The logistics market is making waves again
Editor’s note: This article comes from WeChat public account .
Author / Li Wenjie
Editor / Chen Dengxin
Since Ma Yun ’s prediction of the “age of 1 billion logistics orders per day” that 2018 predicted, the 13 trillion logistics market is now forming, and the offensive and defensive battles on this track have never lacked smoke.
Now, the logistics market is making waves again.
According to the interface news report, since the beginning of this year, Hello has been internally discussing the online logistics service relying on car-hailing. After more than a month of discussion, the project was officially established at the end of March this year. Currently, Hello’s logistics business “Hello Express” has surfaced and has been launched in Dongguan and Foshan.
When Haro Traveling also followed the footsteps of Cao Cao Traveling and other travel platforms, took a leg to this tempting cake, the gears of history continue to rotate, and logistics, a traditional industry that has existed since ancient times, finally came to the turning point , And gradually parted ways with traditional logistics companies.
The impact and opportunities brought by “Black Swan”
Choose to step in at this time, and the decision to travel is not difficult to understand.
Hello was born in 2016. With the help of capital, it went to the spotlight several times. After surviving from the fierce battle between bike-sharing duopoly, the back-to-back huh of the capital has transformed from the late entrant into one of the “big three” of bike sharing.
However, since the name of Haro Bike was changed to Haro Travel, Haro has long been not limited to shared bicycle business, but is positioned on an integrated mobile travel platform, extending its tentacles to mobility services such as mopeds, rides, and taxi , Has been trying to build a completed transportation network, so as to tell a bigger story and realize the high expectations given by capital.
According to public information, as of March 2020, Hello registered users exceeded 300 million, and more than 360 cities were stationed; mopeds reached 320 cities; Shunfeng business covered 203 cities, and more than 14 million certified car owners , More than 45 million passengers billed.
“In two to three years, the revenue share of the two rounds of business will drop to 20% -30%.” Yang Lei, CEO of Haro Travel, once said so frankly.
However, the sudden arrival of “Black Swan” in 2020 has inevitably caused some impact on Haro’s plan-the epidemic has a great impact on the online car-hailing business that is highly dependent on offline, and the operation of the online car-hailing platform Most of the data showed large landslides.
According to incomplete statistics, there are more than 30 cities in the country where the online car rental service is out of service, most of the cities in Hubei province represented by Wuhan. even ifIn a large part of the cities, online car-hailing has not been suspended due to the epidemic, but due to the impact of the epidemic, the decrease in the number of passengers has caused a sudden decrease in the number of orders received by online car-hailing drivers.
“The online ride-hailing car that originally traveled in Haro is the latecomer to the online car-hailing track. The number of users is far less than that of the industry giants. The epidemic has caused the number of car users to decline rapidly. We naturally lost money.” A driver told Zinc Scale, “Hello has attracted users, the price of the platform is lower than other travel platforms, and the driver’s income is not much. As a result, after registering for three months, I encountered an epidemic and received only 11 orders. You can only take two or three orders a day. “
As the income of online ride-hailing drivers is broken, the online ride-hailing platform that depends on it is of course somewhat embarrassing.
Demand for same-city distribution broke out
However, in the same special history window, logistics and distribution have risen. Among them, as the demand for O2O platforms in supermarkets and fresh foods broke out, the orders for errand delivery and same-city delivery showed explosive growth, and the demand for short- and medium-distance freight was also rapidly heating up.
From a subjective point of view, no company wants the epidemic to happen, but from the objective results, logistics companies in this special time window, the user scale is indeed rising.
In addition, whether it is errands or freight transport in the same city, it has already passed the original stage of educating users, and there is no need for large subsidies to cultivate users.
Under such a background, in fact, the existing travel platform Biharo took a fancy to the fat of the logistics market-Cao Cao Travel launched the “Cao Cao Help” as early as 2019, focusing on the same city logistics service; Didi also officially launched the same-city errand service from March this year …
So, Hello, followed the industry giants to start the short- and mid-way logistics and distribution business. It really looks like a good abacus. After all, it can let the ride-hailing drivers affected by the epidemic share a bowl of transportation On the other hand, it can continue to expand the business scope of Hello Travel and add another puzzle piece to Hello ’s transportation vision.
Tiger ’s teeth are hard to escape.
However, it is not so easy to get the abacus out of the travel platform.
After all, their coveted logistics market is no longer a blue ocean.
According to Hello ’s travel plan: the main service scenario is based onMainly short-distance scenes, cross-city farthest no more than 500KM, mainly deliver documents, samples and small items under 30KG.
That is to say, the business of Hello Express not only wants to cover flash delivery and Dada, but also tries to assume part of the freight function.
