Chapter 173 Bang Bang Hard

"Fighting is earth-shattering, but togetherness is loving to the end."

In their joint open letter, Cheng Wei and Lu Chuanwei called their wedding the wedding of the century, and each expressed their aspirations for a beautiful married life in the future.

Public opinion accusing commercial monopoly has disappeared, as if it had never appeared.

People are focusing on how long it will take Didi, the fast-rising unicorn, to become a giant, and the entrepreneurial wave in the mobile Internet era.

The variety show "Let's Talk" produced by CCTV invited Xie Jingxing and Cheng Wei respectively, hoping that they can serve as entrepreneurial role models and tell the growth stories of unicorns valued at tens of billions of dollars.

Encourage the general public to engage in the increasingly exciting and fiery golden age of entrepreneurship.

Cheng Wei refused bluntly. At the merger celebration party, Lu Chuanwei sat alone in the corner of the room with his back hunched and relaxed, while another founder, Chen Weixing, drank alone.

There was nothing they could do, they lost and this celebration party had nothing to do with them.

Cheng Wei was unable to comfort them. Everything he said sounded like a mockery from the winner, so he could only leave.

Then I met a dejected man with bloodshot eyes in the hotel lobby. It was Kalanick who had received the news and went to China overnight. He made two suggestions:

Either Uber acquires 40% of Didi’s shares, or Didi is killed by Uber.

His words were extremely strong, just like the conversation with Xie Jingxing on the rooftop, but his attitude was extremely depressed and tormented.

He couldn't understand why two companies with a combined 90% market share could merge. This would be a violation of business law anywhere in the world.

However, Uber wants to build servers in China, accept state-owned investment, and design rounds of equity structures to comply with commercial laws!
Kalanick clearly felt the deep hostility from Didi or the entire Chinese domestic capital market. It can be expected that Uber, which has swept the world, will fall into a quagmire in China.

This is definitely not what he wants to see, nor is it what Cheng Wei wants to see.

However, the public can only see the glory of Didi Kuaidi’s successful mergers and acquisitions, but cannot see the winner of the previous war, who may lose everything and exit the next war at any time.

Once you step into the door of entrepreneurship, you can never stop.

So when Cheng Wei called him drunkenly late at night and was bored and pretentious, Xie Jingxing also declined the invitation to "Let's Talk".

Lao Cheng saw the hardships of starting a business and did not want to promote the so-called golden age of entrepreneurship. Instead, he saw the wildness and madness of entrepreneurship.

WeChat Pay had 3000 million users in one week. Alibaba swallowed its anger and cooperated with Didi and Kuaidi for a smooth merger.

It then partnered with Tencent to actively promote the "virtual credit card" business, attempted to lift the ban on offline "QR code" payments, and invested in various Internet financial products.

This whole set of wild and impatient operations was unsurprisingly met with a heavy blow. The relevant departments completely suppressed the virtual credit card business, and the offline QR code payment function is nowhere near being lifted.

As for Internet financial products, because they involve inclusive finance and financial system reform, they barely passed the line and were not affected.

Alipay and WeChat Pay, which have nearly 100 million users in total, must know how to be grateful and learn to shoulder social responsibilities. This is the most simple truth.

There was no reason for Xie Jingxing to die with them. He would not publicly mention anything about Didi in the next few months.

But before that, he had one last thing to say.

“We shall never surrender.”

Faced with reporters' repeated interviews and provocations asking why Didi was so confident in rejecting Uber's investment, he deliberately imitated Churchill's voice and said this.

With a smile on his face and a backhand V sign, he responded to Kalanick in a provocative and teasing manner - Fuck you!
Wang Xing looked at the photos in the newspaper and asked himself again and again whether it was really possible for Meituan to acquire Dianping.

If a merger and acquisition is to be carried out, is it necessary to go through Taihe? Sequoia Capital's Neil Shen also holds shares in Dianping, Meituan and Ele.me.

In the future, the food delivery business will inevitably bring Meituan mobile payment transaction volume comparable to Didi. Tencent and Alibaba have burned at least 5 billion yuan for this.

Can Meituan handle such a valuable financial payment business on its own?
Based on this, considering the long-term strategy, Alibaba is definitely not the best partner, but in the short term, Meituan needs a large amount of cash flow to maintain its competitiveness.

Even if we cannot defeat Ele.me in a short period of time, we cannot be defeated in return.

In any case, Meituan has to look for external support from investors, especially since Baidu held another press conference following its successful acquisition of Didi Kuaidi.

On February 2, Baidu held its annual strategic conference at the Water Cube, announcing that Nuomi.com had completed its integration and officially changed its name to 'Baidu Nuomi'.

Robin Li personally stood on the stage and emphasized that Baidu Nuomi is not a group buying platform, but an O2O ecological strategy.

He saw the failure of Didi Kuaidi's merger and acquisition, the failure of Baidu's strategic layout in the online car-hailing industry, and the limitations of online car-hailing in the local life field.

