This article is from WeChat public account: investment community (ID: pedalaily2012) , author: Yang Qing, from the title figure: vision China
After 449 days, Beijing Didi Shunfeng is finally back online.
On December 23, the first day of the return of Didi Downwind, reporters from the investment community experienced a long-awaited ride. After work that day, the reporter started to make an appointment for the Didi Shunfeng from around 5.40. The starting point is the Air China Century Building in Chaoyang District and the ending point is the Xilihe Zhongli Community.
From the price point of view, this trip is only 12.5 yuan, which is indeed a lot cheaper than the 18 yuan express train. But before, Didi’s new car-sharing only cost 9.2 yuan. Obviously, the price advantage of the downwind car is not obvious.
The Didi Shunfeng platform shows that there are about 6 car owners on the road, and the degree of road riding is between 90% and 60%. But after nearly an hour of waiting, there is still no carThe master took the order and finally had to give up the plan to ride a ride.
Behind the launch of the ride is Didi’s urgent need to narrow losses. After all, shareholders have waited too long. According to Glory, some Didi shareholders in October this year began to seek to realise their equity. Two of the original shareholders of Didi in China and the United States intend to sell their shares at $ 40 billion and $ 43 billion respectively. The valuation is asking.
Did you call Didi Downwind? First day experience: waited for more than an hour without receiving orders
At 9:00 on December 23, the long-lost Didi Shunfeng business was finally launched in Beijing again, and the wait was 449 days.
On the first day of the launch of the Didi Shunfeng in Beijing, the reporter tried the Shunfeng business, but after an hour of waiting, there was still no driver to take the order.
In fact, this is not the case. Many users have stated that they have not waited for a long time to receive orders from drivers. “I contacted a driver who was 90% smooth, but the other party refused to take the order.” A friend said helplessly.
From the perspective of passengers, it takes approximately 5-10 minutes to complete face verification, authorize the platform to collect and listen to form a recording, and learn and test passenger safety instructions before using the downwind function. “Information Platform User Agreement” and other steps can initiate travel requirements.
Compared to passengers, the owner’s certification process is equally cumbersome. Similarly, the confirmation process such as face recognition, routine line settings, safety knowledge learning, and examinations is required before entering the passenger invitation link.
As for the service time of the ride-hailing service that has caused great controversy due to the gender of men and women, Didi has also adjusted it to 5: 00-20: 00, and the order is limited to short and medium-haul in the city, and the mileage must be within 50 kilometers . In addition, in order to ensure a real trip, and to avoid the opportunity for criminals to single out, in the new version of the ride function, the user’s personalized avatar, gender, long text evaluation tags and other personal privacy information are permanently offline.
However, Didi’s solution to prevent drivers from being singled out, and the opinions of drivers and passengers are mixed. Some drivers were worried: “What if I was assigned a wrong way?”
At the same time, some people expressed their feelings, “Now the platform has a high degree of security protection for passengers, but the entire recording is required, and the privacy of the owner and passengers is easily violated.” I’m making ‘a most difficult to use ride-hailing product’, to add a block to my friends’ hearts, and I feel very bad. “
Under the premise of ensuring safety, Didi Downwind has indeed sacrificed the user experience, which is understandable. However, the reason why many users are looking forward to the return of Shunfeng is that the price advantage of Shunfeng can greatly reduce users’ commuting expenses.
However, this advantage is now disappearing. For commuting distances of about 20 kilometers, the downwind has no price advantage compared to carpooling; but at the same time, Didi has limited the service mileage of the downwind to within 50 kilometers, greatly reducing the mileage range that gave the original advantage to the downwind. .
Big business of windmills: Didi makes a net profit of 900 million yuan a year, and is afraid to go online without giving up
It can be said that the return of Didi Shunfeng’s business is quite low-key. It is not difficult to feel that Didi’s re-launching of the ride-hailing business has been on the verge of restraint and temptation.
Beijing is not the first batch of cities to come back online. Before that, 5 cities in Harbin, Taiyuan, Changzhou, Shenyang, and Nantong have taken the lead in trial operation on November 20. The cities that have been launched with Beijing this time also include Wuhan, Foshan, Nanchang, and Changsha, which means that the current trial operation of Didi Shunfeng has expanded to 10.
