Internet Business Thinking

Chapter 33 New platforms and new ways of playing in the Internet era (1)
(Section [-]) Another piece of "big cheese" brought by WeChat

Tencent Licaitong and WeChat Pay start from the "deposit" end of Internet finance, and use Tenpay's third-party payment infrastructure to meet the convenience of payment.Its strategic focus is to use the stickiness of Internet social groups to quickly promote online financial management, and provide fast purchase and cash withdrawal services, so as to realize the "financialization" of Internet traffic.

Since the beginning of 2014, Tencent has gradually launched online wealth management products and entered the public eye.Tencent has a huge Internet industry chain, hundreds of millions of Internet consumer groups and social groups, and has its Tencent e-commerce as an extension of e-shopping. It has a good underlying structure in the Internet financial circle and develops Internet-based financial services. It is also relatively convenient.Of course, having good innate conditions also needs to be guided by acquired strategies, including the allocation of its own financial resources, cooperation with traditional finance, and market competition with competitors.

WeChat Wealth Management Financializes Internet Traffic

Tencent Wealth Management is the use of Internet traffic for financial realization, and combined with WeChat's social platform to provide extremely convenient application scenarios for financial management.

Tencent’s Cailitong is similar to Yu’ebao. Customers can bind their bank cards and deposit the cash in the bank card into Lilitong through quick payment. Tencent achieves stable income by investing funds in money market funds, generally annualized income The rate is between 3% and 5%. "Timely redemption, convenient purchase, daily quantification of income, simple and clear" has become a popular feature of online wealth management products such as WeChat Wealth Management, and has gained great market recognition.

From the perspective of market performance, WeChat wealth management has achieved good response, especially the WeChat red envelope based on bank card binding, which detonated the WeChat circle during the Spring Festival of 2014, and successfully launched a nearly zero-cost WeChat financial promotion.From the side, it also reflects the unique ecological advantages of WeChat financial management within the WeChat ecosystem: social groups and frequent social-based financial needs.

On the Internet, Tencent has the same unrivaled ecological traffic as Ali, which is an excellent advantage for the realization of Internet financial products.

Now that WeChat wealth management has taken a key step in the development of Tencent Finance, which financial sub-sectors has Tencent been involved in?
In 2011, Tencent acquired a 20.2% stake in Yimeng Trader, and the two parties jointly launched the securities software "Tencent Trader", which can be logged in with a QQ account, and has embedded functions such as Weibo stock speculation.

On May 2013, 5, the launch ceremony of the first A-share index Teng'an Value 18 Index released by Internet media was held in Beijing. The index was jointly launched by Tencent.com and Ji'an Jinxin, with a base point of 100 points.

In August 2013, it was reported in the market that Tencent and Great Wall Securities jointly established an online securities company and was applying for a license. Both parties later stated that the rumors were not true.

In September 2013, there was news that Tencent intends to apply for a private bank. Although it has not been officially recognized, it reflects Tencent's intentions in the banking industry.

Since July 2013, WeChat released version 7, which incorporated the WeChat payment function, and then gradually opened payment permissions to e-commerce, WeChat public accounts, and offline shopping malls. At this point, the intention of mobile payment began to emerge.

At the beginning of 2014, Wechat Wealth Management was launched, which officially opened up the online wealth management market of Tencent Finance and entered the main wealth management camp of Internet finance.

WeChat red envelopes during the traditional Chinese New Year in 2014, as well as the nearly two-month offline taxi-hailing mobile payment competition, have all begun to use WeChat as the payment medium to try to apply scenarios for Internet finance.

The first product of Tencent Finance that can form a market influence is WeChat Cailitong, while most other financial products are "thundering, but little rain", lacking consistent product development and real market share strength.Tencent's financial strategy has always lacked a comprehensive and clear framework. It has ambitions, but before the launch of WeChat and payment functions, Tencent Finance has not found the core.It can be said that Tencent Finance officially set sail from online financial management, which also marks a key step for Tencent Finance.

