But in China, who is qualified to be an oligarch is still a question!
Didi and Kuai, who made their fortune by taking a taxi, were the earliest duopoly. Although the intense burning of money made the money behind the scenes bleed, the orders they made were all genuine, so when the two friends got together, everyone thought it was time to lie down and make money. However, the addition of Uber immediately brought the story back to the original point, which led to a question:
Is C2C duopoly established?
Before the Internet age, the pattern of duopoly was usually very stable, because it was easy to maximize profits through collusion or tacit understanding, supported by Cournot model and Nash equilibrium, but this was not the logic that * * * enjoyed C2C, AMD and Inter could have fun, and Didi and Uber were sentenced to life and death.
There are several reasons:
1, the medicine cannot be stopped.
? Traditional oligarchs monopolize the market by controlling resources and capacity, and eliminate potential competitors. However, enjoying the socialized supply of the economy shattered this system and amplified the siphon effect of subsidies and flows. In this regard, the experienced Didi has the most say.
At the beginning, Didi and the wedding candle all thought that the clouds collected rain and fell short. However, Uber, a latecomer, quickly made up the position and the subsidy war continued. Didi can't always play the drama of playing first and then falling in love, not to mention it's easy to get LeTV investment by car. Join in with a crazier attitude.
Obviously, as long as the trend of supply and demand with subsidies remains unchanged, the war will never stop. The ending of the story is a bit like the fable in Lv Chunqiu: There were two warriors in the State of Qi, Lu Yu, who drank bravely, so he cut his own flesh and killed everyone. The comment in Lv Chunqiu is "Brave is not brave".
2. The demolished barrier can't be built any more.
* * * Enjoy the supply-side revolution of the economy, destroying the old industrial barriers and the barriers that covered themselves. Drivers and passengers who are carried away by subsidies have no loyalty, and there is no threshold for technology and operation. As long as there is a financial advantage, any internet company can quickly enter and copy. Didi and Uber have no way to stop the latecomers except for hand-to-hand combat with huge subsidies.
3. Prisoner's Dilemma
It is common for traditional oligarchs to collude in pricing and manipulate the market. It is not easy for Didi and Uber to attack their intelligence. At that time, they were still the matchmaking process of investor Liu Qing, or Lu Chuanwei's "* * * business plan", but they couldn't talk in simple terms, couldn't talk to each other, and couldn't stop burning money only by private tacit understanding. Finally, they came together under the strong stick of Ali and Tencent.
This is the so-called prisoner's dilemma. Because the two prisoners are not sure about each other's strategy, they tend to expose each other rather than advance and retreat together. Didi's loss in 20 15 years is about1400 million, and Uber China's loss is 10 billion. Both sides know the importance of cooperation in hemostasis, but they can't practice it. Since Uber returned to Beijing, Didi Express promoted welfare, and the subsidy war escalated again. Since bleeding and ambitious companies have built their success on each other's failure, forget about "long-term survival, honor and disgrace and * * *", and it is an inevitable trend to die.
There are only two possibilities to avoid the upcoming tragic ending. One is to suddenly find a profit model.
Both Cheng Wei and travis kalanick admit the loss, but the brain hole lies in how to solve it. Uber has tricks such as charging "passenger safety fees". Although I have always been a defendant in the United States, I can feel that I still focus on the product itself, which is completely different from the commercialization of Didi. Cheng Wei and Liu Qing's seven product lines are basically losing money. Instead, it is advertising and e-commerce. This is certainly not a long-term solution. To be an ecosystem, Didi really aims at new cars and aftermarkets.
Linking more car-related businesses through diversified product scenarios is Didi's strategy. In the previously disclosed investment documents, Didi set the key conditions for realizing profits of 540 million,1.200 million and 1.5 1 000 million respectively within three years, apparently to wash away the hardship and turbidity of the driver commission model.
But it's too early to talk about profits. First of all, too many people want to dig graves for traditional 4S shops, and the competition is unprecedented. There are both startups and experienced Internet players, not to mention the eager BAT. Secondly, the C2C model makes Didi lack a fulcrum in traditional channels such as car companies and automobile aftermarkets.
The second possibility is mergers and acquisitions.
Although travis kalanick admitted the loss before, it is estimated that Didi will burn 70 million to 80 million dollars in a week, which the latter denied. However, according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers report previously disclosed, Didi lost 57 10/00000 dollars in the first five months of 20 15 years ago. In the case that drivers and buses of big spenders are not online, it can be seen that travis kalanick's mouth guns are not groundless.
