Chapter 172 Honeysuckle
February 2th, the ninth day of the lunar calendar.

On the first day when tens of millions of white-collar workers across the country flocked to office buildings to resume work, Baidu could not wait to hold a press conference and announced its entry into the food delivery industry.

As the absolute leader in the PC side of the Internet, at the handover to the mobile Internet era, Robin Li finally made the most accurate judgment.

Baidu Maps, which has the largest market share, clearly divides cities into large and small business districts.

Baidu search traffic entrance is a more vertical promotion channel for white-collar user groups than elevator and subway advertisements.

So Baidu Takeout came on the scene with the Azure Dragon on the left and the White Tiger on the right, like a wedge into the white-collar market in the Beijing area, and performed a brilliant show in the strategic location that Ele.me had been unable to capture for a long time.

As for the school market, there is no rush for the time being. As long as there is money, one can enter at any time. Baidu has tens of billions of cash lying quietly on its books.

Baidu in the back was kicking hard, while Ele.me in the front was leading and the gap was widening little by little.

"what should we do?"

Wang Huiwen was circling the weekly work report with a pen in hand, blacking out the words "Ele.me's daily order volume exceeded one million". In contrast, the data of 27 daily orders for Meituan's food delivery business was particularly eye-catching.

He is usually used to working on the computer, but writing on paper is more intuitive.

On the 29th day of the twelfth lunar month, Meituan’s daily order volume exceeded 10, while Ele.me was about to reach 50 orders.

There is no doubt that the counterattack that had been carefully prepared for more than a month was crushed head-on. What went wrong?

If Yunhe Logistics organizing and dispatching a thousand riders to reinforce Shanghai in three days was a miracle of some magnitude, then the increase of more than 30 million users of WeChat Pay in a week created history in the Internet industry.

Wang Huiwen is sure that this is a situation that no one, including Tencent, had expected, and the people who reacted most strongly to this are not even in China.

Zuckerberg, who is far away in Silicon Valley, is so jealous that he is crying. If Tencent dares to transplant mobile payment to WhatsApp, he will turn into a robber and rob it!

Therefore, there is no need to summarize the sins of war. Meituan did nothing wrong, the only question is what to do next.

"Maintain merchants, retain employees, and stabilize cash flow."

Wang Xing, holding a book called "On Protracted War" and reading it with great interest, gave a brief answer.

Meituan still has the three-piece set of things it started with. It will definitely not be able to beat Ele.me in terms of customer growth in the short term, so it will provide large subsidies to cultivate strong grassroots employees and merchants.

The market is doomed and cannot be escaped. As long as someone has the goods and money, they can snatch it back at any time.

Wang Huiwen sighed: "Brother Xing, this won't work. We can't stabilize our cash flow."

Be mentally prepared that Meituan cannot beat Eleme in food delivery for the time being. It can completely rely on the group buying business to generate revenue and fight a protracted war of attrition.

The New Year's counterattack plan is an example. If you spend money to seize the market first, I will not respond head-on. After two months, when you have seized the market and reduced the intensity of spending, I will counterattack and fight back.

In the long run, during the tug-of-war, the total market size has increased, and the market share has steadily increased.

Meituan is confident that it can defeat any opponent bit by bit with its more combat-ready employee team, management structure and other basic internal strengths. However, now the opponents are not cooperating and are playing the turn-based strategy of you retreat and I advance.

Xie Jingxing actually wanted to swing a sledgehammer and beat them to death.

Dianping cooperated with Ele.me to launch a money-burning competition in the group buying business. In addition, the entire venture capital market suddenly exploded after the Lunar New Year, with countless hot money pouring in and large-scale financing appearing frequently.

After two or three years of fighting, the online travel industry still has enough energy to fight again, and various strategies such as burning money on subsidies and mergers and acquisitions are frequently used.

This is something Meituan could not have predicted. It is still unknown whether it can maintain its group buying business this year, let alone provide a transfusion to its food delivery business.

“Then we will also raise funds.” Wang Xing put down the book in his hand.

Wang Huiwen asked hesitantly, "Alibaba?"

"Su He wants to see me. After leaving her alone for a few days, the time is almost right. Let's talk." Wang Xing said in a light tone.

Wang Huiwen was hesitant to speak. Baidu Takeout held a press conference today, and Taodiandian also announced that it would follow its peers in terms of subsidy amounts. Although they were making a lot of noise, they have begun to fall behind.

Mr. Ma had to call Brother Xing in person to express his support for Meituan and Ele.me to fight to the end.

This move is obviously aimed at the mobile payment port. From the perspective of long-term development strategy, this is support that Meituan does not want to accept.

Because takeout users use mobile payment much more frequently than group buying users, if we can control a large number of payment transactions in our own hands, we can do a lot of things.

Moreover, it seems that the partner companies that were included in Alibaba's closed ecological loop all had a bad ending.

Meituan managed to survive the group-buying war with great difficulty and became the Internet industry's little overlord by maintaining its independence. Naturally, it was unwilling to easily submit to Alibaba, let Mr. Ma take the lead and stand completely against Tencent.

Of course, Xie Jingxing was not a good guy either. I don't think anyone would have a good impression of a pervert who forced himself on someone.

Although Brother Xing seemed to be in control of everything, he actually had no way out of the impasse and was forced to the brink of compromise.

Wang Huiwen quietly put away his weekly work report. Meituan had enough funds on its books to sustain it for a while, so he decided to just hold on for now.

…………

The business restaurant, which is decorated in a pretentious upscale style, has dim lighting, with beam lights shining on the solid wooden dining table to accentuate its solemnity.

There were several pots of flowers placed in the middle of the dining table, one of which had lush branches and blooming light white flowers.