Early in early 2019, Didi internally planned to resume the ride-hailing business in March and April this year. But as another tragedy happened-on March 24, 2019, the driver of Changdi’s Didi network was killed and Didi’s plan to resume the ride-hailing business was suspended again.
Didi’s sudden loss of position in the field of downwind cars has made other players in the market see new opportunities. Tick, Cao Cao travel, Haro travel and even Gaode maps have announced their entry into the ride-hailing service. In the rivers and lakes of Didi, almost all the players in the field of travel rushed up. Because everyone is not sure, which day Didi suddenly came back, what can do now is to do everything in its power to occupy the market before Didi returns.
After all, Shunfeng is one of the few profitable businesses in the field of travel, and no one is willing to give up.
According to publicly available data from Didi, more than one billion trips have been served during the more than three years since the ride-hailing business was launched. Before the business was offline, the daily order volume of Shunfeng reached 1 to 2 million orders. According to the daily order volume of 20 to 30 million orders of Didi’s platform, it accounted for nearly 10%. Although far less than express trains in order volume, there is no need to subsidize passengers and drivers, and profit can be achieved only by service fees.
According to media reports, in 2017, Didi Shunfeng’s total turnover was close to 20 billion yuan, and its net profit was close to 900 million yuan. Although Didi has said that the data is inaccurate, Shunfeng is the only Didi business that can make a profit It ’s a driving force on behalf of Didi) is an indisputable fact.
Liu Qing once praised the windmill as “a bright business in Didi” and highly praised and approved Huang Jieli, the person in charge at the time.
If it weren’t for the tragedies of one after another, the tailwind has always been regarded as one of Didi’s most successful businesses. I still remember Cheng Wei and Liu Qing confessed in their apology letter at the time, “Our enthusiasm overwhelmed the original intention. In just a few years, we ran all the way by radical business strategy and capital to prove ourselves. Today, in the face of the lost life, all these vanity names have no meaning.
Didi has no one to pick up the IPO?
In the end, Didi launched the ride by 2020 before the Spring Festival.
Behind the on-line ride is Didi’s urgent need to narrow losses. Data show that Didi’s full-year loss in 2018 reached 10.9 billion yuan, and the loss in 2017 was 2.5 billion yuan. Didi founder Cheng Wei once stated publicly: “Since 2012, Didi has never achieved profitability.
Even though it continues to lose money, Didi is not short of money. You know, since its inception, Didi has obtained more than 20 billion US dollars in funding alone.
However, not lacking money does not mean that there is no pressure, especially the pressure to go public. After all, a number of shareholders are waiting to exit.
It may not be difficult for Didi to go public. The problem is that if the losses continue to expand, even if the listing is unavoidable, there will be an inversion in valuation, and the interests of existing shareholders will still be damaged.
Uber, another ride-hailing giant, is a guide. Similar to Didi, Uber has been struggling with losses. Although it has been the first to go public in a few years, Uber’s market value is only $ 51.9 billion compared to its peak valuation of $ 120 billion, which is nearly 60% smaller than the previous valuation peak.
Because of this, Didi has remained unmoved to the market. In addition to re-launching the ride-hailing business, Didi recently divested its self-driving business that was not profitable in the short term and is also seen as paving the way for listing.
But there seems to be little time left for Didi. According to Glory, some Didi shareholders in October this year began to seek to realise their equity. Two of the original shareholders of Didi in China and the United States intend to sell their shares at $ 40 billion and $ 43 billion respectively. The valuation is asking. Although one-third of the previous $ 60 billion valuation has been cut, no buyers can be found.
The recent China Unicorn Report: 2019 released by Evergrande Research Institute shows that Didi’s latest valuation is $ 45 billion, which is $ 15 billion lower than last year’s $ 60 billion valuation. Even if the valuation has fallen, there is still no value in the market.
Who is going to pick up Didi in the end?
This article is from WeChat public account: investment community (ID: pedalaily2012) Author: Yang Qing