After Meituan'S Summit: Hungry? The Days When Former Executives First Disclosed Their Confrontation With Wang Xing

Regardless of Ma Yun's unique layout of e-commerce ecology, how prosperous it is, if you miss the opportunity of local life service, it will eventually become a pity. In the future, whether Alibaba is in the dark layout, waiting for a new turning time?

October 9, 2019 becomes a dividing line. On the same day, meituan's share price reached a new high, with a market value of about US $66.146 billion, ranking behind Alibaba (US $421.590 billion) and Tencent (US $387.518 billion), becoming China's third-largest listed Internet company, and once the Internet's business led by bat was shuffled overnight. Since then, the market value of meituan has continued to soar. At present, the market value of meituan's shares in Hong Kong is nearly 300 billion US dollars.

Behind this, great changes have taken place in the takeout market and even the local living market. Meituan's market share has been increasing. However, the strongest competitor is starving, and the market has been eroded. Analysis of the financial report data of both sides can prove that, in the two and a half years after the acquisition by Alibaba, the market share of takeout of famo has dropped from nearly 50% at the time of acquisition to nearly 30%.

According to the Q3 financial report of meituan in 2020, meituan's revenue increased by 28.8% to 35.4 billion yuan year-on-year in the third quarter. Among them, the transaction amount of core catering delivery business in the third quarter reached 152.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 36%; the average daily transaction number of catering delivery reached 34.9 million, with a year-on-year increase of 30.1%; and its revenue was 20.7 billion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 32.8%. In contrast, Alibaba's financial report for the second quarter of fiscal year 2021 shows that the revenue of local living services in this quarter was 8.839 billion yuan, an increase of 29% year-on-year.

The difference between the two also contributed to the further explosion of meituan's market value. To be sure, there is no lack of hot money effect behind the hot capital market. But at least it proves that o2o has broken away from the vicious circle of burning money with losses, and the business logic has also been recognized by the market. For the platform, takeout is not the goal. The more important layout is instant delivery. From this point of view, o2o market competition is not final. The future competition focus of meituan, Dada and hungry Mo is, who can better meet the immediate needs of consumers? From takeaway to instant retail, can Ali's local life be "sealed off"?

Recently, a number of managers who have left the company have been interviewed exclusively by the 21st century economic reporter. After nearly a decade of entrepreneurship, they and founder Zhang xuhao are both comrades in arms and brothers. In one war after another, they have gained the joy of success, but also experienced the bleakness of having to leave. To this day, they still believe that Alibaba's $9.5 billion valuation was not a choice, but also the best choice. Meituan was called "ruthless execution machine" by them.

When the market value of competitors in the past has risen sharply, they will also flash helpless and unwilling. However, in the Internet world under the rule of at, entrepreneurs have to actively or passively make different choices, which point to different fate. And they "start again" to start a new business, which also indicates that o2o track is still a hot blooded market, and the market pattern is far from solidified.

Members of the early founding team said that during the whole process of starting a business, the pressure was so great that we could count the days to live. Photo by Gan Jun

Growing up passively

A former executive who has left the company thinks that passive growth is not a bad thing, but if you don't think clearly why you do it, you will be very tired.

Back to three years ago, the pattern at that time was completely different from today's.

According to the financial report of the first quarter of fiscal year 2019 (from April 1, 2018 to June 30, 2018) released by Alibaba on August 23, 2018, the revenue of Alibaba was 80.92 billion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 61%. This quarter's revenue was 2.612 billion yuan, accounting for 3% of the total revenue. More details about the acquisition in April 2018 have also been disclosed in this financial report. The overall amount of Alibaba's acquisition is $9.5 billion, all in cash.

On May 8 of that year, Alibaba and famo officially completed the equity delivery. CEO Wang Lei once revealed that 15 of his 22 direct reporting targets are members of the hungry Mo team. In the next two years or so, the top management team of hungry Mo yuan withdrew one after another, and the decision-making power of the team was also concentrated in the hands of Ali department executives. Only a few of the original hungry senior executives who stayed in Ali to live in important positions.

