Winning the new financial era

Chapter 410 Self-operated Logistics
"After two years of development, Pinduoduo achieved good operating results of 709 billion GMV last year. Registered users reached 2.98 million, and monthly active users reached 1.12 million.

Our goal this year is to break through [-] billion GMV and establish the status of the third largest e-commerce platform in China in one fell swoop.

Based on the combined data of Douvision and Musical.ly, global registered users have reached 8.82 million, daily active users are 2.45 million, and monthly active users are 5.21 million.

You can look at this map. "

Zhang Yida called up a three-dimensional global map, and on the huge screen several meters by several meters, a blue planet was rotating at a constant speed.

Zhang Yida slid his fingers lightly on the screen behind him, just like sliding a globe, and Asia appeared on the front.

Zhang Yida's map of the rooster in East Asia was lightly touched, and the map was automatically enlarged, and a line of data appeared at the same time: "1.65 million daily active users."

Zhang Yida clicked "Beijing" on the map, and a set of data "516 million daily active users" appeared.

Click "Magic City", pop-up data: 572 million daily active users.

Click "New York", and the data pops up: 45 daily active users.

Click on "Sao Paulo" and the data will pop up: 62 daily active users.

……

Zhang Yida made a demonstration of the daily active users of DouTV and Musical.ly in major cities around the world.

Dongfang Yu in the audience opened his mouth wide open, looking at the continents with different shades of color on the map, he said in disbelief: "This DouTV and Musical.ly cover North America, South America, Europe, and a part of Asia ?”

"Yes," Zhang Yida nodded, "Except for the African market that has not been entered, Asia has not been fully covered, and other regions and countries in the world have been covered."

Dongfang Yu nodded and said with a smile, "Your map is quite interesting. Is the data updated in real time?"

"of course."

Zhang Yida clicked on the lower right corner of the big screen behind him to switch to another page.

It is still a global map, but with more data on the map, including online users in various countries and cities, uploaded videos today and many other data indicators.

The numbers are jumping wildly, increasing and decreasing.

"Did you make this software yourself? When will you help us to make a set for New Oriental, let me also see the number of students attending classes in each city every day."

Zhang Yida smiled at Dongfang Yu, "Sure! I'll give senior brother a discount, 888 million sets."

Dongfang Yu waved his hands again and again, "It's so expensive, so we can't afford it. How many extra lessons do we have to give to students to earn it back?"

Ma Dongmin chuckled, "Senior brother Yu, you can't be too rich, you should take the initiative to embrace technological innovation."

"New Oriental attaches great importance to technology. We have launched a learning management system with independent intellectual property rights, an APP, and a live teaching website..."

Hearing Liu Zhiping coughing aside, Dongfang Yu came to his senses, smiled apologetically at the investors around him, and waved his hand to signal Zhang Yida to continue talking.

Yida Zhang continued: “Currently Douvision has 1.65 million daily active users, while Musical.ly has 8000 million daily active users overseas.

There are 2.45 million daily active users worldwide, and more than 1 million short videos are uploaded every day.

These data all prove Douvision’s leading position in the short video field. "

"OK, we all understand the fundamentals of Zhonghe Group."

A middle-aged man with a high nose and deep eyes answered, "Now, Mr. Zhang, please talk about the valuation of Zhonghe Group. I believe that the investors here are as impatient as me."

This person's name is Bao Zheyu, and he is the director of the Asia-Pacific region of BlackRock Group.

BlackRock's Asia-Pacific headquarters is located in Hong Kong, so foreigners like to choose a Chinese name.

After Zhonghe Group released the news of the B round of financing, BlackRock immediately expressed its investment intention.

As the world's largest asset management company, BlackRock manages more than US$6 trillion in assets.

Considering the energy of the other party and the possibility that Musical.ly may encounter various difficulties in its overseas development.

Zhang Yida agreed to BlackRock's request and invited Bao Zheyu to participate in the B round financing of Zhonghe Group.

"Okay," Zhang Yida smiled, "Pinduoduo is valued at US$100 billion, Doushi and Musical.ly are valued at US$200 billion.

The combined value of the equity held in Bilibili and Canxing Culture exceeds US$[-] million.

So, the pre-money valuation is $305 billion. "

"Pinduoduo is valued at US$100 billion? How did you come up with this?" Bao Zheyu said with a very surprised look.

"Being benchmarked against Ali and Goudong, there is also the GMV valuation method as a reference."

Bao Zheyu, who works in the Asia-Pacific division of BlackRock, is no stranger to Ali and Goudong. These are the two poles of Chinese e-commerce, with a market value of more than 3000 billion U.S. dollars and a market value of more than 500 billion U.S. dollars.

Softbank and Gao Ling, who invested in these two companies, have made a lot of money.

"Now that China's e-commerce landscape has taken shape, does Pinduoduo still have a chance?"

Bao Zheyu's tone was full of doubts, and he sighed: "Mr. Zhang, I know you are a very good entrepreneur.

But sometimes, excellence is not everything.It is not an easy task to grab food from the mouths of the two giants. "

Zhang Yida was not angry either, he smiled lightly, "Mr. Bao, you may not understand China's national conditions.

China is still a developing country, although there are tens of millions of middle-class families traveling all over the world, doing all kinds of shopping.

