Reborn: Billionaire in College

Time has come to the end of the year again. 2012 is about to end and Chen Pingjiang is busy again.

Since there are no new projects launched this year, it is not as busy as in previous years.

All companies have already gotten on track, and their businesses are as intertwined as a spider web.

As for Renren, although Renren itself has declined, both Weibo and WeChat have made great progress in 2012.

WeChat, in particular, has nearly 4 million registered users and has no rivals in China. It is even expanding into Southeast Asia.

However, due to the limitations of WeChat's many functions, its expansion is still limited to the Chinese community.

It is mainly used by overseas Chinese, international students and foreigners who want to trade with China.

It is worth mentioning that Li Xi went to South Korea at the end of the year.

First, it helped Renren become the second largest shareholder of KAKAO TALK, the Korean version of WeChat, and then it invested in LINE and also became the second largest shareholder.

The former was founded by Koreans, and the latter was founded by the Japanese subsidiary of a Korean group.

KAKAO TALK is used in Korea, while LINE is mostly used by ordinary people and people in Taiwan.

Due to a number of reasons including information security, it is difficult for WeChat itself to enter other countries, but this does not prevent Renren from getting a share of the Southeast Asian market.

The two games, DNF and LOL, have exploded with vitality and achieved new revenue records in 2012. LOL, in particular, has stood out and become the most popular MOBA game at home and abroad.

As for WeChat Pay, although it is still lagging behind Alipay for the time being, it is gradually eroding the number of Alipay users by relying on New Year red envelopes and Zero-Balance Wallet, and relying on WeChat's powerful social relationships.

In addition, Toutiao and Zhihu have no rivals in their respective fields.

Although Gaode's aggregated taxi-hailing platform did not participate in the subsidy war between Didi and Kuaidi, it still firmly guarded its own traffic entrance and became a giant that cannot be ignored in the industry.

The number of taxi orders brought by the WeChat mini-program alone is extremely impressive, not to mention the traffic from Renrengou.

As for Renrengou, its development is even more rapid.

Whether it is group buying or takeout, it is a unique presence in the domestic market, occupying 80% of the market share.

This forced Meituan and Ele.me to survive in the cracks, barely staying alive but unable to die.

Especially the food delivery business, with nearly three million food delivery riders, has provided too many jobs and completely changed people's lifestyles.

While the domestic food delivery business is booming, overseas countries are still a desert for food delivery business.

In the past, domestic companies copied the work of foreign companies, but now foreign companies are copying Renrengou.

Renrengou already has sufficient conditions for listing, but it was held back by Chen Pingjiang.

Renrengou is not short of money at the moment. Instead of rushing to go public, it would be better to wait until the capital market environment is good.

Zhizhen Catering's stock price has been maintained well, and it firmly holds the top spot among domestic catering groups.

While its three brand stores, Miaocha, Taier Pickled Fish and Xiaochen BBQ, are spread all over the country, the company is also actively exploring overseas markets.

The above three brands have appeared in major cities in Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States.

The most noteworthy one is naturally Orange Technology.

This is another star industry under Chen Pingjiang.

The global sales of Orange S3 have already exceeded 2300 million units, and the sales of headphones and PADs have also increased accordingly.

In addition to firmly holding the top spot in the domestic smartphone market, it has also gained some popularity overseas.

What makes Chen Pingjiang happiest is that many domestic component suppliers are developing rapidly and many components can be perfectly replaced.

A few years ago, Chen Pingjiang made a special trip to Shanghai to visit the main acceptance work of the Huaxin Semiconductor Factory. The production line has now been successfully put into place and trial production is expected to be carried out in the first half of 2013.

All businesses were going smoothly and Chen Pingjiang was happy and relaxed.

"Mr. Chen, this year's Spring Festival Gala's cooperation with CCTV is probably going to fail." As soon as he got to work in the morning, Li Xi hurried to Chen Pingjiang's office to report.

Chen Pingjiang looked at Li Xi in surprise and asked, "Is Alipay going crazy?"

Li Xi nodded: "Last year we only spent 4000 million to get the exclusive sponsorship, but this year it has been raised to 2 million, and Alipay is determined to achieve its goal."

Chen Pingjiang sneered: "Old Ma really is... working too hard."

Little did he know that Jack Ma had already slammed the table at the group meeting, threatening not to give up until he got the sponsorship of the Spring Festival Gala this year.

Alipay was badly hurt by WeChat last year. Jack Ma could never forget the sneak attack of WeChat red envelopes. He dared not to run the Spring Festival Gala this year no matter what.

"I think it's better to just forget about it. Just one bid needs to be worth 3 million, and we have to prepare several hundred million in cash for bonuses. The ROI is a bit low."

Li Xi comforted him, but the final decision whether to follow or not was still in Chen Pingjiang's hands.

After thinking for a while, Chen Pingjiang smiled and said, "There are so many satellite TV stations in the country that have Spring Festival Galas. CCTV's Spring Festival Gala is not the only one. We have so much money, we can find a few more TV stations and cooperate with them to organize the red envelope grabbing event."

Li Xi's eyes lit up when he heard this. This is indeed a good idea.

