yidao."

“They want more conditions.”

Li Mingyuan rested half of his buttocks in the middle of the back seat, his upper body leaning forward slightly with his hands on the back of the front seat.

The driver reminded without comment: "Fasten your seat belt."

"Mr. Li, let me drive." Li Mingyuan did not hide his bitter smile.

Big Ma is eager to show off and is very high-profile, while Little Ma is a typical programmer who is low-key and introverted. But my boss is different. He likes to secretly surf the Internet and read comments!

He cares a lot about what others think, and he took a middle ground between the two Ma styles. He would personally take the stage and speak passionately, but he also had to be approachable and sympathetic to his subordinates behind the scenes.

He himself satisfied his psychological needs, but his subordinates were not able to enjoy it. Sitting in this car was like being tortured...

"Uber will probably go and talk to Kuaidi," Li Yanhong continued to himself.

Li Mingyuan was helpless: "So I guess Kuaidi and Didi will also talk about it."

"Uber is not adapted to the domestic market soil, and can't reach an agreement with Kuaidi. Looking at Didi's recent reaction, it also can't reach an agreement with Kuaidi." Li Yanhong judged calmly.

Li Mingyuan grasped the point sharply, his expression slightly difficult to understand: "Zhou Hang rejected Uber?"

"He is too idealistic and can't get anything done." Li Yanhong was also a little depressed.

Since giving up Bumblebee, Baidu has turned to actively contact Uber, and its allocation of resources to support Yidao Travel is the sincerity shown by the former in the negotiations between the two parties.

The latter started out as a high-end business car company, and inherently looks down on its domestic peers such as Didi and Kuaidi, which are expanding into the mid- and low-end markets. The two companies are incompatible in terms of service and technology.

Only Yidao Travel is an exception, so Baidu Uber initially wanted to enter the domestic market by acquiring Yidao. Later, as they talked, they felt that Zhou Hang did not seem like a serious entrepreneur.

In addition, the interests of the three parties were entangled and difficult to distribute, so Kalanick decided to give up Yidao and build his own "Uber China" branch, accepting joint strategic investment from many domestic giants led by Baidu.

The tone of cooperation has been roughly determined here. What follows are negotiations on investment details and preparations for regulatory approvals. It was originally expected to officially enter the domestic market in March after the new year.

However, as Didi and other companies became more and more aggressive and policy crises surfaced, Uber began to get anxious, fearing that Didi and Kuaidi would be the first to merge and integrate the domestic market.

In the past few days, the idea of ​​acquiring Yidao was once again proposed to accelerate its entry into the domestic market, but Zhou Hang refused after repeated consideration.

Li Mingyuan listened to the details in silence and comforted us: "It's good this way. Uber always wanted to seize a certain market share and negotiate terms with us, but now it should give up."

"It will come in next month." Li Yanhong forced himself to show some emotion.

One reason why Uber has been slow to enter the market is that the foreign market has not been fully digested, and local peers in various regions of the world still face varying degrees of resistance.

The second is that they wanted to take advantage and made exorbitant demands on many domestic investors who had extended olive branches. Uber China demanded a valuation of US$30 billion without even seeing a single wheel.

Baidu, as the most enthusiastic investor, was slaughtered the hardest. But now there is no need to worry given the current situation. Uber is so anxious that it has even gone to Kuaidi to discuss a merger and acquisition.

Li Mingyuan pondered and expressed his concerns: "But in this case, Didi and Kuaidi may really merge."

The businesses of Uber and Kuaidi are incompatible. Even if the forced merger is successful, there will be many sequelae.

Didi and Kuaidi do not have such problems at all. In fact, the investors behind both companies cover almost half of the domestic Internet industry and venture capital circle, so they know each other well and can do things better.

"Let it go. Didi Kuaidi's extreme market strategy is wrong in itself and will need to be corrected sooner or later."

Li Yanhong said it lightly, but he was holding back a lot of energy in his heart. People on the Internet said that it was a mistake for him to give up Bumblebee, which caused Baidu to fall behind in mobile payment. Why wasn't it Jack Ma who was exhausted from burning money and publicly stated that it was wrong?
Regardless of whether Didi and Kuaidi merge or not, when choosing to cooperate with Uber, online ride-hailing will only be one part of Baidu's mobile payment strategy, not the whole.

In other words, it doesn’t matter whether Uber wins or loses in the end, as long as it can maintain a certain market share.

The food delivery business is already in preparation and will be launched in February to join forces with Nuomi.com, which has adjusted its strategic direction, to compete in the local life sector.

He will use facts to prove that money is not wasted in this way, and the ultimate goal is to advance in multiple fields and build a complete mobile payment ecosystem.

"Make a good marketing plan for the joint Nuomi and food delivery business. Once Uber enters the country next month, your department will be under great pressure."

The car stopped smoothly in front of the company. Li Mingyuan watched his boss drive to the airport on a business trip to run commercial banking business, and he breathed a sigh of relief in his heart.

Just as the media thought, mobile payment has become Baidu's latest strategic direction and the last ticket to the mobile Internet era.

Currently all layouts are based on this, including the online car-hailing company’s alliance with Uber, the acquisition of Nuomi for group buying, and the self-operated food delivery business.

Especially in the food delivery business, Meituan and Ele.me are targeting merchants and it is difficult to distinguish them, while Taodiandian is busy dealing with the user-side subsidy bug.

Baidu's internal food delivery business team is quietly pondering whether the 2000 million college students in the country are the upper limit of the food delivery market capacity. It is dividing all the CBDs in Beijing into sections and investigating the possibility of white-collar workers and family audiences.

I believe that when the food delivery business goes online in February, Meituan, Ele.me and Taodiandian, which are touted by the media as the three food delivery competitors, will inevitably suffer a dimensionality reduction attack.

