After Liu Chuanjun negotiated with his team and shareholders for a while, they decided to move closer to Ruixiang.
Ruixiang Industrial Investment Fund participated in the A+ round of financing of Meicai.com, and after 10% of the shares were diluted in subsequent rounds of financing, only 5.44% is left.
After receiving an investment of US$400 million from Ruixiang Phase III Industrial Investment Fund, Ruixiang's shareholding ratio will increase to 17.94%.
Making this decision was quite difficult for Liu Chuanjun.
Because of accepting this financing, Meicai.com will be deeply labeled as a "Ruixiang system" and exclude Ahri and Penguin.
Considering Zhang Yida's repeated miracles, Liu Chuanjun still chose to bet on him.
Regarding the fresh food industry, who will have the last laugh in the future? Will it be profitable in the future?
Zhang Yida didn't know about these problems, so he could only choose to "invest in the track".
In addition to Meicai.com, Zhang Yida also met with Xu Zheng, CEO of Daily Fresh.
Xu Zheng is not a simple person. He was born in 1981. He was admitted to the University of Science and Technology of China at the age of 15. At the age of 17, he teamed up with his classmates to start a business, mainly engaged in the pager business.
At the age of 25, he became the youngest business general manager of the Fortune Global 500, and at the age of 28, he became the general manager of Lenovo's notebook division.
Zhang Yida and Xu Zheng have met several times, but they don’t know each other well. Ruixiang invested US$5 million in the Pre-A round of financing of Daily Fresh, and Lan Lan has been responsible for following up the project since then.
As a person who has been doing business since he was 17 years old, Xu Zheng has a very active mind.
He guessed that Zhang Yida must have something important to do when he came to visit in person, because it was Lan Lan who had always dealt with him before.
Instead of asking why he was here, he joked with Zhang Yida: "If I hadn't sold pagers back then, but engaged in e-commerce, I might have become the richest man."
Zhang Yida smiled and said: "Don't say it, it is really possible."
Xu Zheng sighed, shook his head and smiled: "No, when we were in college, it was hard to get venture capital.
Turtles like Charles Zhang, Robin Lee and others are more popular, while jackhorses and hicks like us are not favored at all.
If I could get venture capital, maybe I would drop out of school and start a business."
Zhang Yida nodded, "Thanks to the new era, college students can now get venture capital. Compared with our predecessors, our generation of entrepreneurs is indeed much happier."
Worried that Zhang Yida would misunderstand his words, Xu Zheng continued: "Angel investment and Series A financing are easy to obtain, but the difficult thing is to get a project on the right track and into profitability.
If I was given $50 million in 2013, I wouldn’t dare to guarantee that I would be able to return the investment to a $66.6 billion company five years later.”
Xu Zheng spoke very impeccably and praised Zhang Yida again without saying a word.
Zhang Yida has seen too much flattery and has long been numb. He will not get carried away just because of one or two words of praise.
He came to Xu Zheng for investment reasons.
As a representative company of the front-end warehouse model, Daily Youxian is favored by capital.
Since its establishment at the end of 2014, it has received 7 rounds of financing in a row, with a valuation of over US$1.5 billion.
The only tricky thing is that Penguin has followed the investment for three consecutive rounds, and its shareholding ratio is higher than that of Ruixiang.
Now that the whole world knows that Penguin and Ruixiang have parted ways, there is a big question mark as to whether Xu Zheng still dares to accept Ruixiang's investment.
After briefly chatting with Xu Zheng about business, Zhang Yida said directly: "It has been half a year since the C+ round of financing. Is Daily Youxian interested in raising another round?"
This stumped Xu Zheng. The representative of Penguin Investment once vaguely reminded him and asked him to kick out Ruixiang Industrial Investment Fund.
But he didn't dare. After all, Ruixiang is not a small company that can be offended casually.
Starting a business is actually doing business. It is better to have many friends than one enemy.
Fortunately, Ruixiang does not hold many shares. After several rounds of dilution, only 4.94% is left, which is not even the 5% important position line.
Seeing that Xu Zheng kept doing Tai Chi, Penguin didn't keep pushing him.
Now Zhang Yida wants to invest in Daily Fresh, which forces him to take sides.
No matter which side you stand on, you will offend the people on the other side.
The one he admires most is Chen Wei. Didi’s shareholders include Penguin, Ahri, and Ruixiang.
Didi even acquired Uber China and added Qiandu as a shareholder.
With so many shareholders, he didn't know how Chen Wei balanced the forces of all parties.
Anyway, this trick of playing both sides was taken to a new level by Chen Wei.
"Mr. Zhang, this thing surprises me. Why do you suddenly think of investing in Daily Fresh?"
Zhang Yida said with a smile: “We have always been optimistic about the fresh food market, but it is currently unprofitable because the penetration rate is not high and users have not yet developed a habit.
As the old ladies and gentlemen at the vegetable market and fruit market get older, sooner or later, Daily Fresh will make a profit."
Xu Zheng felt that what Zhang Yida said was very good, and it made him feel good, but he couldn't offend Penguin just because of it.
Xu Zheng smiled and said: "I'm not too anxious about financing. There is still a lot of funds raised in the last round. The next round of financing may have to be delayed for a while."
Zhang Yida heard what was going on behind the scenes, and it seemed that the other party was going to follow Penguin into trouble.
This is also human nature. The valuation of Ruixiang and Zhonghe is only one-third of Penguin.
He is a normal person and should be able to do multiple choice questions.
Zhang Yida simply stopped talking about the financing, chatted with Xu Zheng for a few more words, and left.
Looking at Zhang Yida's reaction, Xu Zheng knew that he had offended the former this time.
But he had no choice. If he had to choose a side, he could only hug the penguin with thicker legs.
If Zhang Yida really wants to get angry about this matter and even quit Daily Fresh, there is nothing he can do.
…
“We inspected Hema Fresh, Super Species, 7FRESH and many other companies this month, and also asked McKinsey Consulting to provide industry consulting reports.
We have drawn the following conclusions about the fresh food industry that the group is about to enter."
Zhang Yida looked at Xie Zheyuan, who was talking eloquently on the conference room stage. This was a senior talent recruited by Zhonghe Group from Yonghui Fresh Food Division.
The other party has served as the vice president of Yonghui and the general manager of the fresh food division. He has rich experience in the fields of fresh food supply chain and product selection.
Instead of rushing to start the project immediately, Xie Zheyuan led the team deployed by Zhonghe Group to investigate the entire fresh food industry.
Now when we analyze these survey results, we find that they are basically failure cases. There is no large-scale profitable enterprise in the fresh food industry.
During this time, Zhang Yida was also chatting with big bosses from companies related to the fresh food industry. On the one hand, he was making investment plans, and on the other hand, he had a deeper understanding of the industry.
“In the future of fresh food-related retail formats, my team and I judge that there will be two relatively large opportunities.
One is a supermarket model similar to Hema, which facilitates the online part and offline booking + self-pickup.
There is also a community convenience store type, with online pre-sales, group purchases, and offline pickup + delivery.”
Zhang Yida listened carefully. Although the fresh food industry is currently losing money, everyone is betting on the future.
At the size of Ruixiang and Zhonghe, a small loss can still be tolerated. The most important thing is that no one wants to miss the ticket to the next big era.