That is 'Honeysuckle', also known as honeysuckle. It has a tenacious habit of surviving the winter and has a rich fragrance when it blooms.

Wang Xing folded his hands across his chest, lowered his eyebrows and quietly sniffed the fragrance of the flowers.

"I remember you said last time that I would contact you when I regretted it," he said. "Things have changed. To be honest, I didn't expect Ele.me to grow so fast."

Su He smiled helplessly, and his words were sharp and provocative: "I think Meituan is facing great challenges now. I have to help you. I can't just watch you being forced to take Ali's money to destroy Meituan."

Wang Xing did not comment. Meituan has no shortage of investors. He endured the conflict and met with other investors today in order to increase the bargaining space for financing.

What Su He said didn’t matter.

"How does Mr. Su plan to help me?" Wang Xing asked calmly.

Su He was prepared: "Your takeaway delivery business should be quite busy. I can help you contact a few crowdsourcing companies."

"We operate our own business." Wang Xing refused the good intention.

The market has exploded recently, and each food delivery platform is short of riders, so they are trying to find ways to recruit them.

The only exception is Ele.me. After surviving the first two days, the number of riders being beaten has increased in recent days.

Just because Ele.me can use crowdsourced logistics and sign long-term contracts with a large number of crowdsourced logistics companies led by Quhuo, it indirectly leads to crowdsourced logistics companies also joining the competition of spending money to attract talent.

The subsidies given to riders by third-party crowdsourcing companies are no lower than those given by Meituan, and because of their small size they are more willing to spend money.

Currently, in Beijing alone, food delivery platforms other than Meituan and Ele.me are almost being squeezed out by these crowdsourcing companies and are forced to cooperate with them.

Meituan naturally wants to do this, but after careful study, it finds that it cannot do it for the time being.

The quality of crowdsourced logistics and delivery services is low and cannot meet the intensity of competition in the white-collar market.

The reason why Ele.me dares to do this is that it has the support of Quhuo crowdsourcing, which is invested by Xiyou, and can barely maintain the lower limit of service quality.

Second, they poached a product manager from Taodiandian, who developed a delivery function that distinguishes between self-operated and crowdsourced delivery for high-quality customers based on the user data accumulated by Ele.me over the years.

Meituan has no data accumulation support, and even though they arranged people to poach the product manager, they were unable to do so. In the short term, it is impossible for them to introduce crowdsourcing delivery self-destructive signs before developing similar functions.

"Are you short of promotional resources? I can introduce you to the two regions of East China and Northeast China." Su He was kind enough to help find a solution.

Wang Xing adjusted his glasses and said, "We have enough promotional resources for now."

Online ride-hailing, food delivery, online travel, there are at least ten industries competing fiercely in the market now, and advertising and marketing resources have suffered a strong run, so outrageous that it has led to a surge in the stock prices of several listed advertising companies.

In short, Su He made two suggestions in a row, which were quite sincere, but they were of no help to Meituan’s current situation.

"Then the only thing I can help you with is investment," she finally suggested.

Wang Xing laughed and said, "We are not short of money."

"I said investment is not about money. Obviously, your current predicament is that you have money but cannot spend it."

Su He pursed her red lips and counted on her fingers: "When it comes to customer growth, Ele.me has Tencent's full support, you can't beat them. When it comes to the marketing team, Ele.me has Yunhe's support, you still can't beat them."

"So if Ele.me doesn't have external support, can Meituan beat them?"

She answered without thinking, "I think it's definitely possible. Even an outsider like me can see how chaotic Ele.me's operating structure is. Mr. Wang must know this."

"..."

Wang Xing was speechless for a moment. Su He's statement was as ridiculous as a child exchanging chess pieces.

But he had to admit that it was indeed frustrating to be suppressed by Ele.me. Putting aside all external factors, he couldn't tie up Zhang Xuhao and Zhang Tao together and squeeze the shit out of them with one hand, so they were considered to have done a clean job.

But the problem is that it cannot be let go, unless Zhang Xuhao enters his rebellious period and breaks up with Xie Jingxing and Tencent.

"It doesn't necessarily mean that Ele.me has no external support. It can also be that Meituan has the same external support." Su He reminded slowly.

Wang Xing leaned back and looked at her, then raised his eyebrows and signaled her to continue.

"I will help you acquire Dianping.com to solve the bleeding problem of the group buying business first, and then we can talk to Tencent and Xiyou about how to compete fairly with Ele.me." Su He persuaded in an orderly manner.

Wang Xing scoffed: "How about we talk about how to help the Chinese national football team get into the World Cup?"

"I don't understand football, but I know a thing or two about mergers and acquisitions. Youku and Tudou can merge... Didi and Kuaidi can merge, so why can't you and Dianping merge?"

Su He lowered his voice slightly.

Wang Xing frowned and confirmed: "Didi and Kuaidi?"

"Mr. Wang, please consider it. If you need any help, please feel free to come to me. Don't be polite." Su He said this and left.

Wang Xing clenched his fists tightly. Alibaba has lost the offline mobile payment battlefield of online car-hailing, and Meituan’s value is rising!

February 2th, the tenth day of the lunar calendar.

Didi and Kuaidi jointly issued an open letter. The two companies fought for half a year and burned billions of funds in total, but finally stopped fighting and got married.

They survived the long, cold winter, when honeysuckle blossomed all over the city, filling the air with fragrance.

Wang Xing smelled it, and the fragrance of the flowers guided him to look towards a route he had never imagined - acquiring Dianping, unifying the group buying market, and releasing cash flow.

Tencent and Xiyou are no longer rivals, and he will have a "fair fight" with Zhang Xuhao.

But does this route have to be achieved through Taihe?
(End of this chapter)