From the perspective of market growth alone, Uber definitely wants to return to China, but there are many difficulties.
First of all, the biggest difficulty is how to cater to domestic supervision. At present, the network security department investigates Didi, strengthens the supervision of its data security and establishes stricter standards. In the short run, this has brought difficulties to Didi, but in the long run, this is a huge restriction for Uber. The best way for Uber to return is to unite with the local Meituan and Gaode taxi.
Secondly, the competition in the domestic tourism market is hellish. Didi has been fighting for many years, and there are almost no decent opponents. The share of Meituan and Gaode is very small. The domestic market is the basic disk of Didi, and it is also the support point of Didi's market value. The biggest significance of Uber's return is to lock in the growth of Didi.
However, Uber's current main direction is profit, and it has no intention of fighting money again. If it is not absolutely necessary, it will never choose to return to China.
It can even be said that whether there is still a battle between Didi and Uber depends not on Uber, but on Didi. After all, Didi hit Uber's heart.
In April 2020, Cheng Wei announced the "0 188" strategy, that is, to realize the global daily service 1 100 million orders within three years; The penetration rate of domestic travel is 8%; Global service users MAU exceeds 800 million.
In the case that the domestic market is saturated, Didi's daily orders are still less than 60 million, so nearly half of the remaining orders must be obtained from overseas.
Didi took a relatively radical internationalization road, which obviously moved Uber's cake.
Looking at it now, Didi's road to the sea is probably like this.
First of all, before 20 18, it was basically the investment layout. In the battle between Didi and Uber, Cheng Wei thought of a tactic of "playing octopus" in an emergency. Didi went out to sea passively, and with its own investors, invested in American Raffles, Grab in Southeast Asia and Ola in India, which pushed Uber back and opened the road of Didi's internationalization.
Especially in markets outside the United States, after the first three investments were completed, Didi successively invested in Taxify in Europe, Careen in Dubai, 99 in Brazil and other companies.
Cheng Wei once quoted a sentence: "Alexander has been to Moscow, Napoleon has been to Moscow, Hitler has been to Moscow, but no one has conquered Moscow."
Behind this sentence is actually a sentence in the domestic internet circle: "ebay has been to China, Google has been to China, and Amazon has been to China, but no one has won this site."
Internet companies in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Latin America have never beaten the United States at home, while Internet companies in China have never lost.
While bringing them capital, Didi has been instilling in them the belief of boycotting Uber. Later, Grab led by Malay Chinese Chen was defeated, making Grab the largest unicorn company in Southeast Asia.
After 20 18, Didi went out in person, starting from developing countries and regions with cheaper human resources.
In June 5438+10, Didi acquired 99, the largest online car in Brazil, and launched smart transportation business in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Qiu Guangyu is the CEO and also the general manager of the whole Latin American region; Although Qiu Guangyu was born in investment banks such as Morgan Stanley and Bain Capital, he has rich experience in Uber operation. When he was in charge of the Didi special car business, he always rushed to the forefront of Uber competition and personally went into various Uber tactics.
In April, Didi entered Mexico and launched Didi Express in toluca.
Prior to this, Uber's market share in Mexico was close to 90%, and its revenue contribution was huge.
After the drip arrived, the subsidy war began immediately, with low prices on the client side and rewards on the driver side. As a direct result, the commission rate has also dropped to 65,438+00%, which is 65,438+05 percentage points lower than Uber. I even tried to put the driver service center and Uber directly in the same building, and finally gave up because of the obstruction of the other party, but the relocation address was also in the neighborhood next to Uber. As a direct result, drivers lined up in front of Didi, but Uber disappeared.
However, the tourism market is a dangerous place, and its biggest feature is that it is easy to attack and difficult to defend.
We can calculate an account: from a less rigorous point of view, the travel war is a subsidy war. If the original owner of a market has a share of 90% and the attacker has a new share of 10%, then the defender will spend 9 times the cost to align every time the attacker subsidizes 1 yuan.
From the cost point of view, the attacker is always in an advantage until the share is averaged. The only way to play this kind of war is to "step by step", avoid Armageddon, fight alone in various markets, form advantages, then open up new battlefields and gradually infiltrate.