However, in the spirit of Liu Cheng and travis kalanick, they will not seek compromise unless they are at the end of their tether. Moreover, Didi and Uber still hold a large number of orders and most of the market share, and there is no urgent need to hold a group to keep warm. For example, Churchill's famous saying "When Hitler invades hell, we will form an alliance with the devil" has not yet appeared.
Calm and profitable shenzhou special car
First, let's carry out a rumor. Ali's capital injection into China has already been finalized. The previous two public relations "false infatuation without epilepsy" and "crossing the sea" were purely thirty-six, but this investment was not entirely based on the special car in China. We will show it later.
Shenzhou special car is a different kind of internet travel. Since its birth, it has paid attention to the cooperation with CAR Inc, which not only digests idle inventory, but also feeds back the car rental business in peak season. This idea of strengthening operations based on offline resources is very different from the Internet thinking of Didi and Uber. The wool is on pigs.
The biggest difference lies in the consideration of profit.
Before getting the commission, Didi and Uber used subsidies to satisfy the appetite of drivers and passengers, knowing the strategy of taking what they want and giving it to them first. This customer storage tactic has risen to the theoretical field, which is the famous saying of Vice President Deng: "Internet companies that make money too early have no future". Please pay attention to Deng's identity before savoring this sentence. His entrepreneurship and innovation incubation center is one of the main fulcrums of JD.COM O2O. It is not surprising that there is a theory of subsidizing before making money.
However, this theory is meaningless to Shenzhou Special Vehicle. The vehicle source of Shenzhou Special Vehicle needs to be effectively revitalized in the depreciation cycle in order to present a prosperous posture in the asset income statement, which determines that the subsidy of Shenzhou Special Vehicle should be accurately targeted at users who still have consumption power after stopping the subsidy, or in other words, after the subsidy tide recedes, Didi and Uber are concerned about owning the whole beach, and the interest of Shenzhou Special Vehicle is to catch delicious oysters and shells.
On the one hand, the cost structure allows Shenzhou Special Vehicle to shrink subsidies and make money calmly when its peers burn money, but more importantly, it thinks that its strategy of stimulating demand with subsidies and retaining customers with services has achieved results. The company's biological clock and competing products are not on the same frequency, so there is certainly no competition.
The real killing trick of the Shenzhou Department is platformization, which is completely different from Didi's meaning to China. The key is to realize the accumulated offline resources. On the one hand, the two product lines, CAR Inc. and Special Car, gather thousands of new cars every year, which gives China the right to speak among upstream manufacturers. On the other hand, how to make these vehicles digest according to the financial model is the top priority of the ecological closed loop.
In this case, the platformization of Shenzhou department may be a two-line strategy, one is a new car and the other is a quasi-new car.
The former relies on the price advantage of centralized procurement to establish an online sales platform beyond the traditional 4S shop channels. This is the layout that China has long wanted to make, and it has been planned many times in the era of car rental.
The latter has been operating in a low-key way for several years, mainly sinking into brand stores in third-and fourth-tier cities, and completing the transformation of old cars in two systems: car rental and special car. What plays a connecting role between these two strategies is the auto finance being planned.
In order to promote the above strategy, China urgently needs to connect to a large-flow Internet platform. Ali, who started as an e-commerce, is obviously the best choice, while the latter needs to incite the fulcrum of the automobile aftermarket, which can be described as taking care of one thing and losing another. Many people question the rumors that Ali invested in the Shenzhou Department, but only vaguely feel that Ali, who already owns Didi's equity, should not give up and should seek further. This is purely the reasoning of ordinary people. The current format of Didi is more conducive to Tencent's social advantages, and the income of WeChat payment far exceeds Alipay, which is certainly not what Ali expected.
Ali's capital injection into China is not simply involved in the car dispute, but has another grand plan. There are two important judgments implied here:
1, Ali does not agree with the practice of some companies such as Didi to subvert the automobile sales channel from the test drive. This C2C scenario is immature, and the demand is small and scattered, so it is not welcomed by automobile manufacturers. It is impossible to complete large-scale new car sales;
2. Travel in internet plus is moving from point-to-point travel service to a deeper level, and the production, sales and service of cars are facing changes, which is much more meaningful than the war of car subsidies, and it is also what Ali really cares about.
