Only after the first time with Baidu+Toutiao, Alibaba's senior management realized the difficulty of things.

Cai Chongxin flew from Hangzhou to Yanjing in person and started a secret conversation with Wang Xing.

As for the Toutiao Company headquarters, far away in Shanghai, Zhu Wenbin reported on the achievements of Yanjing.

Alibaba spent more subsidies, but could not stop Baidu's new users from expanding. As a result, it had to press the pause button. When Meituan faced the joint attack between Baidu and Today's Preferred, it naturally chose to make a compromise.

The other party stopped subsidies, and according to the agreement with Today's Selection, Baidu also stopped subsidies. Although Chen Zi'ang seemed reluctant, he was unwilling to break the agreement for such a trivial matter.

Today's Youxuan continues to attract new users with small subsidies. For old users, it is also the old routine of attracting new users to obtain subsidies.

Meituan seems to have lost this first game, but Meituan's own group buying model has already connected merchants and users. This subsidy directly converts some of the group buying users into takeaway users.

Although there is no subsidy, Meituan's strength is to operate offline carefully, reduce merchant costs, increase takeaway route algorithms, and push high-quality food to users. In addition, the occasional subsidy, Meituan still firmly occupied part of Yanjing's market share and competed with Today's Preferred.

Zhu Wenbin finished summarizing and said: "Offline is our disadvantage. Meituan has much better understanding of merchants in Yanjing City than us. According to this situation, the same problem may occur in other cities."

Zhou Yujie nodded and said, "Meituan has been doing group buying for two years. It has raised hundreds of millions of dollars before. Before cooperating with Quxin, it basically did not advertise and was used for offline promotion. If there were no results, Wang Xing would not have won the final victory in the group buying war."

The previous Toutiao and Teng Xun all relied on offline advantages to take advantage of Meituan's powerful offline combat capabilities.

Now Meituan has become a competitor, and offline has become its own disadvantage. At this time, it is necessary to take advantage of Toutiao's online advantages and use Toutiao to promote advertising to the people of Yanjing City.

After Meituan and Alibaba stopped subsidies, the subsidy amount of today's preferred subsidy was also reduced, and a long-term and slow promotion strategy was adopted.

Zhu Wenbin asked: "Meituan is now in contact with many venture capital investors, and it is estimated that the financing will be settled soon. What should we do next?"

Because of Zhou Yujie's strong demands, Today Youxuan has been "internal smuggling" with Meituan and Ele.me instead of using this fund to open up other blank markets. This actually makes many people not understand.

Zhu Wenbin's subordinates will not question the boss's strategic layout at will. He also thinks that Meituan will be a strong opponent, but he doesn't quite understand why he is targeting a very small Ele.me.

Zhou Yujie smiled and said, "Now Meituan's main energy should be the negotiations on financing. The subsidies in Yanjing have come to an end for the time being. We don't know where Meituan will choose to start next, and we can't continue to fight.

But I heard that Ele.me has recently started taking the small county route in Zhejiang Province, so we didn’t choose to keep up?"

Zhu Wenbin said: "No, I have also sent someone to inspect the market in small counties, but it is very difficult to operate.

The first problem is the map problem. The cover surface of Baidu Map is mainly large cities, and the map error rate in many third-tier cities is very high, which will seriously interfere with our efficiency of delivering food.

The second problem is that although the economy in Zhejiang Province is pretty good, the penetration rate of smartphones in small counties is much smaller than that in big cities, which cannot match the model of our platform.”

No matter what kind of takeaway platform, there are high requirements for the density of nearby orders, because a takeaway employee can cover a limited range. If the takeaway density is low, the takeaway employee may only deliver one or two takeaways, which will seriously increase labor costs.

"How did Ele.me operate?" Zhou Yujie asked with concern.

Zhu Wenbin said: "Ele.me adopts the delivery model of locals. Small counties and small towns also have small benefits. Some long-term locals are basically familiar with all places.

As for consumption density, they have been operating at a loss, and seem to be cultivating the market. At the current rate of smartphone explosion, it is estimated that it will almost increase in one or two years.

What we are now adopting is the expansion of the outsourcing model. There may not even be a few group buying websites in these small counties, and there is no local ground promotion team at all. If we want to do it, we can only send our own people.