Make full use of social group stickiness

Tencent Licaitong and WeChat Pay start from the "deposit" end of the "deposit, loan, and remittance" of Internet finance, and use Tenpay's third-party payment infrastructure to meet the convenience of payment.For Tencent, this is the best strategic entry point.Compared with Ali, if Tencent starts from the asset side of "loan", it will be difficult to gain an advantage, because Tencent's e-commerce data accumulation and platform credit environment are not enough to support the demand for e-commerce small loans.

Just as Baidu chose to use Baifa Wealth Management to detonate market stickiness, Tencent's strategic focus is also similar. It uses its biggest advantage - the stickiness of Internet social groups to quickly promote online wealth management, and provide quick purchase and cash withdrawal services. Money market In the process of Internetization of funds, before the market is fully saturated, Tencent's social advantages should be used as early as possible to capture more customer groups and achieve geometric growth in scale.

At present, Tencent’s financial strategy has finally caught up with the last train in the online wealth management market. It has achieved good market results and fired the first shot. However, it still needs to do more work in other subdivisions, such as e-commerce small loans , P2P, financial service platforms and more Internet financial application scenarios.In fact, Tencent's financial strategy does not need to copy Ali's "deposit, loan, and foreign exchange" model at all. Instead, it can learn from it and use its own superior resources to realize the "financialization" of Internet traffic.

In the next step, Tencent Wealth Management should further try to sell more wealth management products online through the huge social circle of WeChat. In addition to money market funds, it can also put insurance, bank wealth management and other products on the Wechat wealth management channel. The premise is that Obtain the approval of the regulatory authority, and do a good job of connecting with the relevant financial institutions to the online sales system of the product.

In addition, financial management is not just a process of value-added. Tencent financial management, which uses WeChat as the medium, also needs to derive more life-like payment scenarios on the basis of financial management, revitalize the financial management funds paid by WeChat, make convenient daily payment, and create funds. More scenes that have settled, such as Didi taxis and red envelopes.

When making financial layout, Tencent should grasp the following aspects.

First, integrate the financial resources within the group, including the underlying payment structure, product cooperation with traditional financial departments, and financial docking with other products of the group.Regarding this step, I believe that during the dormant period in 2013, Tencent has already done a lot of work.

Secondly, do not seek blindness and completeness, but strive to be refined and detailed.On the premise of mastering its own advantages, Tencent Finance should make selective attempts, first concentrate its superior forces to break through a few core superior products, and then consider the globalization and strategicization of products.In the launch of subsequent financial products, Tencent Finance should use Tencent's platform as the underlying structure to develop convenient and fast financial services.In terms of product performance, it is likely to be fragmented, but looking at the overall situation, these fragments just become the backbone of Tencent Finance, supporting the operation of the entire financial service platform.Tencent Finance should grasp the keywords of "platform, fragmentation, and payment" to build a financial framework.

(Section [-]) Others are busy panning for gold, we sell services with peace of mind
There has never been a shortage of entrepreneurs in the mobile Internet. Unlike other entrepreneurs who have gathered together to develop apps, cloud adaptation helps companies to move the content on the Internet to the Internet, so as to establish their own platforms.Now, cloud adaptation has begun to transform from providing SaaS services to users to an open platform that provides API-based PaaS services.

The mobile Internet has brought countless opportunities for entrepreneurs.When most entrepreneurs are rushing to make apps, some people find another way and find other opportunities in the mobile Internet.For example, Chen Benfeng, the CEO of Cloud Adaptation, tried to seize the opportunity of "mobile Internetization of enterprise Internet content" to catch a ride on the mobile Internet entrepreneurship.

Opportunities brought about by mobile internet
In 2004, in the era when there were no iPhones or smartphones, Chen Benfeng, who was a graduate student, needed to choose his research topic for the next two years. "What will mobile Internet devices look like in the future? It was hard to imagine at that time, but one thing is certain, that is, the screen must be smaller than a PC." Therefore, Chen Benfeng began to conduct research on solving the multi-screen problem from large screens to small screens , and received a scholarship from W3C, and finally published an international patent.