But from the perspective of the same-city freight market, after 2018, after several duels, the networked freight platforms including No. 1 Cargo, Aegis Express and Blue Rhino have declined or even fled. The head player Lala and Kuaigou hit the taxi, dragging their blood-stained and bruised bodies, and finally hit half of the country.
Today, these two industry giants have occupied about 80% of the market share of the freight market in the same city. According to Qixinbao’s data, as of March 2020, the cargo pull platform had 440,000 monthly live drivers and 6 million monthly active users; Kuaigou Taxi had more than 1.1 million registered drivers and over 9 million active users.
With sufficient driver resources and accumulated users, as well as the long-term promotion of the brand, the giants are clearly far ahead. If you want to snatch food from these long-cultivated forces, it is impossible for the newcomers to be unscathed, at least they must first have a “skin”.
As analyzed by industry insiders, “The players who stay in the freight market today have all gone through a lot of hard work, relying on the price war to get drivers and users in exchange. Probability is hard to escape. “
Data source: “In-depth research report on business model innovation and investment opportunities in China ’s online car rental industry”
The same city distribution market has already entered a fierce competition stage.
China ’s instant delivery platform has been around since the rise of takeaways in 2015. After the acquisition of Baidu takeout in 2017, Hungry Bird, Meituan and Xindada once showed a three-legged trend.
In addition to these industry leaders, the huge market has also been divided among express delivery companies.
In 2017, Yuantong launched Timed Express; in April 2018, Yunda launched cloud delivery; SF Express also launched the same city express delivery in the same year, Quanfeng Express and Zhai Express delivered the “instant delivery” and “O2O flash delivery” services, respectively In July 2018, Cainiao Network announced that it will become the controlling shareholder of its largest real-time logistics platform Dianda with crowdsourcing and other business resources and US $ 290 million in cash strategic investment.
During this period, with the help of capital, the same-city logistics players who have received huge amounts of financing have accelerated the pace of the personal competition. After the fight, Meituan and Hummingbird, the leading players in the real-time distribution field, have now occupied more than 80% of the market share, and are showing the “Matthew Effect”.
As a result, both tracks in the logistics market have become extremely crowded. Although the wheel of history brings latecomers to the window of opportunity, they are not restless.
Even if you have accumulated hardware resources such as vehicles and drivers, you have to pay a high cost if you want to stand out in a strong competition like Lin.
Perhaps “Hello” has already prepared. Yang Lei, CEO of Hello Travel, said in an internal sharing a few days ago, “The company has completed a new round of financing at the end of 2019 … It should be the time when we have started our business and have the most cash reserves on the account.”
Hello holding a lot of money looks confident, but under the fierce diversion of the head players, it is clear that not only capital can take off.
Retreat from difficulties or catch up?
The difficulties and obstacles ahead of the road can be imagined, but in a market prospect of up to 10 trillion yuan, no one will easily give up the ambition to eat a bigger cake.
A few days ago, Cao Cao Travel released the operation data of its product line “Cao Cao Help”. The unit volume of “Cao Cao Help” business increased by 77.11% year-on-year in January 2020 compared with the same period in 2019. The month-on-month growth was 69%, and the year-on-year growth was 81.11% in April.
Operation data of “Cao Cao Bang Bang”
A considerable increase can indeed increase the confidence of the latecomers in the battle.
So, everything is still full of variables. The industry giants who have been cultivating for many years will not sit still in the face of the fierce latecomers; and when the new window of the industry has arrived, it is difficult for latecomers to give up the opportunity and enter.
So, in the future, this may become another super marathon on the logistics track, but the price war gradually lapses, competition services and refined operations, and enhancing user stickiness have become a vital match point.
“In fact, after a preliminary incubation period, users’ requirements for distributionIt is getting higher and higher, but because there is no long-term contract, users can be easily diverted. So experience and convenience have become the biggest advantages. “Industry sources told Zinc Scale that the logistics industry is a very sensitive industry. Once the pattern changes, players also need to react immediately.
“Right now, for a travel platform that already has certain original users, in order to expand the new business of the logistics platform, the platform needs to adjust the capacity operation strategy for the user’s personalized needs to meet the user’s deep needs. The above-mentioned industry insiders pointed out, “On the one hand, it is to build capacity resources; on the other hand, it is to conduct differentiated competition with old players in the industry.”
In the face of competition, the old players in the logistics industry, although they have already made a fortune, but the user experience that has been criticized in recent years has made them unable to guarantee that they can “lie and win.”
So, when the horn of this battle has already been blown, the smoke of the logistics industry will be thicker, and players will inevitably retreat from difficulties, and there will be no shortage of brave people to meet the difficulties.
Compared to giving away, whether delivery is more easily obtained fat or harder to eat bones, we have to wait for the future “Hello” to give an answer.