If you think that this investment only adds another fire to the chaotic car subsidy war, it is all wet. Maybe in the near future, we will see a series of actions of the two companies in the automotive aftermarket.
Easy to use roles and scenarios
In the attack of C2C Didi, Uber and B2C Shenzhou special car, the loneliness and loneliness of easy-to-use car are obvious. The reason why the entrepreneurial aura quickly faded and fell into the mortal world was mainly that the means and goals did not match.
Easy-to-use car has always insisted that users choose drivers in billing mode, rather than other C2C ways of grabbing tickets. The emphasis, of course, is on enhancing the experience. This idea is closer to the special car in China. The only difference is that the latter is differentiated through service, while Zhou Hang wants to build a car network based on location and social relations.
This brings two problems:
1. Is travel a service or a social activity?
The two sects of China special car, one is Didi and Uber; People suffering from GMV hunger; Second, the key is to recharge the Shenzhou special car that intercepts high-quality users; The thinking is very clear; Easy to use the car, don't take both, insist on finding another way. Determined to implant some social genes in the product and bind the driver and passenger into a relatively fixed pair. It can be seen that the pink beard complex of Raffles is harmful. In fact, this scene is not pornographic at all. Carpooling is social, but you can't make friends with professional drivers.
2. The supply and demand are out of line.
Because it is not a self-owned vehicle, compared with the special car in China, it is easy to control the driver with the car. It lacks the means to control passengers' tolerance and behavior, which leads to the inability to expand the fleet size, the gap between user experience and commitment, and it is inevitable to fall behind in the competition.
For a long time, the popularity of easy-to-use car products was maintained by cross-industry activities and Zhou Hang's storytelling, but by the end of 20 15, the market structure had changed dramatically, and a small rich man had no way out. Zhou Hang was forced to accept an extremely expensive investment in LeTV, especially like Li Shishi in the man-machine war, desperately looking for the last bullet. First, it followed the practice of charging 100 and returning 100 for special cars in China. After charging 100, it returned to 120. March 2 1 was upgraded to 100 and returned to 200, which was very local, but the ending may not be as Zhou Hang hoped.
The first is the pressure of burning money, and LeTV has limited blood transfusion.
According to Zhou Hang, during the period of 100, the performance of LeTV Investment increased by 4-5 times. Even if it is true, the absolute value is pitiful. LeTV is not interested in giving Zhou Hang a dream, and the purpose of investment is only to find offline high-frequency scenes for LeTV's ecological chain.
In other words, the easy-to-use car is valued and positioned in the form of LeTV product carrier. Easy-to-use cars with the VIE frame dismantled seek listing in China, thinking that they are overtaking Uber in corners. In fact, this is of much greater significance to LeTV, which holds 70% equity of Easy-to-Use Car.
It is also doubtful whether generous subsidies can maintain the expansion. Shenzhou special car, the originator of recharge and rebate tactics, launched the activity of 100 charging 100 on October 28th, 20 15, and then extended it to September 1 twice, burning nearly 4 billion yuan in the whole year. It is conceivable how long LeTV's $700 million can last.
Secondly, easy-to-use cars lack the ability to expand supply.
Special car subsidies tend to new customers, but in the high-end market, special cars in China are very replaceable, and it is easy to lack obvious incremental space. In C2C mode, Didi and Uber are vulnerable to pressure by depriving the low-end market of supply. On the one hand, it is difficult to improve the order taking rate of existing drivers, and on the other hand, drivers are constantly diverting to large-scale acquiring platforms.
Finally, the construction of Easy Platform has fallen behind.
Easy to attach great importance to BD in the past, I didn't expect BD to just use the icing on the cake, but failed to reverse the ability of Gan Kun. In addition, its actions in the field of auto finance are also anticlimactic, and strategically there is a tendency to "control the narrowness with sharpness". Except for Zhou Hang, which pays more attention to marketing value and neglects product construction, the lack of business volume is a serious injury. Today, as a C2C junior, Yizhi has missed the best opportunity to take the upper position. In the best case, as a branch of * * * Enjoy Travel, it shows a sense of existence under the egg wing of LeTV.
Oligopolization and platformization are the ultimate forms of Internet travel, and BAT standing in line behind the scenes intensifies this trend. The casual trip of "Young children are old in rivers and lakes, and pink ladies have temples" is about to play a gorgeous elegy.