Li Lixun, founder of xintianweng, a retail service provider in the same city, has been in charge of logistics, Ka, crowdsourcing, and merchant operation, etc. in his job No. 43. After the two companies completed the closing in May 2018, he decided to leave after two months' vacation.

"The core reason is that I feel that I have entered a large company and I have seen the system and operation. In addition, I still want to start a business again. I have to leave sooner or later, so I just want to leave early. Another reason is that it was predicted that if you want to stay, you need to prove yourself again. This process will take a lot of energy and time. " Li Lixun reviewed that experience.

Up to now, Zhang Xuefeng, CTO, CO founders Deng ye and Kangjia, vice president Zhou Zhengchuan, product VP Qiu Xiao, ued director Li Ming and operation VP Zhong Xianwen have all left Alibaba.

"Alibaba's acquisition at that time did not give Ali options and stocks. In fact, it was ready. Hungry? The team would go. At that time, in their opinion, they were hungry, did not do well enough, did not meet the expectations, and wanted to control by themselves. Who knows later found that this kind of playing method is not good, began to hire hungry old staff, I hope some familiar old people can go back. " Xu Haijun, former vice president and founder of diner, has been in Hangzhou for a long time, and has a very clear perception of the changes in famo.

For hungry people, the first step to access Ali's new retail system is to open up the omni-channel interface of Ali system. On October 12, 2018, Alibaba announced the formal establishment of a local life service company, which merged famo and word-of-mouth to form a local life service platform. Wang Lei, partner of Alibaba group, serves as the president, reporting to Alibaba CEO Zhang Yong and concurrently serves as CEO of famo; fan Chi, vice president of Alibaba group, continues to lead word-of-mouth business and reports to Wang Lei.

Throughout 2017, the company has been running in with Taobao system from technology, backstage, logistics to management, including HEMA, RT mart, etc. On March 10, 2020, Hu Xiaoming, CEO of ant financial services (now renamed ant group), announced that he would build Alipay digital life open platform and focus on digital service industry. The first to bear the brunt is the revision of Alipay app, which adds convenient life plates such as takeaway home, fruit and vegetable merchants and super medicine. The relationship between Alipay and Ali's local life services has become closer. At the same time, Hu Xiaoming is also the chairman of Ali local life service company.

The environment is changing all the time. "It's like growing up as a teenager. It turns out that when you start a business, you don't know what you're looking at, and it doesn't matter. But when you grow up later, it is equivalent to that you have rules to become more mature. But there are good and bad processes. If you choose to take the initiative to become mature, you will still be powerful. But if it's passive maturity, such as organizational change, integration, promotion system, etc., you need to accept it passively. " Another former executive who has left the company thinks that passive growth is not a bad thing, but if you don't think clearly why you do it, you will be very tired.

From Taobao to Alipay, are you hungry? It still takes some time to adapt. In the view of industry insiders, Alipay will provide more resources, because Alipay is a more localized traffic platform, and platform users will pay more attention to local life. "The decline in market share is partly due to the problem of integration in the past two years. In this process, the government has reduced the subsidies and caused the loss of users."

Young battlefield

On October 8, 2015, dianping.com and meituan.com announced that they had reached a strategic cooperation and established a new company. The worst subsidy war in the history of the Internet was launched with the promotion of capital.

Three years is enough to change the trajectory of a person or even a company. After reviewing Zhang xuhao's nearly 10-year entrepreneurial history, it is found that none of the founding teams who started their business in 2009 have waded out of the "barrage of bullets" of their rivals. They are not afraid of "fighting", but afraid of losing their direction.

Like Li Lixun, many employees joined Zhang xuhao's company just after graduation. Are you hungry. "At that time, when everyone came in, I felt that the team was very strong. Some of them were top students in the college entrance examination and junior class. They all gave up studying in graduate school to do takeout." A member of the early founding team said.

"2014, 2015 and 2016 are the most competitive years, starting from the end of 2013 when Taodian went online and began to do takeout. At that time, I felt a strong sense of belonging when I was hungry. Later, I felt that I was giving money to the company. At the beginning, I went to Shanghai University to send out leaflets, and I usually lied that I was a student union before I could go in smoothly. " Born in 1989, Li Lixun was only twenty-four or five years old at that time.

