"Finally it's the last round."
Lin Yi felt very emotional when he said this, because the competitive landscape of the taxi-hailing industry has been so tortuous in the past few years.
When he entered the game in 2013, the top three at that time were Dudu, Kuaidu and Shanghai Dahuangfeng. Wanli Travel acquired the latter and took its place.
In 2014, the main competitors were still Wanli Travel, Dudu and Kuaidu, but the ranking changed after a subsidy war.
At the beginning of 2015, Dudu and Kuadu achieved a lead after merging, but soon Uber entered the market in a big way, and the world is still divided into three points.
It lasted until 2016. Even Uber, the super unicorn with the strongest financing ability in history, could not survive. The two rivals of Wanli Travel merged again.
This game finally reached the finals.
"But our current situation is far from optimistic. After the merger, the company Liu Qing takes charge of, which she calls Xindudu, is indeed an opponent we have never faced before."
"After the merger, Xindudu's valuation will most likely reach 20 billion U.S. dollars, and its cash reserves are expected to be more than 4 billion U.S. dollars, which is almost twice our size."
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"What's going on over there these days?"
Paying attention to this merger has been Li Moyan's main work recently. At this time, she introduced: "The merger of the two companies is still in progress. With their current scale, this process will still take some time."
"From a system perspective, it is almost too complex. It is impossible to dismantle it and merge it into Uber. It can only be the other way around."
"However, in terms of the team, this time Liu Qing did not lay off anyone like the last time she merged with Kuaidu. She retained a large number of employees from the original Uber."
Uber's own product line is very clean. It's not like Uber, which even makes all kinds of buses and competes with buses for business.
And after all, the size of both companies in China is several times that of Uber, so it is expected that the former will dominate the market.
As for the team, Lin Yi speculated: "Although Liu Qing started his own business in Beijing after leaving Goldman Sachs, he may still be more accustomed to and favor the corporate culture of Uber."
What is the corporate culture of Uber?
The ultimate elitism.
Li Moyan added: "Even so, there are still many former Uber employees who couldn't stand the merger with Dudu and chose to leave."
“The merger with Uber was just based on its name, but Dudu Kuaidu, or Liu Qing himself, took the fact that Uber’s employees are all smart people, and most of them have very good resumes, so they simply resigned.”
"If we need it, we have ready manpower, but having said that, if they don't like Dudu, they may not be interested in us."
The recruitment principle of Wanli Travel is that internal promotions take priority over external introductions, unless they are incompetent. Therefore, the backbone of the management team so far is still the entrepreneurial batch. The advantage is that it has strong cohesion.
Lin Yi was not interested in these people and continued to ask: "How will the business of the two companies be arranged after the merger?"
Li Moyan said: "The most important thing is that customers on both sides can communicate with each other."
"For the time being, the Uber application has not been closed directly, but it is obviously diverting traffic in the direction of Dudu Kuaidu. Similar product lines have been directly merged, leaving only two entrances."
"In addition, Liu Qing also plugged Uber's leaks. The original subsidy intensity has not been reduced, but it has become more difficult to swipe orders."
Uber is a company that is not very localized and has few employees, so its previous subsidy measures left huge room for fraudulent orders.
The so-called spoofing means that passengers make an appointment with the driver in advance and pretend to complete an order instead of actually picking up and dropping off, so as to defraud the platform's subsidies for both the driver and the driver.
According to statistics, more than 10% of Uber's subsidy amount may not have been paid out normally, but was defrauded by professional fraud gangs.
Although Wanli Travel and Dudu Kuaidu also faced the problem of cheating due to large subsidies, their countermeasures in this regard were more effective, so they were less affected.
In this matter, even if they don't personally go out to help defraud Uber, they are at least happy to see it happen.
"Now that Liu Qing has taken over Uber, he will naturally not let this situation continue. It will be a matter of time."
"Based on the experience of the previous merger of Dudu, it is estimated that the aftermath of this merger will be over within a month or two, and by then we will be facing a real new capital."
"Well, Liu Qing's new capital."
When Lin Yi confirmed this, he didn't feel much fear, but felt relaxed as his boots landed. He had a premonition that this should be the last confrontation.
He is very clear about what Liu Qing is good at, and he has indeed gained the upper hand in this aspect, so there is nothing to be afraid of.
"There's one more thing you need to pay attention to."
Li Moyan added, "Lin Yi, I think Cheng Wei's experience of being eliminated this time is also a revelation for us. We must also pay attention to the security of our control rights. We cannot rule out that Liu Qing will repeat his old tricks."
Before the latest round of US$2 billion in investment led by Factory A, Lin Yi had never worried about the issue of control. This was his advantage over Cheng Wei.
However, after this round, even including the shares of senior sisters and other management, their share of equity has dropped to less than 50%.
In fact, for a unicorn at this stage of development, the proportion of equity held by Lin Yi and the entire management team is not small.
However, the senior sister's reminder is reasonable. This kind of thing must be guarded against. After all, Cheng Wei did not expect this to happen before Liu Qing launched the attack.
"When you put it like that, I really think Factory A's investment this time is a bit suspicious, because they don't seem to have withdrawn their shares from Dudu Kuai after investing in us."
Although Lin Yi discussed this for a few words, he never believed that Liu Qing could instruct Factory A to spend 2 billion US dollars to work as an undercover agent for her.
Unless Majek is her biological father.
"The current situation is quite favorable to us. With our shareholding, we can just get any major shareholder to support us."
"And if Liu Qing wants to use our brains in this regard, she will almost have to pull all the shareholders to her side. This may be faster than what she did in the capital and more difficult than what Cheng Wei did."
"No matter what, we should make some preparations in advance and handle the relationship with investors in advance so as not to be caught off guard by her taking money from the bottom of the cauldron."
Lin Yi thought about it in his mind. Although Wanli Travel has put up the sign of Factory A after the latest round of financing, the relationship between the two parties is not close, otherwise they would not have been turned away by Majek in the first place.
Factory A gave this money, not so much as a support to Wanli Travel or Lin Yi, but rather as a punishment to Dudu and Kuaidu.
At this juncture, when it comes to who is most likely to firmly support him, the person Lin Yi can think of is really not Ma Jack.
Chapter completed!