A single travel platform cannot be the core driver of the entire local life concept, including group buying of food, drink and entertainment + map navigation + job hunting and recruitment in the same city + decoration and wedding planning...

He wants to put all the services that users need into Baidu Nuomi, and build a mobile Internet ecosystem belonging to Baidu with mobile payment as the core.

Robin Li talked about the merger of Didi and Kuaidi as a model, which created a unicorn with a valuation of tens of billions of dollars. Baidu Nuomi learned humbly and was able to connect and cooperate with 100 super agents to create a 100 billion dollar ecological chain.

If you want to play, play big!

This move is similar to Tencent's core strategy, which involves bringing in leading companies from various industries such as beauty and wedding, hotels and restaurants, etc. to join the fight.

Baidu provided traffic and financial support. To show its sincerity, on the day of the press conference, Baidu Nuomi was put on the most important hyperlink promotion position on the Baidu search page, which is only activated when major national events occur.

This means that Baidu's next strategic focus will be the group purchasing business. The person in charge of Baidu's Nuomi business publicly stated that he will be laid off if the market share fails to reach second place this year.

On the other hand, the Ele.me + Dianping alliance focuses on food delivery, and Meituan also focuses on food delivery.

Alibaba's own group buying brand "Koubei" was shelved, Taodiandian fell out of the first echelon of food delivery business, and it was left with a full hand of cards but nowhere to place the bets.

In addition, there are a lot of competitors in the segmented fields such as Meicanwan and Daojiameishi that have sprung up like mushrooms after rain and joined the melee.

The entire group buying + takeaway local life market has entered the stage of fierce fighting, and you can knock down several direct competitors even if you close your eyes and throw a turtle punch.

In such a situation, it is not only Wang Xing who has to consider cash flow. Everyone is the same. Without money, you will die.

The merger of Didi and Kuaidi has a huge impact. People in the industry have more or less understood some meaning from it, and the venture capital industry has become extremely busy.

The office of Taihe Xiyou was deserted. The employees became frequent flyers and traveled all over the country to look for projects. Xie Jingxing even went there in person to meet with the founders.

During this period, I had a competition with Xu Xin of Today Capital, but the outcome was inconclusive. The project that both parties were scrambling to see was a scam. They dug a hole in the door to get financial payment and took photos, but ended up doing Internet mobile charging, which was related to overseas washing machines.

In short, Didi has set the venture capital market on fire, and all kinds of monsters have emerged, sweeping the market with a sense of crisis.

Only Zhang Xuhao remained indifferent, numbly wrestling and rolling in the mud with Meituan.

Ele.me and Taodiandian had completely decided the winner in Hangzhou, and he personally sent a WeChat message to Xie Jingxing to inform him of the good news.

In Beijing, he surpassed Meituan in market share, and he personally sent good news. In Jinling, he shut down several small local platforms and completely unified the market, and he sent good news again.

Zhang Xuhao tried to prove that he was right with repeated successes, and that he could lead Ele.me to invincibility without reforming the existing operating model.

Xie Jingxing never responded to the message, silently watching him shout out the slogan "Win over Meituan in 6 months" again at a recent internal meeting.

"If we do a good job in crowdsourcing logistics, Yunhe will make a profit regardless of who wins or loses between Ele.me and Meituan."

In the cold and quiet Taihe office, Liu Qiangdong looked around leisurely.

Xie Jingxing disagreed: "Since the bet is placed and two dollars can be earned, no one wants to earn only one dollar."

"This is how it is for your financial institutions. A dozen workstations control tens of billions of funds, and they scrape off the last bit of profit."

Liu Qiangdong joked: "We are JD.com, just the opposite. I have always told my brothers that when JD.com can reduce its net profit to below 10%, our business will be considered a success."

"It's almost there. My father has always wanted to control the net profit of Yunshan Group at 5%-8%." ​​Xie Jingxing said.

Liu Qiangdong shook his head and declined to comment. If Yunshan Group could control its net profit to 8%, its annual revenue would reach billion yuan. It would be a bit exaggerated to say that it is a century-old enterprise. It would be easy for it to survive years of ups and downs.

He raised his eyebrows and confirmed: "So Taihe really has 10 billion in funds?"

Xie Jing Xing was speechless: "Brother Dong, you look down on me."

"Although I said a lot when we were drinking in New York last time, I actually don't know much about the financial industry. Afterwards, I specifically asked someone what level Taihe is in the industry, and then I realized that you guys are better than I thought."

Brother Qiangdong explained frankly: "I thought about it and felt it would be a pity not to cooperate with you, so I asked you to meet in the office. Otherwise, we would have gone directly to the restaurant."

"How to say?"

Xie Jingxing didn't comment. They were both very busy, and if they didn't have anything to do, there was no point in having a good meal.

"When JD.com first raised funds, it didn't have the money to hire a professional consultant, so I went to talk to Xu Xin myself, and she asked me what the valuation was."

Brother Qiangdong squinted his eyes and said to himself: "I didn't understand what valuation was at all at the time, so I asked the boss of the company next door. The boss was also illiterate, and he told me that valuation was annual revenue."