Xu Haijun, a former senior vice president of the company, was born in 1982. He joined the company in 2011 and helped the company expand the Hangzhou market. This is also the second city outside Shanghai to open takeout.

"In any case, when I started my business, I basically did my own things. For example, there were a lot of things in the office. Basically, I took some of them directly from home. In order to save money, I bought desks and installed curtains myself. At that time, the cost of getting customers was basically one yuan, but I made Hangzhou 66 cents, mainly distributing leaflets. " When Xu Haijun recalls, he still remembers Zhang xuhao's saying that when the team is less than 150 people, he must lead by example and rush to the front.

An interesting little thing is that when he went into his bedroom to hand out leaflets, many students playing games stopped because he was too old to think that the teacher was coming. Compared with today, the Internet eight years ago was still in the outbreak period of demographic dividend. Taking the activity planned by Xu Haijun as an example, he purchased from the beverage manufacturer for 1 yuan, sold it to the catering business at a low price, and then sold it to the takeaway users with a price of 1 yuan, which successfully opened up the resources of suppliers, businesses and users, and gained a large number of new users.

The real pressure comes from 2015. In November 2013, meituan began to take out business online. In May 2014, meituan obtained US $300 million round C financing, with Pan Atlantic capital, Sequoia Capital and Alibaba co investing as the leading investment institutions. By January 2015, meituan completed the D round of financing with a total amount of US $700 million, with a valuation of US $7 billion. Subsequently, on October 8, dianping.com and meituan.com announced that they had reached a strategic cooperation and established a new company. The worst subsidy war in the history of the Internet was launched with the promotion of capital.

Xu Haijun remembers that meituan's takeout started from small cities in the fourth, fifth and sixth tier cities, while in the first and second tier cities, the main body was still hungry. It is comprehensive, and the relevance of public comments is not particularly large, reviews provide more information. However, after the merger of public comments, meituan can make full use of its strategy. After all, there is another important group buying business, which can be more focused on the takeout strategy.

Li Lixun's most impressive is the crazy expansion of meituan's personnel. "The takeaway orders brought by the review may only account for 10%. Since September 2015, meituan's subsidies have been particularly strong, expanding the city crazily. In two weeks to three weeks, cities are more than us. "

At this time, it is urgent to expand the high-end catering market and expand the supply chain. Li Lixun still remembers that at the beginning, most brands refused to cooperate with takeout and thought it was too "low". In some extreme shopping malls, people wearing takeout clothes were not allowed to enter. The first chain restaurant we cooperated with was xinxianghui. At first, we sent a delivery man to place an order on site, then we packed it and sent it to users. It wasn't until takeout brought revenue to the restaurant that they really started working together.

The process of winning another international chain restaurant group was more tortuous, which Li Lixun always remembered. "A big sister is in charge of this company's new business, and she neither refuses nor accepts it every time she talks. Later, I found out that she was very fond of green plants, so I went to the flower market and bought a pile of green plants. I went to her door every day and waited for them to be given to her. After running for more than a month, she said it's not easy for you to be young. Let's have a try. "

In the first half of 2016, meituan's and hungry's market shares were basically in the fourth and sixth percentages, while in the second half of 2016, the number became five to five. But hungry? In Wenzhou, Wuhan, Xi'an, Fuzhou, Xiamen still maintain the lead.

"Meituan's subsidy is more serious than ours. At the beginning, the subsidy of one yuan and two yuan was extremely high. The most ruthless city is 20 yuan minus 19 yuan. " Li Lixun revealed that in 2014, when the competition was most fierce, city managers even had to carry cash to directly pay subsidies to restaurants. Because meituan finished its activities today, it sent cash to each restaurant the next day. But hungry needs a series of processes, which has been greatly questioned internally.

However, for the whole hungry team, there is no turning back after choosing the beginning. The more cruel question before them is, where does the money come from?

Ruthless "execution machine"

"I feel like I can't make it to the end. I'm hungry. I've implemented the management plan very well, but meituan's people seem to be ruthless implementation tools."