After graduating from graduate school, Chen Benfeng joined Microsoft to work, and he was naturally responsible for browsers and web page display issues. As he said: "My entire career has basically revolved around the issue of multi-screen display."

In 2011, Chen Benfeng, who decided to start a business in Hong Kong, still revolved around the problem of web page display, and built a mobile reading platform similar to Zacker.Because of the favor of Li Ka-shing Hutchison Whampoa, this app, which is also essentially a mobile website content, has achieved great success in Hong Kong.

But problems followed, as Chen Benfeng said: "We did well in Hong Kong at the time, and we have always been the No. There are only 1 million iPhone users, which is not as big as Haidian District, so the 'ceiling' will be reached soon."

So, in September 2012, Chen Benfeng came to Beijing from Hong Kong with several million angel investments, and established the company Yunadapter.At that time, there were only two people in the whole company. In January 9, Cloud Adapter entered the Microsoft Incubator, and the entire company began to operate officially.

Different from the previous mobile reading apps, the target of cloud adaptation has changed from individual users to enterprise users.Because more and more smart devices, such as smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, wearable devices, etc., have resulted in different display screen sizes, different system versions, and different interaction modes. Therefore, it is necessary to mobile Internet content on the Internet , Smart TV, and finally realize multi-screen interaction, it becomes more and more complicated.

As Chen Benfeng said: "In the past, we used the mouse and keyboard to operate the computer screen; now we use touch to operate the smart phone with a small screen; on the smart TV in the future, the screen will become larger, and users will use the remote control ; and the screens of wearable devices will become smaller, and we will have to use voice control. As a result, the related browsing experience will become extremely complicated.” The significance of cloud adaptation is to help enterprises integrate things on the Internet , perfect mobile Internet, rather than rote.

As long as one line of code is implanted in the PC website, cloud adaptation can realize real-time analysis, data extraction and reconstruction of the web page structure.When a user visits a website page, the cloud will push different adaptation engine styles according to different access devices, perform instant intervention and optimize the display effect of the webpage, and realize the creation, optimization and value-added of cross-platform websites.Chen Benfeng said: "In the future, it is impossible for a company to develop a PC version of the website, then develop a mobile version, then develop a tablet version, and then develop a TV version... Not to mention anything else, just considering the cost is too much. Higher, exponential growth."

Now, Yunadapter has more than 1000 enterprise users. Not long before the press release, Yunadapter received tens of millions of A-round financing.

Transformation from SaaS to PaaS

If at the beginning of its establishment, Cloud Adaptation was to provide users with SaaS (Software-as-a-service) services, then starting from July and August 2013, Cloud Adaptation is trying to transform into an API-providing PaaS (Platform as a Service, Platform-as-a-Service) open platform.

"The website itself is full of strange things, and there are all kinds of types. It is impossible for us to use a transcoding engine to achieve perfect conversion of all websites. Therefore, for most small and medium-sized enterprises, we mainly use a combination of transcoding templates and some manual debugging. method, and if it is a complex website for a large customer, more in-depth customization is required." Chen Benfeng told reporters, "When we were doing SaaS before, we had to bear the time and labor costs of manual debugging, so the scale Transformation is a big problem.”

Previously, the price of cloud adaptation to provide website mobilization services for a small and medium-sized enterprise was 5000 to 8000 RMB, and some large e-commerce websites cost only tens of thousands of yuan.If you completely rely on the cloud to adapt your own manpower for manual debugging, it will inevitably not be able to scale, and such a low price will make the profit insufficient.

Therefore, Cloud Adaptation hopes to scale its services by transforming into an open platform. "Now, we only do PaaS, provide a platform, provide development tools, let the programmers of the agency call our transcoding engine and templates, and let them complete the manual adaptation." According to Chen Benfeng, at present, cloud adaptation There are more than 50 agents all over the world including Hong Kong, Taiwan, the United States, and Europe. Most of these agents are also website building companies themselves, with many developers and the ability to do front-end development.