"I foolishly believed her. After calculating the annual revenue, I went to Xu Xin and quoted a price of $200 million. She told me that she would invest an additional $800 million, but I had to sign a bet. If the performance did not meet the agreed standards, I would have to give her additional shares."

"I just can't figure out what finance is. It makes me shudder just talking about it. Don't blame me for not understanding the market, brother."

Brother Qiangdong spoke vividly, but Xie Jingxing listened without believing it at all.

A veteran who graduated from Renmin University in the 1990s and started several businesses doesn't know what valuation is. If he believed it, he would have been Dong Ge's cheap senior brother for nothing.

But if Dong Ge knows so much about finance, why did he go to Columbia University to seclude himself for half a year to figure out how to go public?

The two knew that they were fooling each other, so they sat in a separate office and got down to business.

"JD.com invested in Yunhe and Taihe invested in JD.com. How about this kind of cooperation?" Brother Qiangdong said directly.

Xie Jingxing expected something: "You want to do crowdsourcing logistics?"

"You acted too quickly. The food delivery market had just started, but you invested in all the potential crowdsourcing logistics. JD.com would have had no way to start if it hadn't found Yunhe." Brother Qiangdong laughed wryly at himself.

Xie Jingxing asked again: "Why doesn't JD do it itself?"

"We definitely have to do it ourselves, but if we calculate the input and output, it's not worth it to start from scratch."

Brother Qiangdong spoke the truth in every word, and he dug and dug with a small shovel, making one hole after another.

JD.com has invested in Yunhe to enter the crowdsourcing logistics industry. The powerful combination will maximize its competitiveness. In the future, Yunhe will be killed by super leverage, and JD.com will be the first heir to the legacy.

By then, the crowdsourcing business will be incorporated as a whole, and it will be very smooth to lay eggs by borrowing chickens.

Taihe invested in JD.com and, together with Tencent, took over the holdings of foreign shareholders in an effort to dilute the control at the BVI level in the VIE structure as much as possible.

If Wang from Meituan can figure out financial payment, so can Liu from JD.com. There is no reason for them to willingly work for Alibaba and Tencent, two landlords. He can just wait until Yunhe explodes in the future and then take back the shares.

The rise of the food delivery industry has led to the rise of the crowdsourcing logistics market, and Yunhe’s super leverage of up to 50 times has made Brother Qiangdong see opportunities.

He firmly believed that Yunhe would be killed by Xie Jingxing sooner or later. Instead of being the enemy and wasting money to fight head-on, why not just take a ride and wait for the equipment to explode?

"Mr. Liu, can you please give me a price for the specific shareholding ratio?"

Xie Jingxing laughed. He was only 23 years old, an age when he had to wake up with a bang every morning. It would be great to live longer than anyone else.

Brother Qiangdong took a deep breath and said solemnly: "JD.com can transfer 5% of its shares to Taihe and subscribe for them at the IPO price."

"too expensive."

Xie Jingxing said without hesitation: "Why not have JD.com and Yunhe cross-hold shares and avoid the trouble of Taihe."

"...Brother, our two companies are direct competitors in the logistics business to a large extent, and it is difficult to explain the cross-holding to the investors."

Brother Qiangdong explained that he wanted to take over Yunhe’s legacy, not to explode hand in hand with Yunhe.

Xie Jingxing looked embarrassed: "5% of the shares are enough. The valuation needs to be carefully calculated. I can give a rough range of about 150 billion US dollars."

"What do you think about JD.com's investment in Yunhe?" Brother Qiangdong asked vaguely without expressing his opinion.

JD.com is currently discussing financing details with Tencent. Tencent will package all of its e-commerce businesses and acquire 15% of JD.com's equity in cash, and will subscribe for 5% at the IPO price after the listing.

Tencent acquired a total of 20% of the shares, paying a total of approximately US$35 billion in cash and in-kind, with a valuation of approximately 175 billion.

But this is still under negotiation, and since there is payment in kind, the bargaining between the two sides is quite intense.

In addition, Tencent's internal e-commerce business department was particularly resistant to being packaged and sold to JD.com. Qiangdong made seven consecutive calls to Hillhouse Capital's Zhang Lei, who was skiing in the Alps, and called him back to bring dozens of negotiation team members from both sides to deal with the matter.

Now that Tencent has made a slight concession, the valuation can be increased to 170 billion+, but JD.com must sign a long-term cooperation agreement with Tencent and purchase services and advertising businesses from Tencent with a total price of no less than 70 billion yuan in the next three years.

Not only does Yunhe not need JD.com to force it to purchase its business, it can also support JD.com's crowdsourcing logistics business. Its valuation should be lower, and US$150 billion is a more generous amount.

"10%."

Xie Jingxing carefully offered a price: "Yunhe newly registered 10% of the shares, with a valuation of 300 billion yuan."

Brother Qiangdong frowned unconsciously, this was too unfair.

(End of this chapter)