After the fierce battle in 2015, hungry Mo and meituan are in urgent need of new capital transfusion. In November 2015, Alibaba decided to sell its 7% stake in meituan reviews. On the other hand, Tencent plans to invest $1 billion in meituan review. At this point, Alibaba and meituan completely broke up.

Previously, the first meeting between the two sides occurred in 2011. At that time, meituan, which had just experienced the thousand regiment war, was waiting for new capital for winter. In July of that year, meituan said that all the US $50 million of round B had been paid, and the investors included Alibaba, Aurora Borealis, Walden International and Sequoia Capital. In 2012, meituan announced that it had obtained a total of 300 million US dollars of financing from Alibaba and other investors. In May 2014, Wang Xing, founder of meituan, disclosed that Alibaba holds 10% to 15% of meituan's shares.

However, the two companies did not have business intersection because of multiple investments. Until the end of November 2015, meituan local promotion personnel launched "lightning action", requiring merchants cooperating with meituan platform not to use Alipay for settlement. At the same time, the news of Alibaba's $1.5 billion investment has also been heard, making the pattern of o2o industry confusing.

In fact, after obtaining the financing from Alibaba, since 2015, hungry man has been organizing employees to learn from Alibaba's system. Zhang xuhao also specially took the team to Alibaba to participate in training. At this time, in the hungry interior, for this war of attrition has felt tired.

"I feel like I can't make it to the end. I'm hungry. I've implemented the management plan very well, but meituan's people seem to be ruthless implementation tools." Li Lixun said frankly that after the merger of meituan and Dianping, which is led by Tencent, the company has no more choices, but it is still a crucial attitude to maintain "independence".

Zhang xuhao once said in an internal e-mail that "the shares of the company held by public comments are already very small. You are hungry? We will maintain a fierce competitive relationship with meituan takeout and all other delivery platforms."

However, in the case that meituan is backed by Tencent and glutinous rice is backed by Baidu, it is very difficult for hungry people who have no backing to survive.

"It is not only the pressure on subsidies brought by meituan, but also many problems in our internal management ability." Another member of the early founding team told the 21st century economic reporter that meituan saw through well that it was going all out to open cities. If you drive 10, I will open 200. "How can I follow you? You can't manage it. You can't get over it for two or three years. "

The average age of the management team is only 267 years old after the service of the whole platform suddenly covers 5600 cities. "At that time, there was really no way to manage it. Obviously, when you saw that the business people were doing it, you couldn't help it. There are even some people who are obviously corrupt and you don't have the energy to look them up. " The person even said frankly, if you are hungry, the management basically depends on roaring, and the fastest burning money is still the subsidy war. According to the order quantity, in the two years after 2015, when the competition was the most intense, the subsidy input was close to 10 billion yuan per year.

"That is to sleep at night, close your eyes and open your eyes. 30 million will be gone. At the beginning, the loss was particularly severe, and the logistics loss was 78 yuan per order. I think takeout can make money with your eyes closed. Investors ask when to make money? My judgment is when the price of vegetables will double and when the takeout will make money. " He added further.

War means bloodshed, killing ten thousand enemies and losing eight thousand. It is hard for the wise strong to avoid it. According to the public financial report data, meituan has been in a state of continuous huge losses in nearly four years from 2015 to 2018, with a total loss of 150.8 billion yuan. After the adjustment of accounting standards, this figure is still as high as 22.7 billion yuan. Wang Xing, the founder of the company, has always taken the road of burning money to invade the hinterland and try to subvert companies that are more focused and powerful than themselves.

However, in addition to the problems of capital and management, the members of the early founding team said that meituan only made fewer mistakes.

After breaking up with meituan, Alibaba began to give full support to hungry. In August 2015, leading meituan got new financing, with a valuation of more than $1 billion, and the morale of the whole team was high.

In April 2016, Alibaba invested $900 million and ant financial contributed $350 million, totaling $1.25 billion. Are you hungry. From this point on, the founding team of hungry Mo has expected that the company may be acquired by Alibaba.

How long can "by day" live

"At that time, meituan suffered a lot. Basically, the cash flow was going to be cut off. We can all figure out that he could last for half a year. Who knows, the result changed completely later."