But this is not all of China!

80% or even 90% of Chinese people earn less than 5000 yuan a month, have mortgages and car loans, and have wives and children to support their parents.

They don't have too high pursuit of quality of life, just get by.

In other words: like cheap things!
And Pinduoduo's C2M model, Customer-to-Manufactory, the abbreviation is "customer-to-manufactory".

With the reduction of intermediate links, manufacturers can make small profits but sell more, and users can obtain cheap and easy-to-use items, which can be regarded as a win-win situation for both parties.

This kind of factory that cooperates with Pinduoduo is called a Pinduoduo factory or a Pinduoduo factory.

Pinduoduo uses the same order-making mode as playing games to gather orders.

The specific manifestation is: in order to enjoy greater discounts, users call friends and friends to make group purchases together.

Pinduoduo has a long-term strategic cooperation with Penguin, China's largest social platform, and can enjoy the massive traffic of Penguin.

This provides a great help for order matching, and users can quickly complete information communication on social platforms.

Even, users will spontaneously form group shopping groups, and when they see their favorite products, they will post the group shopping links in the group, and everyone will fight together.

After talking so much, I just want to tell Mr. Bao that there is still a folded world in China called "Beyond the Five Rings". "

"Outside the Fifth Ring Road? Does it mean the suburbs or rural areas far away from the city?"

Zhang Yida laughed and said: "Mr. Bao is worthy of being a China hand, he told the secret in one word.

There is no e-commerce company in this market to vigorously explore, and Pinduoduo is the first person to eat crabs.

As long as we eat the entire market, it is only time to surpass Goudong, and we can fight against Taobao! "

Bao Zheyu carefully chewed the content of Zhang Yida's words, the world outside the fifth ring.

As head of Asia Pacific at BlackRock, he has read too many reports on China.

China has indeed enriched a group of people, but there are also many people engaged in low-end manufacturing and low-efficiency agriculture.

As the world's premier asset manager, BlackRock primarily serves wealthy clients.

The strategy in China is almost the same.

In China's vast rural areas and third- and fourth-tier cities, BlackRock cannot provide services, nor can it make money from these people.

But he heard Zhang Yida say that it seems good to earn money from these people by investing in Pinduoduo.

Pinduoduo does not need to reach the level of Ahri, surpass Goudong, reach half of Ahli's market value, and BlackRock's investment can return more than ten times the return.

"As for Pinduoduo, our Blackstone Group is very optimistic about its development.

Blackstone Group has been laying out logistics real estate in China, and when Pinduoduo has developed to a certain extent, it will definitely need to deploy logistics and express delivery.

Blackstone can provide some help in this regard, helping Pinduoduo to improve its ecological layout. "

Zhang Liping, senior managing director of Blackstone Group and chairman of Greater China, spoke.

Over sixty years old, he is in good spirits and speaks with great vigor.

It is indeed a top-level celebrity who has served in a series of senior positions such as the CEO of Credit Suisse Greater China and the director of Merrill Lynch's investment bank.

Zhang Yida said with emotion that he was very accurate in seeing the problem. The logistics and distribution link must be faced and paid attention to by Pinduoduo.

Blackstone, a top international PE company with assets under management of more than US$3000 billion, is also very interesting.

I like real estate speculation, especially optimistic about Chinese real estate.The management scale of real estate funds is actually higher than that of private equity investment funds.

Logistics real estate generally provides customers with a full range of services including site selection consultation, planning and design, and engineering construction according to the requirements of customer supply chain management.

Find suitable locations in designated areas to "tailor-made" warehouses for customers, and provide long-term lease contracts and property management services.

Provide customers with logistics value-added, supply chain extension and property leasing services in the entire industrial chain.

If Pinduoduo does not learn from Goudong and Suning to engage in self-sustained storage properties, it is also a good choice to choose to cooperate with logistics real estate.

If Pinduoduo wants to improve its industrial layout, logistics and distribution are an indispensable part.

If the closed loop cannot be completed, it will always lag behind others in cost suppression.

In particular, Jack Ma has the ambition to control the three links and one reach. At that time, Pinduoduo may only cooperate with Shunfeng and Goudong Logistics.

If you want to do the logistics yourself, Zhang Yida feels that it is not a very safe way to cooperate with a third party.

High-quality warehousing is in the hands of a third party, which is not conducive to long-term control and reduction of logistics costs, and there is also the risk of being constrained by others.

However, if too much investment in self-owned storage is used to continuously "burn money" with its own funds, there may be problems such as financing difficulties and long project payback periods, which will bring pressure to operations.

Goudong’s acquisition of land was not too expensive back then, and it was criticized by investors for a long time.

Pinduoduo is only now engaged in logistics, and it is still a direct property management model, so the difficulty should not be too high.

But it is not impossible, finance is a good tool!
Pinduoduo's main task now is not logistics and distribution. The top priority is to become an e-commerce platform with [-] billion GMV, and become the third in the industry, even surpassing Goudong.

Zhang Yida put away his thoughts and smiled at Zhang Liping, "Yes! However, at present, we still plan to adopt the asset-light model and put user growth and GMV growth first.

Once the status and own advantages are established, it will not be too late to make heavy assets. "

(End of this chapter)