The exposure rate of the taxi-hailing industry has been very high this year.
The lively subsidy war not long ago has since become a hot event that everyone is paying attention to. Although the subsidy range is now much lower than before, it seems that it is only a matter of time before it is cancelled.
But the media has not let this issue go easily. Various related and unrelated so-called experts, scholars, and media commentators have come out to comment on this issue.
In this process, the three parties involved, Wanli Travel, Dudu Taxi and Kuadu Taxi, have all been directly or indirectly involved. As for BAT, they will certainly not respond in a downcast manner.
Lin Yi soon discovered that Liu Jianni's suggestion came very timely, because both Dudu and Kuaidu were already laying the groundwork for their respective industry status after the subsidy war.
For example, in the earliest Kuadu app, Chen Weixing revealed in an interview at the end of March that the number of registered users had exceeded 100 million.
In fact, it is very easy to register as a taxi-hailing software user. The three companies all adopt the simplest registration method, that is, as long as you have a mobile phone number, you can place an order.
Over 100 million users sounds like a lot, but Wanli Travel and Tuk-Tuk Taxi will only have more users than it, not less.
Of course, many overlap.
Then in April, Cheng Wei announced in media reports that Tuk-Tuk taxi services had entered 236 cities across the country.
Before the start of the subsidy war, among the three companies in Kaicheng, Wanli Travel was the most active one. Lin Yi completed its presence in 50 cities by the end of 2013.
The layout of Dudu and Kuadu is slightly different, and the coverage area during the subsidy war is also different. The former is 32 cities and the latter is 40.
After the subsidy was opened, Lin Yi's pace slowed down because Wanli Travel has covered major large and medium-sized cities across the country.
The rest can be collectively referred to as the "sinking market", which is only meaningful in terms of statistical quantity and has no impact on the actual battle situation of the three companies.
However, in just a few months, Lin Yi expressed doubts that Dudu could make such a major expansion in coverage while coping with the subsidy war.
In short, if a startup company brags to the outside world, it must be discounted.
After discussing with Liu Jianni, Lin Yi jointly invited a third-party investigation agency in the name of Wanli Travel and Xiong Chang, and commissioned it to issue an industry report on the current share of the taxi-hailing market.
The results are naturally self-evident.
In the most critical market share indicator, Wanli Travel has a 10 percentage point advantage over Dudu Taxi. As for Kuadu, it is less than half of either of the top two, and the gap has obviously widened.
One of the most obvious evidences is that according to separate surveys in several key cities listed in the report, as a brand developed with the support of Factory A and headquartered in Lin'an, Kuadu's market share in this city has been lost to Wanli Travel.
Exceed.
With the release of this report, Wanli Travel promoted the news of being number one in the taxi-hailing market in a very high-profile manner in various internal and external announcements and promotional materials.
Also announced: the number of registered users of Wanli Travel has exceeded 100 million, the number of registered drivers has exceeded 1 million, and the average daily orders have exceeded 5 million, making it the largest daily order trading platform on the mobile Internet.
With these data as support, the report seems less dry and the conclusions are more real and credible.
In fact, as early as the end of last year, Lin Yi and Li Robin announced it at their respective annual meetings. However, the subsidy war was not over yet at that time, and it was obviously just a phased achievement.
As for this time, it seems to be final.
The other two companies had different reactions to this. Kuadu responded silently, with the official saying that "Kuaidu still maintains a good momentum of rapid growth."
However, Chen Weixing himself expressed his disdain for Wanli Travel in a few words in a less formal public occasion, thinking that they were just lucky enough to take advantage of this subsidy war.
Dudu is different. Although it did not publicly respond to the news, another survey report soon appeared on the Internet. The results showed that Dudu still maintains its leading position in the national taxi industry.
Silence is better than sound. Obviously Cheng Wei did not admit Wanli Travel's claim to be number one.
Then the good-natured media rushed over like a cat that smelled something fishy, asking the two companies to comment on the conflicting statements in the two reports.
Lin Yi originally didn't want to come forward to talk about these things in person. To be honest, he didn't like to face the camera. He had deliberately hyped himself up before when he was preparing to travel thousands of miles. It was just a temporary measure required by the situation.
But Liu Jianni insisted that he should deliver the signal.
Because as the founder and CEO of Wanli Travel, he is the person who best represents Wanli Travel in the eyes of the outside world, or he is its personified symbol. This is his unshirkable responsibility.
Lin Yi respected this opinion, so after the company's team drafted the reply, he came forward for an interview:
"I understand that survey agencies will use different methods, and there will always be certain errors in sampling methods. This does not mean that the results of both parties are unscientific."
Respectable people also need to pay attention to elegance when quarreling. His tone was not too aggressive. He just tried to save everyone's respect before saying:
"However, I am very confident about Wanli Travel's position as the number one in the taxi-hailing industry. In fact, if Tuk-Tuk Taxi is willing, there is no need for any third-party investigation report. As long as we each use our own back-end data to compare
Just know it.”
This was considered a positive response, so they used these words to find Dudu to take a taxi. As expected, Dudu did not accept the call.
In short, Lin Yi and Cheng Wei would not take this kind of verbal quarrel too seriously, and the facts would not change because of someone's harsh words.
For Lin Yi, the most important significance of this matter does not lie in this.
The reason why Wanli Travel and Xiong Factory are both the principals of this investigation is because when Xiong Factory invested in it in October last year, the two parties had a performance promise bet.
If Wanli Travel fails to meet the market share requirements, Xiong Factory will take away 40% of its equity. In this case, Lin Yi and others will not be far away from losing control.
At that time, it was agreed that the deadline would be half a year. Now it is April 2014, and the half-year period has arrived, so it is time to test the results.
Therefore, the results of that report are not a reflection of Lin Yi's recharge. After all, under the supervision of Xiong Chang, he can basically give a true feedback on the market situation.
Fortunately, Xiong Factory was not like Dudu Taxi who had the burden of face and was unwilling to admit the truth. Robin Li accepted the result readily and happily.
Oh, by the way, since Robin Li told Lin Yi his next plan, Bear Factory's takeout business has now been launched.
Like the group buying business, Xiongchang Takeout has received a lot of financial support from Robin Li, which has put a lot of pressure on competitors such as Meituan, Dianping and Hungry?
So in the short term, his main focus may be on those business directions.
In short, in a peaceful atmosphere, both parties confirmed the achievement of performance commitments in the form of a supplementary agreement. As a result, Wanli Travel's current equity structure has stabilized.
This means that it can prepare for the next round of financing.