I have tried to form a team by myself, but after Ele.me found out, I ran away and changed into a county town. Hu Wei, the head of Zhejiang Province, did not dare to continue to follow him. He was afraid that Ele.me would do this trick again."

"This Zhang Haoxu is a bit interesting. He actually thought of this move." Zhou Yujie couldn't help but admire him.

Choosing a county town can indeed avoid the deliberate targeting of today's preferred targets, especially in Zhejiang Province, where the per capita income is not much worse than that of big cities. The only difference is that the density may not be enough.

If you cannot use the outsourcing model to expand, it will consume too much energy today to enter the county town.

Ele.me has a lot of choices. Today, the choice is not coming, so I will develop slowly. When you come, I will give up.

After all, Ele.me is now a small brand and can give up some county towns at will. But today's Selection is the same as the other party, and will not do it after the publicity is done?

Zhou Yujie then asked, "If I still have to target Ele.me, what are you going to do?"

Zhu Wenbin did not ask why, and directly replied: "Actually, we already have a method, that is, not to fight guerrilla wars with the other party. No matter what, Ele.me will also occupy the market. I heard that Ele.me's boss has been negotiating with venture capitalists from all parties recently. Without a fixed business scope, they cannot make good-looking PPTs.

As long as their market is settled, even in small counties, they will never give up. At that time, we can launch another attack.

But in this way, they have a first-mover advantage, and we need to pay a greater price to occupy the market, and if Ele.me successfully raises funds, we cannot completely solve them."

"It doesn't matter, so let's wait until they take over the markets in several county towns." Zhou Yujie nodded and said.

As long as Ele.me gets Alibaba's funds, it will not be completely defeated. But as long as it competes with it many times and consumes its funds, it will inevitably break up other venture capital investment ideas over time. If Alibaba continues to follow up, Zhang Haoxu and others will gradually lose their controlling rights.

If the founder does not have the controlling stake in his own company, it is easy to have a major crisis in "control". An expanding company is a dancer. Once a problem occurs, all previous achievements may be wasted.

If Alibaba acquires Ele.me, it will probably take some time for the two teams to get in touch, and Zhou Yujie is not satisfied with Alibaba's management ability to acquire the company.

After Ele.me was acquired by Alibaba in later generations, even with the strong traffic of the Alipay platform, its market share was still getting smaller and smaller.

Zhu Wenbin said again: "There is another thing. There is a takeaway platform with good market feedback in Hankou City called [Flash Delivery] takeaway. Their model is the same as ours. It also uses milk tea to open the way, financial subsidies, and old users bring benefits to new users, and has obtained a considerable market in the local area."

"Flash delivery?" Zhou Yujie frowned slightly. He hadn't heard of this name, but he just didn't know whether it was a new entrepreneur who had appeared in his previous life but failed in business or because of his own influence.

Zhu Wenbin said: "There is nothing in a takeaway platform in a city. It's just that the success of flash delivery will make more people discover that although doing takeaway is more complicated than group buying, as long as you have money in the early stage, you can still do it.

Next, we will contact venture capital to get more funds. I know that Tengxun is more active in this area now. If one of these people succeeds, we will also encounter a strong opponent."

"There is no way, I can only take one step at a time." Zhou Yujie shook his head and said.

History has changed so much. In the early stage of the takeaway war in later generations, there were actually many players, but the subsequent three companies were destroyed by the money-burning war between Meituan, Ele.me, and Baidu takeaway.

Now, because of his existence, Teng Xun is anxious to find a target to invest in. There are so many outstanding talents in the Chinese nation, and one or two will seize the opportunity to rise and then get Teng Xun's funds.

With so many cities in China, even if you have 3 billion US dollars in your hand, you will not be able to deploy all cities at the same time, and your energy will not be able to keep up.

Of course, I just don’t know if Meituan will join Teng Xun like later generations, but at present, it shouldn’t be the case yet.

Fortunately, I have Toutiao and Quxin behind me, and Baidu will temporarily sit on the same boat with me. Zhou Yujie still has a certain degree of confidence in losing in the takeaway market and will definitely win a part of the market share.

The era of food delivery platforms is about to begin.
Chapter completed!