In this way, the cost of manual adaptation is shared by the agent, and the corresponding solution profits are also owned by the agent.For cloud adaptation, it is charged according to traffic instead.Chen Benfeng said: "For a customer, having traffic proves that he must have made money. If you make money, give us some; if you don't make money, you don't have to give us any money." Cloud Adaptation It is changing from a simple solution provider to a real cloud computing enterprise, and by building a cloud platform, users can pay according to the usage effect.

According to Chen Benfeng, in addition to the core technology of screen adaptation and transcoding, the cloud adaptation platform will also be grafted with other value-added services such as image compression and video transcoding, making it truly a development platform for the mobile Internet.More importantly, six mobile marketing portals, namely mobile search engine, Weibo, WeChat, App, SMS, and QR code, have been connected to the platform.Chen Benfeng believes: "Building a mobile website is just the beginning for an enterprise. The next step is to promote it naturally, so these marketing channels are connected to our platform, and enterprises can choose freely."

At present, Cloud Adaptation has reached cooperation with many domestic SMS bulk sending companies, Weibo and WeChat marketing companies. In this way, not only has the industrial chain been completely opened up, but also commissions can be obtained from these mobile Internet marketing companies, making it a important means of income.

(Section [-]) Platform Creation Experts, Experts Promote Brands
Lefeng.com has taken the No. [-] market position in cosmetics vertical e-commerce.Lefeng.com is very different from other e-commerce companies. Its business operation logic is: make full use of the TV program production platform, which is its parent company Dongfangfengxing, and use the charisma of talents to influence the target group, and use it to operate And develop its own brand and its products, among which Daren is the central bridge to revitalize the resources of the parent company and graft the market.

"In 2011, Lefeng.com's sales were less than 7 million yuan. In 2012, it more than doubled from 2011. We hope to double it again in 2013. But we will maintain our own sense of development rhythm and will not do it for the sake of scale. Scale." Wang Licheng, vice president of Dongfang Fengxing Group and CEO of Lefeng.com, said in an interview with "Manager", "What we value is whether the brand is done right. Anything can hurt, but the brand must not be hurt. This is our business attitude.”

Now, Lefeng.com has occupied the No. [-] market position in cosmetics vertical e-commerce.However, Lefeng.com is quite different from other e-commerce companies. Its business logic is: make full use of the TV program production platform, which is its parent company Dongfang Fengxing, use the charisma of talent to influence the target group, and borrow In order to operate and develop its own brand and its products, the talent is the central bridge to revitalize the resources of the parent company and graft the market.

Build a talent business platform
Lefeng.com has three categories: star talent, expert talent, and grassroots talent.The three types of experts plus many fans create an ecosystem.

Whether it is a star expert or an expert expert, there is a lot of room for brand expansion.For example, celebrities Fan Bingbing and Li Bingbing want to make their own clothing, accessories, cosmetics, etc. Lefeng.com can be well connected with them.According to Wang Licheng, on the one hand, connect these star brands with Lefeng.com’s star talent operation platform, which covers a complete set of operating systems from product design to packaging, production, marketing, and supply chain; on the other hand, combine Multimedia way, communicate with customers through this celebrity operation platform, and finally customers buy the products they want through Lefeng.com. "Here, we need to complete the shaping of the celebrity brand imagination, the shaping of the entire product supply chain, and the shaping of communication and interaction with customers."

Lefeng.com currently has signed contracts with more than 300 talents.But Wang Licheng said that grassroots talents are currently more of a dissemination role, and have not yet reached the value of commercial development.To this end, Lefeng.com has launched the "Hatching Egg Project", which is to create a grassroots talent brand in the fields of beauty, clothing and fashion, with the goal of eventually signing 1000 grassroots talent.

(End of this chapter)