Editor Hao
"We have raised too much money and have not made a profit yet. I am a little embarrassed. " Yang Lei, the founder of Hellobike, said in a media communication meeting recently.
The competitors are weak, but Hellobike is gaining momentum.
At the end of 20 19, Hellobike received a new round of financing, and Ant Financial was still on the list of investors. So far, Hellobike has raised more than 20 billion yuan. "At present, it is the stage with the most cash in the history of Hello entrepreneurship." Yang Lei said.
During the staking period, the speed of enterprises occupying the market is considered, and "fast, accurate and ruthless" is the first priority.
After the vigorous noise, the runners were eliminated, the industry order was gradually established, and the hedonic economy entered the era of rational deep cultivation. This marching rule has been confirmed in many new economic fields.
0 1 survivors
Hello, "the last is king", one of the survivors of the money-burning war.
The path of rapid financing, barbaric expansion and extensive management can be seen in the early expansion history of almost every Internet company that has survived to this day. Liu Qing, president of Didi, once admitted that if Didi didn't burn money, it wouldn't have come this far.
Hellobike, who entered the arena at the end of 20 16, is both a latecomer and a survivor. At that time, * * * enjoyed a raging fire in the field of cycling, and dozens of * * * enjoyed the strangulation of bicycles on the spot. It has been two years since ofo and mobike, who were slightly conspicuous in the melee, came out.
With the differentiated layout and refined operation of the scenic spot business, Hellobike was able to survive in the brutal competition in the first stage. In the winter of 20 17, when Hello was just full 1, the cycling track began to encounter a reshuffle storm, and the players struggling to survive fell like dominoes.
In the tragic battle of life and death, Hello, which has always been low-key, ushered in an olive branch thrown by Ant Financial. 20 17, 12, Hellobike has successively completed the series D financing of $350 million and the series D+ financing of 10 billion RMB, and the major shareholder behind it is Ali.
Watchmaker/Yiou Automobile Commercial Analyst Qian Yi
* * * Players who like to travel may not think that the future track king will not be ofo or mobike.
With Ali's endorsement, in March 2065438+2008, Hellobike and Ant Financial started a strategic cooperation, taking Alipay as the entrance to promote national credit exemption. Hellobike's expansion here has pressed the "double speed" button, gradually leaving its declining competitors behind.
The war ended more suddenly than expected. In April of the same year, Meituan announced a wholly-owned acquisition of mobike. Wang Xing bluntly said at the staff meeting that mobike's main opponent was not ofo, but Hello. At this time, the daily orders of Hellobike exceeded the sum of mobike and ofo.
Ofo did not survive the autumn of 20 18. Decision-making mistakes, high-level turmoil, broken capital chain, ofo gradually falling apart, pushed to the brink of bankruptcy and disintegration. This star enterprise, which was born in idealism and embraced the global economic vision, finally lost to "ideal".
Hello, the challenge is not just a competition. "The impact of the epidemic on us is still relatively easy to digest." Li, co-founder of Hellobike, said at the media communication meeting in the spring of 2020 that Hello's business showed a step-by-step recovery, and the current business volume has recovered to about 80% in the same period last year. "We are lucky to recover faster."
Source /pixabay
02 Endurance War
This is a marathon war to test endurance.
* * * There seems to be no threshold for enjoying bicycles. In fact, the long-term operation and maintenance of the city is very difficult. The threshold comes from the complexity of the overall environment and the quality control level of enterprise operation. For the heavy asset operation of * * * enjoying bicycles, controlling costs and expanding business are the key to turning losses, that is, increasing income and reducing expenses.
The fixed cost of vehicle investment, vehicle depreciation, operation and maintenance and other variable costs are unbearable for early start-ups, and more need a lot of money to maintain operations, invest in research and development, and subsidize users. In the process of barbaric growth of * * *, the urgency of obtaining the value of traffic has created its invisible watershed.
"I don't agree to rely on subsidies to continue to drive traffic. In the past, 20 17 and 20 18 had such cognition due to insufficient operational capacity. This is a business that can be self-hematopoietic and sustainable. " Chu Yiqun, general manager of Hellobike Business Unit, said.
Hello believes that since the era of 1.0, when the bicycle industry is really on the right track, the industry has changed from an unhealthy business model that relies on the deposit pool to a business model that relies on users to ride their own to earn income.
Source /Unsplash
This is the beginning of a virtuous circle.
The mode of competition in the industry has changed, from extensive emphasis on "quantity" to fine emphasis on "quality" * * * The competition for bicycle enjoyment has changed from extensive scale and quantity competition in the early days to cost control and efficiency and quality competition, which is the 2.0 era of * * * bicycle enjoyment in the hello concept.
Realizing scale profit is a difficult problem to enjoy economic form. Even Hello, which stands today, is not profitable.