"At that time, the negotiation was not easy, and the whole delivery took half a year. There is not so much time. We are still talking here, and we are ready to talk about collapse at any time. If we talk about collapse, where will the money come from? How about another six months? The danger is beyond your imagination. "

Members of the early founding team said that during the whole process of starting a business, the pressure was so great that we could count the days to live. It's not calculated by the hour, it's just because of the lack of computing power.

Another founding member felt the same. Guo Xingjun, the founder of nowwa Nova coffee, once worked for five years in the company. In his early years, he was in charge of breakfast, enterprise ordering and other businesses, and also served as the head of commercialization and commercial advertising business, and incubated the unmanned shelf project "hungry now". Until May 2019, he resigned from Ali local life.

Before joining the company in 2014, Guo Xingjun's treatment in foreign enterprises was several times higher than that of hungry men. "At that time, I felt that there were many opportunities for the company to make various innovation attempts. In fact, it's true that promotion has been rapid in recent years. " Guo Xingjun recalled that, in fact, since the second quarter of 2014, the takeout industry has entered the most fierce hand to hand battle since the end of 2014.

This is also a great challenge to the organization and management. From the end of 2014 to the end of 2015, the exact number of employees in the whole company has not been clear. It is understood that starting from 2016, the market share will start to drop irreversibly. Meituan has been making efforts in the sinking market. It is precisely through the money made in the fifth and sixth tier cities that meituan has subsidized to the first tier cities.

In addition, in terms of delivery capacity, one layer is called organization operation, which is similar to didi special car, and the other layer is crowdsourcing operation, similar to didi express. "We feel that the ultimate business must be a" special car "rather than a crowdsourcing operation. It is not easy to coordinate the internal scheduling of the company. What's more, we and dianyida are totally two companies and systems, which is equivalent to handing the key point of the life and death line to a partner. Strategically, it's no problem, but the docking needs a lot of cost. So when the orders of the two platforms are soaring, you can't send them when you are hungry. " A former executive in charge of transport capacity believes that, after Alibaba's investment in famo, hungry Mo has received strong traffic support, but the coordination level is not as good as expected.

On the other hand, Tencent led meituan review's new round of financing of $3.3 billion in January 2016, with the new company valued at more than $18 billion. The separation from the public comments also makes the choice of hungry people more passive. "When Dianping was still with you, Dianping developed flash products. At that time, meituan suffered a lot. Basically, its cash flow was going to be cut off. We can all figure out that he could last for half a year. Who knows, the result has changed completely." Li Lixun remembers that on the day of meituan review's announcement of the merger, he was still training in Bali. In the evening, the team members had dinner together. Zhang xuhao answered a phone call and immediately changed his face. He left Bali in a hurry that night.

Since then, the seat of o2o has been rebuilt again, and meituan has survived. According to the public financial report, meituan lost 10.5 billion yuan in 2015, with a net loss of 5.9 billion yuan after adjustment. At that time, meituan liquor and tourism business accounted for 94% of the total revenue of meituan, which was the most profitable and mature business of meituan. In 2015, the takeout business accounted for only 4% of meituan's revenue, and the gross profit margin was - 123.7%.

"In the next three years, we are under more pressure. Because reviews are a good source of cash flow for meituan, they directly help meituan to cover the third, fifth and sixth tier cities. " Xu Haijun said.

After 2017, because of the lack of money, the whole team felt a little bit behind in the competition. In addition, the merger of comments and meituan has greatly affected the morale of the company.

"In the beginning, we and Dianping are partners. We call each other brothers, and in the twinkling of an eye, we marry others. Before, we had a group with reviewers. We often chatted and talked about business in the group. After the acquisition, the group never said a word. " Li Lixun recalled.

By 2016, meituan lost 5.8 billion yuan, with a net loss of 5.4 billion yuan after adjustment. Meituan's takeout began to break out, with revenue increasing from 175 million to 5.3 billion, accounting for 41% of the total revenue. However, meituan still lost money on takeout, with a gross profit margin of - 7.7% in 2016. According to the figures, meituan has gradually established its foothold in the field of takeout, while hungry Mo is facing a more difficult situation.