Didi is particularly aware of this. After reaching the 30% share target, it will pull the price to the same level as Uber, and then attract customers by improving services and operations. Didi has always maintained the initiative.
As the saying goes, "it is better to lose a son than to lose a son first." Didi loves neither war nor siege. After gaining a firm foothold, he immediately went south and entered the online car market in dozens of countries, including Chile, Colombia, Peru, Costa Rica, Panama and Argentina. In the online car market of hundreds of cities in Latin America, Uber's share was eaten.
On the team, compared with Uber's favorite special forces combat, that is, three employees in a city, they call the background support when they encounter major events; Didi chose to be deeply integrated with the local area and built an operation team of 1500 people in Latin America, 90% of whom were local employees.
After the success of the Latin American model, Didi moved to Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Africa.
In May, 20 18, Didi began to operate in Melbourne, and later announced the establishment of a headquarters in Melbourne on June, 20 10 to manage the operation of Didi in Australia and New Zealand.
Prior to this, Uber had spent six years educating the market and responding to laws and regulations, and finally turned ANZ into a profitable area with stable market, high customer unit price and friendly laws and regulations.
Didi quickly occupied about 14% after landing, with 75,000 drivers and10.5 million active users in 28 cities including Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane. Didi was even called "D-Day" by local newspapers during the trial operation in Geelong.
Didi's expansion in Europe is generally from east to west, from north to south, and Russia in Eastern Europe ranks in the forefront.
However, Didi has encountered Uber's dilemma in the past: taking a taxi is a luxury service in many countries, and the platform can attract more users through subsidies. However, as a resource-rich country, taking a taxi is a very cheap thing in Russia, and there is no room for big international companies to fight price wars. Even Yandex. The first local company taxi can only occupy 27% of the market.
Uber entered Russia in 20 14, but it only lasted for three years and ended hastily.
Didi's commission in Russia is only 5%, but it still can't attract enough drivers. After barely opening the city, you can only see the fruits of intensive cultivation.
From here, we can roughly see a trend. Uber's advantage lies in its technical and system support, but its localization ability is still weaker than Didi's, so Didi can always grab a share from Youbu.
Didi touches Uber across the river, where Uber can eat, Didi can eat, and where Uber can't chew, Didi is hard to swallow.
Recently, Didi has set up a team responsible for the European market, which will serve the vast western Europe including Britain, France and Germany, and the recruitment work in Europe has also started.
If Didi continues to increase its offensive in Europe, Uber's core interests in overseas markets will be greatly threatened. Even in the face of many difficulties, it is not impossible for Uber to return to China in 2023.
But Uber without Kalanick, is there any fighting power? Uber's takeaway business proves the power of professional managers.
In fact, Uber Eats was originally Kalanick's idea. In those years when Uber was highly sought after by capital, many people thought that he would surpass Google and Facebook. One of the reasons is his idea of super everything. Freight, express delivery and take-away are all within his scope.
In 20 14, when Karanic contracted the Presidential Suite Command and the Didi Battle in Hong Kong, Uber began to try a food distribution business called Uberfresh in Los Angeles, mainly providing users with lunch and dinner packages. Who would have thought that this became a lifeline for Uber later.
On 20 15 12, Uber Eats was officially launched as an independent application, and entered a period of rapid expansion, and began to expand sales teams in various cities. In fact, at this time, American takeaway applications such as Postmates, Grubhub and DoorDash have made great progress, but Uber Eats still has its own advantages.
On the one hand, it is the accumulation of technical operations. Uber's surveying and mapping cities and planning routes on the online car are all reused; On the other hand, Uber naturally has a huge food delivery group, and 2 million Uber drivers can be the best takeaway brothers; Then there is ecological support. For many food delivery staff who don't have cars, they can even ride Uber bicycles for short-distance food delivery.
From this perspective, the online car service seems to be naturally coupled with the takeaway business, and Didi actually plays like this.
20 17, 17 On February 4th, Meituan piloted taxi service in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, and established a taxi business department with more than 200 employees, which quickly realized the daily order volume of 654.38+10,000.