If the publicity effect brought by CCTV Spring Festival Gala is 1, even if the publicity effect brought by other local TV stations is only 0.1, then we only need to find 10 local TV stations.

But the effect of superimposing 10 0.1s is definitely greater than 1.

Local TV stations will certainly welcome with open arms any olive branch extended by Internet giants like WeChat.

Chen Pingjiang thought about it again and felt that there was nothing wrong with this idea. He slapped the table and said, "Let's do it! There's no need to fight to the death with Alipay on CCTV Spring Festival Gala. I might consider it if the premium is two or three times, but if it's five or even six or seven times, it's not worth it. If Alipay wants it, let them take it."

Li Xi also nodded: "Last year's sneak attack was very successful. From the marketing effect, we went through the cold start and added a large number of payment users overnight. Moreover, these users will still use WeChat red envelopes this year. There is really no need to fight hard."

…………

At the same time, Alipay, which spent 2.65 million yuan to win the exclusive sponsorship of the Spring Festival Gala, finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Ma said at the meeting: "Although the investment is a bit large, it doesn't matter. From a strategic point of view, we must prevent the continuous 'sneak attacks' of WeChat red envelopes anyway."

Last year, the sneak attack of WeChat red envelopes made Jack Ma very angry. This year, he issued a death order, calling on WeChat to be squeezed out at all costs.

Not to mention 2.65 million, even if it was 3.65 million, Lao Ma wouldn't even frown.

The Alipay executives present had no objection, and no one dared to give such a channel to WeChat red envelopes again.

In the past year, WeChat Pay has grown rapidly from scratch.

And relying on the powerful social relationships of WeChat, it has been gradually eroding the market share that originally belonged to Alipay. If it loses the sponsorship of the Spring Festival Gala again this year, it will be GG.

Ni Xingjun, who is in charge of product development, also said: "For this year's red envelope activity, we have prepared a game called 'Collect Five Blessings', which is an interactive game in itself. Friends can directly send 'blessings', which can greatly increase the interaction between Alipay users."

In preparation for this year's Spring Festival, Alipay updated its version early and added the Alipay friend system and service number functions for the first time.

The goal is to expand social and life services and obtain considerable social relationship chains.

Although no one said it, everyone knew in their hearts that the project was aborted.

All of Ma's hard work has been wasted again, and social networking has failed to take off. Under such circumstances, Alipay cannot sit idly by and must pick up the banner of social networking.

From the company-wide mobilization in the spring of 2017 and the continuous sending of internal letters to Jack Ma’s daily live broadcasts on Laiwang, Alibaba invested a huge amount of money and energy in the Laiwang project, but ultimately it still failed.

Although no one said anything, they kept sighing in their hearts.

Does Alibaba really not have the talent and genes for social networking?

Even Lao Ma started to doubt himself.

Some time ago, Lao Ma himself analyzed the reasons for the failure of the exchanges.

First, Alibaba has always been mediocre in social products, especially products for communication between people, which can be seen from Wangwang. The main reason is that it has too strong commercial purposes and lacks the genes to make social products.

Second, Ma had to admit that there was a huge gap between Alibaba and Renren in their understanding of product development. WeChat has done a lot of work in terms of product quality, experience, and development, especially in terms of the groundbreaking Moments and mini-programs.

The fact that all instant messaging software overseas are now copying WeChat is enough to illustrate the problem.

WeChat has formed powerful social relationships and penetrated into every aspect of users' lives. Coupled with its first-mover advantage, it has indeed not left Alibaba with too many loopholes.

In terms of promotion strategy, WeChat spent almost no money on advertising. Good products speak for themselves.

This is much better than Alibaba.

Alibaba is a company that is good at mobilizing all its employees. In order to promote Laiwang, the company requires every employee to add 100 friends, and the year-end bonus is linked to the number of friends. If the number of friends is less than 100, the company will not receive the company's special red envelope. But this method is worthless.

Peng Lei then took over the conversation: "After testing the waters with WeChat red envelopes last year, we found that the Spring Festival Gala is indeed attractive. Whether it is the number of participants, the frequency of interaction, or the peak value, it is worthy of praise. With so much money mobilized, I believe we should be able to achieve better results."

Ma Yun finally nodded and said: "Come on, everyone, seize every opportunity."

Although there was still a strong confidence in his tone, there was also a sense of heroic loneliness.

2012 was a nightmare for Lao Ma.

Because of the equity relationship of Alipay, the company's shareholders were offended.

In terms of business, both Alibaba and Alipay, under the shadow of Chen Pingjiang, seem to be trapped in a siege and cannot get out no matter how hard they try.

First, it was attacked by WeChat red envelopes during the Chinese New Year, and then by Zero-Balance Wallet. Although Alipay quickly launched follow-up products, the gap for breakthrough had already been opened by WeChat Pay.

From this point of view, Alipay failed last year.

It originally monopolized 99% of the payment market, but now it only has barely 60%!

Social networking has not been successful, and Alibaba is also facing challenges from JD.com in e-commerce, which is its strong point.

However, Jack Ma doesn't care about JD.com.

I am still bothered by the fact that I can't get out of this circle. (End of this chapter)