"Due to the large investment in research and development, the company as a whole is at a loss." Li believes that as link management moves towards the digital and intelligent stage, the improvement of operational efficiency will reduce cost sharing.
Raising the unit price of bicycles will also contribute to a healthy and sustainable business model. In today's fierce competition for cycling, consumers have limited choices, and Hello has the initiative to adjust the price. Modifying the pricing rules will not only prevent the loss of users, but even use big data to reach the prepaid users of monthly cards and season cards and increase the scale of income.
Hello's profit model seems to be succeeding. Li is optimistic. "Whether it is a bicycle or a moped, from the perspective of its own operation, Hello has achieved breakeven in most cities in 20 19, and it will be profitable as a whole in 2020 according to the plan."
After the indiscriminate bombing of the market-driven behavior with high subsidies in the early stage, the determined players not only became a few winners in the market, but also occupied the bargaining power in the market. After all, how much market share you can have after canceling subsidies or even adjusting prices depends only on how many survivors there are on the battlefield.
03? "We need an opponent."
On April 2 1 day, Didi's green orange bicycle was financed by junlian capital, with an investment exceeding 1 billion USD. Hello, speaking of which, "how about it? We need an opponent. "
Laojing's influence on mobike's future has been written into the layout of Meituan's life service ecology.
Meituan dropped $3.7 billion to buy mobike business, and many insiders shook their heads: "It's not cost-effective." Two years after the acquisition of mobike, the bicycle business did not bring significant revenue growth to Meituan. In the total revenue of 97.5 billion in 20 19, new businesses such as B-end solutions, * * bike sharing and online car rental contributed a total of 20.4 billion.
Source/123RF
Bicycle business only exists in the "other" column of Meituan's annual report.
Perhaps the US Mission didn't expect to make money by bicycle from the beginning, but wanted traffic. The C-side traffic in your hand is the lifeblood of the US Mission. Obviously, the business of * * * enjoying economy has always been a traffic entrance for Meituan, which started from catering service.
Different from Meituan, Hello, which started from the bicycle business, slowly extended the antenna radius.
2065438+September 2007, Hello moped business was launched; 2065438+In September 2008, on the occasion of the second anniversary of cycling, its brand was officially upgraded to "Hellobike". In June 5438+ 10 of the same year, the Hello car service was launched; In the following two months, Hello successively accessed the network car service, started Hello's campus business, and began to recruit downwind car owners.
Hello moped business currently occupies about 70% market share in the industry. From September, 20 17, it was first introduced to the market, and by the end of February, 2020, Hello mopeds had settled in over 320 cities, with a total mileage of 3.227 billion kilometers. Its ride business has been launched for one year and has been deployed in more than 300 cities across the country. The total number of card issuance exceeds 45 million, and the cumulative number of certified car owners exceeds140,000.
It is true that the exponential development of the consumer Internet industry is inseparable from the supply of C-side traffic. "Only in a shorter period of time can we deepen the industries that have been cultivated for a long time in the past." Kaizhi Li said.
Watchmaker/Yiou Industrial Internet Business Analyst Yuan Shuai
All roads lead to the same goal?
"The so-called hello layoffs circulating on the Internet are not true, and we have not laid off employees across the board." Li Kaifu responded to rumors of layoffs.
Since the end of 20 19, the scale of high-level technical talents introduced by Hellobike has been increasing, mainly in the fields of algorithms, big data and artificial intelligence. "Most of them come from head Internet companies such as Ali and Ctrip."
Hello's strategy is not radical. At present, the smart lock, the core hardware of bicycle, has developed to the fifth generation, which has the functions of multiple intelligent positioning, intelligent self-diagnosis and adaptive Bluetooth networking, and gradually realizes accurate operation.
The problem of bicycle parking and misplacing in cities has always been criticized. Hello has launched "Bluetooth Seconds Kill" to solve this problem. "The early fixed-point parking of electronic fences was mostly tentative, and there were problems such as immature technology and inaccurate positioning," Li said. "But this year we have put the fixed-point parking mode into practice on a large scale."
Source/official Hello
At the same time, * * * enjoys traveling organically and becomes the capillary of urban public transportation. Hello's 3.0 era has begun.
The hero behind this is "Hello Brain"-an intelligent system applied to the mass internet, enjoying travel equipment. Based on big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, etc. , the full link operation decision-making intelligence is realized. The capacity of Hello can be optimally matched in time, space and demand, and the operation efficiency and cost can be balanced.
Just like Yang Lei, CEO of Hello, said, we should do our business carefully. Following the initial intention of refined operation, Hello wants to build a "behavior-based life service platform"-which sounds quite similar to Meituan.
From a purely commercial point of view, Li hopes that it can provide users with value, self-help, achieve sustainable development and serve users for a long time, "not just a so-called entrance."
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.