Winning the new financial era

Chapter 243 OYO
After the work inspection of BBPay, Zhang Yida visited five companies including Ola, Zomato, Byju's, PolicyBazaar, and Delhivery.

These five companies are involved in five fields including transportation, takeaway and catering, online education, online medical care, and logistics and express delivery.

The valuations are not particularly high at present, and most of them are still in the valuation range of hundreds of millions of dollars.

去年锐向获得25亿美元D轮融资后，就由兰澜出面，向这5家公司投出了总计2.9亿美元的重资，获得了5家公司6.67%-25%不等的股份。

Zhang Yida approached them, and in addition to caring about the development of each company, he mainly chatted with them about BBPay's cooperation on the shelves.

Several founders are also more knowledgeable, and have agreed to help BBPay carry out new promotion, and reached a strategic partnership with BBPay.

Zhang Yida is very satisfied with the attitude of the founders, and also said that in the following days, Ruixiang Group will continue to support them, and financing is nothing, just ask.

Zhang Yida sent Lanlan to India to invest in India. In addition to financial investment to generate high returns on the cash in Ruixiang's account, he also had the intention of focusing on industrial layout.

Now this move has finally shown its effect. After BBPay acquires several new application scenarios such as taxi-hailing and food delivery, the number of users will definitely usher in a wave of upsurge.

……

At the Indian headquarters of OYO Hotel, I met the company's founder and CEO, Liedes Agarwal, who is also a classmate of Xiao Li with the Chinese name "Li Taixi".

Li Taexi was born in November 1993, only one year older than Zhang Yida, and he was also very curious about Zhang Yida.

When Lan Lan came forward to invest 1 million US dollars on Zhang Yida's private investment, he expressed great affection and respect for Zhang Yida, and Tuo Lanlan replied to Zhang Yida, saying that he would come to China to visit Zhang Yida.

However, due to the busy business of the company, his trip to China has not started.

"Mr. Agarwal, hello."

Zhang Yida looked at the "youngest self-made entrepreneur" in India with protruding eyes, darker complexion, and slightly curly hair, shook hands with him, and started talking enthusiastically.

"Mr. Zhang, hello, you can call me "Li Taixi" in Chinese, or Xiao Li."

Lee Tae Hee gave people a very gentle feeling, and a few words shortened the distance between each other.

However, Zhang Yida is not surprised at all. A young entrepreneur can make such a high level of achievement, or in a country like India, there must be two brushes.

Whether it is affinity or talkativeness, they are all skills that give entrepreneurs extra points.

Li Tae-hee complimented again: "I also heard about your entrepreneurial story in India. You started your business at the age of 18 and created a super unicorn "Ruixiang Financial Technology Group".

I heard that you have not dropped out of school yet, and you are much better than me at balancing study and entrepreneurship. "

"Haha." Zhang Yida laughed, "Our school is more tolerant to me, otherwise I would have dropped out of school a long time ago."

"China's universities are good, much more enlightened than ours in India."

Zhang Yida heard a hint of complaint in his words, and asked, "I heard that the $10 you started your business came from the Thiel Scholarship?"

"Yes, in 2012, I was invited by Mr. Peter Thiel to go to Silicon Valley, where I received a seed round investment of 10 US dollars. Then I returned to China and dropped out of school to start a business.

I started my business a year earlier than you. I founded Oravel Stays in 2012, trying to replicate the Airbnb model in India.

But then, the co-founders left, and the company nearly went under at the time.

In desperation, I had to switch to online, trying to integrate budget hotels, and then there was an OYO franchise hotel. "

Zhang Yida listened carefully to his entrepreneurial story. Peter Thiel has also heard of him. He is the partner of Iron Man Musk, the co-founder of PayPal, and a well-known billionaire in Silicon Valley. 2004% of Facebook shares...

He is a successful entrepreneur and investor.

The Thiel Scholarship he founded selects 20 to 25 teenagers under the age of 20 from around the world every year, invites them to Silicon Valley, and provides contacts and resources to help these teenagers start their own businesses.

Each member gets a $10 scholarship, provided you drop out of school—two years.

The New York Times once called the Thiel Scholarship "one of the most extraordinary experiments in higher education today."

Because it encourages young people to drop out of school and start a business, the Thiel Scholarship has been criticized a lot.

Former Harvard president Larry Summers called it "the most inappropriate philanthropy of the decade."

It is not easy to get the Thiel Scholarship. First, you need to fill out a 7-8 page application form, stating your entrepreneurial ideas and plans, including a thing that no one else believes in but you believe in.

Then entrepreneurs and investors in related fields will review your application in turn, followed by several rounds of telephone or video interviews. Those who pass will become the final candidates, and will come to San Francisco to spend a weekend with other candidates and mentors for final screening.