Three months after the merger of Dianping and meituan, Dianping's takeout entrance was switched from "hungry" to "meituan", which made hungry Mo, who was already in a disadvantageous position in terms of traffic, more passive. It is reported that at this time, Zhang xuhao hopes to recover the share through the combination of the second and third place. At the beginning of 2017, Zhang xuhao began to contact Baidu takeaway. He and Li Yanhong met twice in Hong Kong, but the price has not been negotiated.

In the end, hungry Mo bought Baidu takeout for $800 million, two-thirds less than the previous round of Baidu takeout's valuation of $2.4 billion. "The role of this acquisition has not been played yet. When you are hungry, you are bought by Ali. In 2017, we have been arranging integration with Baidu, including staff placement, product connection and so on. But when I came back after the new year, things changed again. " Li Lixun revealed that he was hungry before, and the employees of Baidu takeaway had also gone out to participate in the group building.

2017 became the most critical year in the takeout war. Meituan narrowed the adjusted net loss to 2.9 billion yuan. For the first time, the takeout business surpassed the liquor brigade, accounting for 62% of the total revenue. In addition, the gross profit margin of takeaway business turned negative for the first time, reaching 8.1%, which means the scale effect began to appear.

This is Alibaba and hungry you do not want to see the result. Without any choice, on April 2, 2018, Alibaba group, ant financial services group and famo jointly announced that Alibaba had signed an acquisition agreement, and United ant financial services completed a wholly-owned acquisition of emamo with a total of US $9.5 billion.

Swing and search

In an interview with the 21st century economic report reporter, the relevant person in charge of "hungry Mo" believed that the growth space of hungry market in the future mainly lies in two aspects: one is the increasing proportion of retail sales; the other is the improvement of digital ability to serve businesses.

"I decided to sell because of the pressure. Meituan and hungry? Only one family can grow bigger. Tencent supports meituan to comment, and you can only follow Ali. What's more, Ali still has its ecology in it. What we want to do is how can it be better for the company. " Deng ye said frankly, if you are hungry, it will be very difficult to work alone.

The original intention and starting point are not bad. However, for Alibaba, in 2018, it has been a long time to make great efforts to smash the local life.

As early as June 2013, Taodian was officially established. At the initial stage, it focused on ordering dishes, and then online ordering. After upgrading to the division in September of the same year, Taodian began to make efforts in the field of takeout, which was highly expected by the group.

"Taodian will do offline Taobao. At that time, Taodian had both point to point business and some takeout business, but it was not very good. Alipay's offline payment reached a peak of 8 million in December 2014. Ali saw the opportunity point and invested resources to do offline payment, so it incorporated Taodian into Alipay. At that time, there were two choices: one was to pay offline, the other was to do shop and take out. Offline payment has been seen clearly, which is a big opportunity point, and wechat payment is also making efforts. I didn't see the delivery and delivery clearly at that time. The advertising mode of group buying leading to stores, or the way of selling coupons, is not a very big business. Takeout is strategically late. " An Ali insider who had left his job resumed the process at that time.

In the second half of 2014, Taodian also participated in the subsidy war launched by several takeout platforms. Xu Haijun remembers that Taodian first settled in crazy restaurants, and each restaurant was given a subsidy of 400 yuan. BD became the most important promoter. Some BD could reach more than 20 restaurants a day. "A lot of Taodian's service providers, after receiving the list for 400 yuan, let the students run, and each student will give 100 to 150 yuan. At that time, our BD base salary was only 3000 yuan, and each restaurant was subsidized by 20 yuan. "

Only Taodian, after burning money crazily, is still faced with unclear variables. On June 23, 2015, the official microblog of womb announced its return, and the offline business resources and teams of Taodian and ant financial became the main force of womb.

However, the former Alibaba insider who has left said, "for a long time, word-of-mouth has almost become the largest ground push service provider of Alipay offline payment, and its purpose is to expand the scene of offline payment."

"It can be said that word-of-mouth has never made an independent choice. It has never existed as an independent company. At the beginning, it was to check and balance meituan and help Alipay grasp the offline scene. The early more than 300 team members were basically Alipay's offline business teams. " Another word-of-mouth business person who left his job now recalls with regret.

