In order to form a basic capacity coverage in these super cities, the number of vehicles invested is tens of thousands.
In December 2016, Wei Dong announced the establishment of the Shouqi car-hailing open franchise platform in an attempt to solve the problem of too low coverage density. This franchise platform is aimed at passenger transport companies, cruise taxi companies, and leasing companies that meet the above-mentioned specifications across the country, and has attracted a large number of decentralized platforms with more than 500 compliant transport capacity under its name.
It is not difficult to see that even if the capacity extension is expanded, Wei Dong still tends to include compliant full-time platform drivers. However, compared with Didi, which has a nationwide capacity, the professional capacity supplemented by Shouqi car-hailing can only be considered a drop in the bucket.
As the market continues to seize the market, Shouqi car-hailing has to relax the entry restrictions. In May 2017, Shouqi Car-hailing began to recruit drivers and vehicles that comply with the dual-certificate policy to join in Beijing, that is, opening the channel for private vehicles and self-owned drivers.
The supply of transportation capacity has gradually stabilized, and Shouqi car-hailing services have successively connected to major travel platforms to obtain traffic entrances. At the same time, it is also increasing its efforts to recruit franchise platforms.
In July 2019, CEO Wei Dong issued a letter to all employees, announcing that compared with January to June 2018, the revenue of Shouqi car-hailing in 2019 increased by 227% during the same period. Shenzhen has achieved profitability, and it is also close to profitability in cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Chengdu, and Guiyang.
Wei Dong divides the growth trajectory of Shouqi car-hailing into four stages: the first stage is from launch to 2016, mainly for geographic coverage; the second stage is 2017, mainly for density coverage; the third stage is In 2018, the franchise will be opened to reduce the burden on the platform and accelerate the scale; the fourth stage is 2019, focusing on building a high-reputation core competitiveness of service + quality.
He called 2019 a “profitable year” and Shouqi Car-hailing plans to achieve overall profitability in 2019.
The pain of heavy mode
Private vehicles are a representative of quality and safety to a certain extent. The platform requires higher-quality drivers and more standard processes to maintain service levels, and stricter control over the capacity of drivers + vehicles also means higher Input costs.
At that time, the deformed ecology of subsidy competition greatly lowered the threshold of users and raised the income of drivers. There was no advantage in comparison with the high passenger unit price of private cars. Shouqi Rent-a-Car had to provide follow-up subsidies, such as the “Charge 100 Return 100” campaign launched by Shouqi Car Rental in 2017.
In addition to the user terminal, in order to stabilize the driver, Shouqi
However, industry insiders believe that it is not users, but drivers (vehicles) who lack online car-hailing. “Which platform can call for a car now, users will run there, and the capacity is the most demanding.” The traffic aggregation platform that was sought after in the past is now beginning to harvest traffic. After layers of commissions, the driver’s income is also reduced a little cut back.
This forms the traffic paradox. The traffic aggregation platform has increased the number of orders for drivers, and at the same time increased more intermediary costs. Drivers have received more orders, but it is hard to say that they actually earn more than those directly on the platform.
Traffic is king or word of mouth is the top priority. At this stage, it is not that fish and bear’s paw cannot have both. The best choice is in line with the development path of the platform.