The first Thiel Scholarship recipient in China is a girl named Chen Xinyi. She was born in Beijing and went to the United States to study after graduating from junior high school, and she was also admitted to Princeton University.

The girl dropped out of school at the age of 19 and founded the intelligent robot company Helios, but unfortunately the project failed in the end, and returned to China to work for the computer vision company Greenshentong.

At present, no one in mainland China has received this scholarship. Zhang Yida originally had a chance, but he rose too fast and missed it.

"I heard that your father has his own company. Did you ask him for help when you started your business?"

Zhang Yida knew that Lee Tae-hee was born in "Marwar" in India. The people there are just like Wenzhou in China, and the blood of entrepreneurship is flowing in their bodies.

Li Tae-hee smiled and said, "My father's company is very small, and it would hurt him to invest 10 U.S. dollars in me.

But Mr. Zhang, I heard that your father is your angel investor? "

Seeing Li Taexi's playful smile, Zhang Yida said frankly: "Yes, that's right, my father invested 100 million yuan in me at the beginning of my business, which was about 15 US dollars at the time.

I'm not strictly a self-made entrepreneur. "

Li Taexi waved his hands repeatedly and said, "Mr. Zhang, don't get me wrong. Although you are not a self-made entrepreneur, it does not affect my admiration for you in the slightest.

You have this resource at home, why not use it?

Entrepreneurship is a process of integrating one's own resources and making them more effective.

On the contrary, I admire your decisiveness.I have learned about your mobile Internet startups in China.

If you were struggling to start from scratch, you missed the golden age of mobile Internet entrepreneurship.

Maybe companies such as Leech Financial Services and WeChat Pay have already fully grown up, and they will never have the glory of Ruixiang Group today. "

Zhang Yida smiled, this flattery is good, I like it.

Lee Tae-hee continued: "I founded OYO was actually stimulated by India's harsh mid-to-low-end hotel accommodation environment.

Cheap hotels in India were like that at the time: dirty washrooms, broken taps, stained sheets, not even an AC.

In addition, I also found that many donkey friends do not trust the online reviews of travel websites when they travel to other places in China and book hotel rooms.

So I judge that the real problem is not getting users to find you online, but the lack of predictability and standardization in budget hotels.

Thus, OYO came into being.

We work with budget hotels and reinvent traditional hotel rooms with poor service in the past.

From finding a room, booking, to checking in, we at OYO have established a strict assessment system.

Under the OYO model, small and medium-sized hotel owners with vacant rooms get more benefits, and consumers get a clean and tidy hotel accommodation environment with high quality and low price.

Therefore, the success of OYO is by no means a fluke, but an inevitable trend of win-win for all parties. "

Zhang Yida nodded. Every successful entrepreneur has his own uniqueness. Li Taexi also has insight into the pain points of the economical hotel industry.

OYO has solved some small problems such as "cleanliness and sanitation". In three years, it has created the largest economy hotel chain brand in India.

"What do you plan to do next? OYO is already a leader in India, will it bring this model to other countries?" Zhang Yida asked.

"Of course." Li Taixi looked at Zhang Yida respectfully, and said, "Maybe we still need your help."

"You want to enter China?"

Li Taixi nodded and said, "I want to make the Chinese market OYO's largest market."

Zhang Yida didn't speak, he was thinking that in the past two or three years since OYO entered China, it has become an economic hotel giant with tens of thousands of cooperative hotels and 50 rooms.

Li Tae-hee is very smart, he adopts the strategy of "encircling the cities from the countryside", starting from the second, third and fourth tier cities, and infiltrating them little by little.

It is said that this is what he learned from the great leader... He studied China really thoroughly.

Use free to attract hotel owners to join and settle in, and at the same time spend money to decorate and upgrade these hotel owners for free.

At the craziest time, an OYO franchise store opened in an average of 3 hours.

The reason why he dared to play this money-burning game was mainly because he hugged Sun Zhengyi's thigh.

With the support of the oil tycoons in the Middle East, Sun Dadi will rise in the next two years. Uber, We Work, OYO... specialize in investment that burns money.

The more money is burned, the bigger the market is.It is estimated that Sun Dadi thought so.

OYO's crazy expansion has also left many sequelae.Before Zhang Yida was reborn, he had heard negative news about OYO's layoffs, performance fraud, and owner siege.

This made Zhang Yida hesitate, whether to find a suitable opportunity to sell the shares to Softbank.

Anyway, Sun Zhengyi liked Xiao Li very much, and praised him as "Jobs of Asia".

The Softbank Vision Fund has money and can afford the starting price, so it is a perfect candidate to take over.

"Yes! How do you want me to help you?"

After Zhang Yida made up his mind, he asked Li Taixi.

　Thanks: Sanjiang Robber, 198215dai, Concert Boy, Book Friends 20180804212052750, Lost Purple Sky, thank you for your rewards!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)