2016 was also a year of fierce fighting between Alipay and wechat payment, which also made it impossible for word-of-mouth to develop local life business independently, including store to store, take out, etc. "In fact, many attempts have been made in word-of-mouth this year, including smiling restaurants, outbound tours, online merchant membership cards, etc. However, all the basic ideas must be closely around Alipay payment. If you have any idea, you will be pulled back. " The source further revealed that in 2017, the keynote and focus of Alibaba will be shifted to new retail, and the status of word-of-mouth will also change accordingly.

At that time, the local life service to Alibaba was an ecological supplement rather than an independent "business". On October 12, 2018, the relevant person in charge of the wom platform told the 21st century economic news reporter that due to the different main user groups of the two apps, word-of-mouth and famo are different in business direction, they will still adopt the mode of independent operation.

On June 19, 2020, famo announced that all its business systems and database facilities have been migrated to Alibaba cloud. After the peak period of cloud service, famo can support 100 million people to order online at the same time. Hungry? And Alibaba are fully integrated, but the time window is not long.

The continuous adjustment of the internal organizational structure makes many Ali local life service staff feel at a loss. "Two teams, one is the style of professional managers, the other is the style of Founder team, it is very difficult to integrate. What Wang Lei brings are basically people who are Taodian, and Alibaba's organizational culture also needs to be adapted by the team. The latter pays attention to more practical things. " A former Ali local life middle-level personage disclosed that the refinement operation ability of the whole local life system was too poor, and the cost of an order was several cents higher than that of its competitors.

The teams are still running in. "I remember that in the past, when there was nothing on the document, I asked you to sign it. We signed it without looking at it. Because I believe that the company will not cheat me, is unlimited trust. And Xu Hao is not in the office every day. " Another hungry founder employee now recalls that the passion for starting a business may be hard to find in a new team.

In addition, Ali's decentralized layout strategy also shows lag. According to Yiguan data, in the first quarter of 2018, the market share of famo was 48.9%, and dropped to 43.9% in the first half of 2019, and has not recovered since then. Compared with the financial report, it can be found that from the third quarter of 2018 to the first quarter of 2019, Ali's local living service income has been stable at the level of 5 billion yuan. In the second quarter of 2020, the income of Ali's life service sector has increased to 7.11 billion yuan, while meituan's catering delivery business revenue has reached 14.54 billion yuan in the same period.

This means that the income of Ali's life service sector is less than half of that of meituan's catering delivery business.

"Ali is so powerful, it's also a river and lake. You can't ask for resources if you want it." A former executive, who just left this year, told 21st century economic reporter that the competition for local life services is phased or long-term. If we want to turn over the market in a stable state, we must have a big structural change to have the opportunity. "Even if the market share is 37%, there are still 20 million orders. Anyway, it's too early to say win or lose. The core still depends on the strategic focus of the group.

In this regard, the relevant responsible person in charge of the 21st century economic report said that the growth space of hungry market in the future mainly lies in two aspects: one is the increasing proportion of retail sales. In 2020, if you are hungry, you will upgrade. In addition to delivering meals, you will meet the immediate needs of more users, such as supermarkets, flowers, medicines, department stores, etc. Based on the offline distribution network, more goods can be delivered in half a day or an hour. The second is to improve the digital ability of business. It's not only takeout, but also serves offline business.

To be sure, the decline in takeout market share in the past was due to the unfairness of being acquired by Ali. The time is also the trend. This is the story of a group of young fighters fighting hard in the new decade of the Internet. Compared with Zhang Chaoyang, Ding Lei, Li Yanhong and many other rich predecessors in the last century, Zhang xuhao and Wang Xing did not have the myth of "getting rich overnight". Perhaps, the process of starting a business must go through the hardships that ordinary people can't bear. In their view, it's just a matter of suffering sooner or later. If we want to make a summary of this period of entrepreneurial history, Deng ye said that we have also defeated some competitors, big and small, but in the end we met a heavyweight opponent. "I feel like I've been playing promotion and finally I've reached the finals. I've put in enough efforts and the result has to be recognized."