The diva and I cross each other

Double 2016 in 11 was the time when Pinduoduo rose to prominence. It took the company just over half a year to go from being unknown to ranking third in sales among all e-commerce platforms.

Moreover, in terms of the number of transactions, Pinduoduo is no less than Taobao, but it is the price of the goods that makes it lower than Taobao.

Such a speed of rise is really surprising.

Since this Double 11, Pinduoduo has unsurprisingly become Taobao's primary enemy.

Although JD.com is also on guard against Pinduoduo, it has not yet targeted it to the extent of Taobao. After all, at present, there is not much overlap in the business scope of Pinduoduo and JD.com.

Just when e-commerce platforms were fighting each other, Zhuoguang’s investment department acquired a shared bicycle company called Jianbian Bicycle.

The reason why Rong Mu chose to acquire this shared bicycle company is simple. According to the investigation of his subordinates, this company's bicycles are the most comfortable to ride on the market.

At the same time, this shared bicycle company is also a company with a strong sense of social responsibility, with many employees from disabled people and poor families in the company.

Before the acquisition, Rongmu conducted a detailed assessment of the company in early 2015.

At that time, ofo had already started its initial expansion, and with the momentum, convenient bicycles easily obtained an angel round of financing of 1.5 million Chinese yuan.

They then used the funds to expand into all first-tier cities across the country. In April 2015, they received a second round of B financing of 4 million Chinese Yuan, and then carried out another round of expansion, covering most provincial capitals in the country.

However, in the current Internet money-burning war, hundreds of millions of dollars are just a drop in the ocean.

In the era of mobile Internet, any industry that wants to rise must have the support of big capital behind it, because big capital not only provides funds, but also traffic and resources. An important reason why ofo can rise is that they have the support of Internet giants behind them.

This makes ofo the most well-funded among all shared bike companies. It is basically impossible for other shared bike companies to succeed under the suppression of ofo.

Most bike-sharing companies burned through their financing within a few months, but ofo, which dominated the market, has raised funds multiple times in succession. Now, no capital is willing to invest in other bike-sharing players.

As a result, the first wave of bankruptcies of shared bicycles emerged, and the same was true for convenient bicycles. Even the deposit could not be refunded because they had long been used to fill the holes in the company's development.

Under the pressure of a large number of online complaints and debt collection from suppliers, the person in charge of Convenient Bike had no choice but to sell the company to Zhuoguang, who finally acquired Convenient Bike for RMB 500 million.

500 million sounds cheap, but in fact, Zhuoguang also assumed a debt of about million for Jianbian.

Zhuoguang is willing to take on such a large debt, on the one hand because other shared bicycle platforms on the market are also like this, and everyone is burdened with varying degrees of debt; on the other hand because this company has a sense of social responsibility and takes the initiative to help people with disabilities, which is in line with Zhuoguang's business philosophy.

Of course, Zhuoguang Technology can also choose to operate a shared bicycle company from scratch, but if it starts over again, it will delay nearly a year, which is too uneconomical for Zhuoguang to quickly fill the blank market left after exiting ofo.

Moreover, the fundamental problem of Convenient Bicycle is the broken capital chain. Its previous relationship chains, personnel teams, bicycle assets, etc. in major provincial capitals are also very valuable. If it were to build them up on its own, one hundred million might not be enough.

After acquiring Jianbian Bicycle, Rongmu immediately moved its headquarters to Shanghai.

The rice side also sent people over as soon as possible, and both parties jointly injected 10 billion yuan in development funds.

Among them, Zhuoguang Technology received 3.5 million yuan and Dami received 6.5 million yuan, but the equity distribution between the two parties was that Zhuoguang Technology received 51% of the shares and Dami received 49% of the shares. The 10 billion yuan of funds was used for team building and subsequent market expansion. In order to facilitate expansion, Rongmu also changed the name of Convenient Bike to Hello Bike.

This name was decided by Luo Ming, and Rong Mu also felt that the name Hello Bike sounded easier to remember than the convenient bike.

After all the preparations were completed, Zhuoguang began to use his own resources to promote Hello Bike.

In just half a month, thanks to Zhuoguang’s operation, Hello Bikes can be seen everywhere in Shanghai.

That afternoon, Luo Ming and Rong Mu went downstairs to the company and found a Hello Bike to try out.

"This bike is pretty good to ride! It's much more comfortable than other bikes." Luo Ming said with a smile.

"I chose to acquire this company because of this. Shared bicycles should put user experience first, so we acquired this model. The tires are hollow tires for convenience. Oh! That's not right. It should be called Hello Bike now.

Other brands on the market, including ofo and Mobike, all use solid tires, and our hollow tires are definitely more comfortable to ride. "Rong Mu said.

"Hollow tires are prone to deflation, right? Do we have to rely on humans to add air to them?" Luo Ming asked.

Rong Mu nodded and replied: “Yes, all the gas is filled manually, and the cost in this regard will increase, but this company used to hire local families in need, such as people with disabilities who are not very serious, or some middle-aged and elderly people who can’t find a job to fill gas.

This can reduce our costs on the one hand, and also serve as a positive publicity resource for our brand on the other hand.”

"So they hire people with disabilities and people from poor families to do this! Not bad, that's great. We should support things that are beneficial to society.

How about this! Mu Tou, you can give each of these workers from poor families a free lunch every day, and keep the cost at around 10 yuan. "Luo Ming said.

"Okay, I'll make arrangements right away."

"What about the promotion of Hello Bike?" Luo Ming continued to ask.

"The first wave of promotion was a comprehensive push. All apps under our company pushed the news of Hello Bike's launch. The purpose was to let everyone know about it. The subsequent push was based on big data records and user habits." Rong Mu replied.

"The deposit has also been cancelled, right?"

"Cancelled. Like you said, I used Kuaishu's credit point system when I was riding."

Luo Ming nodded with satisfaction.

It turns out that the operation of canceling the deposit was correct. After experiencing the incident of misappropriation of the deposit, users became resistant to the deposit.

Many shared bikes want to cancel the deposit but can’t do it, but Hello Bike doesn’t need to think so much and directly cancels the deposit, which attracts a lot of users. It basically has its plan. (End of this chapter)