Li Mingyuan believes that each link in the layout centered on mobile payment is a bold and visionary move when taken individually, but when taken together, it always feels a little off.

Time is limited, and a series of competitions will all be launched in the next two months. Can he really withstand the melee with competitors like Tencent and Alibaba?

Baidu has never experienced such a bloody battle. In the search engine wars of the past, it seemed weak...

Li Mingyuan raised his head, feeling the snowflakes floating in the sky. After watching for a while, he straightened his back and walked towards the company with resolute steps.

The snow and wind in Beijing in the dead of winter are no less beautiful than the wind and rain in Shanghai in early autumn. The mobile payment war has entered its second stage. The wind blows the snowflakes into tiny white pieces, like a faint smoke of gunpowder.

…………

A thin layer of smoke swirled in the air as a pair of slender fingers with solid-colored nails put out the cigarette butt. Her long black hair covered most of her fair face, making it impossible to see her expression. The woman lowered her head and stared at the sneakers on her feet in silence.

"Qingshuang, I'm not asking you to make a report, but it's really not appropriate now."

Opposite him, a haggard-looking middle-aged woman in formal attire whispered, "Taodiandian is a top-down project. The bosses above are responsible for the top-level design. The communication between us small soldiers is very rough and the granularity is not aligned with that of the leaders."

"The underlying logic of your analysis is totally unsupported by data. If you report it like this, the entire team will be criticized. In serious cases, it is possible that the performance of the entire team will be 3.25."

The middle-aged woman paused and emphasized, "Let's not talk about your personal relationship. You have worked hard for a whole year, and there are still a few days before your performance bonus is deducted. Can you still have a good year?"

"Zuo Xiang, when did you come to join the Taodiandian team?" The black-haired girl with the nickname 'Qingshuang' was stroking a delicate Dunhill ladies' lighter.

The middle-aged woman opened her mouth and said, “At the beginning of the year, I was transferred here as soon as Taodiandian passed the horse racing plan.”

"You must have had a very comfortable time during the month when you were on a business trip to Xiamen for closed product testing. I heard that you got reimbursed for hundreds of travel invoices alone?" Qingshuang continued to ask.

The middle-aged woman changed her expression and said, "All our business trips are carried out in accordance with the rules and regulations. If you have any ideas, you can talk to 'Qiao Feng (Wang Yulei)'. There is no need to target me."

“If I had an idea, I would go to the Political Commissar (HRBP).”

Qingshuang leaned against the wooden partition of the bathroom, lifted the hair beside her ear and looked up: "Although I have been in the Taodiandian team for less than half a year, I joined the company relatively early. I have witnessed the company's growth from 10,000 people to more than 30,000 people in just three or four years."

The middle-aged woman curled her lips slightly. This colleague who joined the company halfway had an ID number of just over 10,000, which could barely be considered as him reaping the full benefits of the company's personnel expansion period.

But he is only at the P8 level now. He is young and his rank is not high, but he always shows off his seniority and talks about promoting the style of hard work.

A product team leader wears a pair of sneakers and goes out with the marketing staff every day to promote business, saying that without practice, he has no right to speak.

It would have been bad enough if they just went out to be lazy and slack off, but they also did it regardless of time or place. At the critical moment when a major accident occurred in the Double Eleven subsidized marketing and the bosses were furious, they turned around and submitted a report to apply to set up their own promotion team to reduce outsourcing.

I had no idea what was going on. Everyone knew which big boss the outsourcing team belonged to, and as expected, the whole team got blamed and criticized.

Now it pops up again that the focus of Meituan and Ele.me in developing merchants is for consumer user groups outside of schools, and Taodiandian should follow suit immediately and focus on the merchant side first.

Don't just think about the product itself. Instead, allocate more resources to merchants, develop more functions to compress the online order process for takeout, and completely abandon the platform mentality.

Alibaba started out as a trading platform, so it eats only lamp wicks and farts lightly. Shouldn't it use the advantages of its platform, which it is best at, to challenge the product logic of Meituan and Ele.me?

When Wang Yulei heard this, he almost jumped up and performed the Eighteen Dragon Subduing Palms to exorcise the demons for the entire team.

The middle-aged woman thought with a lot of complaints and sarcasm.

"We enjoy the same benefits, powers and capabilities as Taobao's division, so we should achieve the same results as Taobao."

She lit a cigarette and blew out round smoke rings from her red lips: "Taobao is not built on jargon or what the leaders say. If Wang Yulei thinks there is something wrong with me, you can fire me."

"Sister, I've said it many times, no one is stopping you from reporting your work, the key is that the timing is not right now. Meituan and Ele.me are in full swing, and Qiao Feng already has a lot of lawsuits on his mind, so he lost points in front of President Lu and President Ma."

The middle-aged woman looked around unconsciously: "You still want to report to your superiors at this time. How can he lead the team if he doesn't get rid of you?"

"Wait a minute, just wait until after the New Year. Can't you wait for ten days? After the New Year, submit the team report. You can talk to whoever you want. I beg you."

Qingshuang suddenly laughed: "Do you know what the sales staff of Ele.me and Meituan do? The sales staff of the two companies teamed up to ride bicycles around the city, and agreed that the two companies would take turns to negotiate with the same merchant, spending five minutes with each merchant."

"They can visit dozens of merchants a day, filtering over and over like a sieve. In ten days, they can visit tens of thousands of merchants!"

Qingshuang tore off the name tag and held it in his hand: "The company was not like this before, really."

She suddenly pushed open the wooden door of the bathroom with a loud noise, and walked straight outside. Her long flowing black hair curved with the ends slightly raised.

With white fingertips, he pressed the button for the top floor of the elevator.

(End of this chapter)