In June+February of that year, Didi Takeaway Division was exposed by the media. At that time, the industry decided that this was an excuse for Didi. However, judging from the business logic of Youbu Dining, it seems that Meituan is the defensive side, but the way is preemptive.
20/kloc-in March, 2008, Didi launched take-away business and spread coupons in nine cities including Wuxi, Nanjing, Changsha, Fuzhou, Jinan, Ningbo, Wenzhou, Chengdu and Xiamen. A meal is even a few cents cheaper. On that day, Wuxi's order volume exceeded 330,000.
But the two sides obviously have no intention of entering the subsidy war. Meituan's taxi service was quickly closed, and Didi also shifted the focus of take-away business to the international direction, with take-away business in Brazil, Mexico and Japan.
Perhaps because there is no local market as the basic dish, Didi takeaway has not yet become a climate.
20 17 After Karanic stepped down in June, Dara Kosrosasi, who was born in Iran, took over. Dara Kosrosasi led Expedia to achieve a six-fold increase in market value, which was highly anticipated by Uber executives.
2065438+In May 2009, Uber went public at the issue price of $45, and then fell below the issue price, and even fell to $30 billion at the lowest.
Kosrosasi had to learn from a painful experience and began to lose weight and save himself. On the one hand, he laid off a quarter of his employees in a month. On the other hand, he sold the loss-making business and then devoted himself to the take-away business with better income.
In 2020, affected by the epidemic, uber taxi's business declined by 70%, and Uber Eats surpassed the taxi business in revenue for the first time, reaching $654.38+$02 billion.
In July of the same year, Uber completed the acquisition of Postmates, the fourth largest takeaway company in the United States, for US$ 2.65 billion. The number of Uber Eats stores has greatly expanded, and its share price has risen by 10%.
According to the data of Uber's financial report in the first quarter of 20021year, Uber's total orders were 195 billion US dollars, of which only 6.8 billion US dollars were online car service and the other two thirds were take-away business. It can even be said that Uber's current market value of 97 billion US dollars is mainly supported by takeaway.
Kosrosasi is equivalent to creating another Uber besides Uber, and Uber under the management of professional managers is still full of fighting capacity.
During Kalanick's period, Uber had a "super-pumping" standard when recruiting employees. China translators translated two versions, the elegant version was "ambitious" and the popular version was "chicken blood". In a word, it is a very exciting and enterprising state.
However, when Cheng Wei came to the poker table again, another person had changed his face.
2065438+March 2007, Karanic had a fierce quarrel with Uber driver while taking a taxi, which was recorded and spread on the Internet. This video caused an uproar in the United States. After that, former Uber employees began to compete to expose Uber black material.
In this case, Uber executives must find a way to get rid of Kalanick. They took three measures: first, to establish an independent board of directors against Karanic; second, to draft hundreds of pages of documents to expose Karanic's illegality and force him to leave; The third is to introduce Softbank investment and recover Kalanick's super equity.
After that, Uber's president, public relations director, financial director, director of autonomous driving department, senior vice president of engineering, director of artificial intelligence laboratory, vice president of map department, vice president of global automobile project, president of Asian business, vice president of product and growth, etc., followed Kalanick's entrepreneurship, and more than ten executives left.
20 19 after the failure to grab the CEO candidate, Kalanick, who was completely disappointed, sold all his shares in Uber, cashed in $2.5 billion and left without taking any position in Uber.
On May 6, 2020/KLOC-0, Uber CTO Pan announced his resignation. Since then, Karanic's entrepreneurial team has been completely emptied, and the corporate culture of "super pumping" has been deleted and replaced by "customer first".
Uber has become a thorough professional manager company.
In terms of actual management, Uber is dominated by professional managers. In fact, Didi is also dominated by professional managers. After all, Cheng Wei himself will not go into battle in person. It is precisely because the founder totem is still there that Didi's wolf nature is indeed far better than Uber.
However, it is not enough to be wolf. The Uber team that has undergone rectification is relatively perfect in management, while Didi Company has defects in its governance structure and needs at least one major adjustment.
In recent years, Didi has fought overseas, seeking new growth points, accumulating experience, polishing the team and preparing for another decisive battle with Uber.
Although Didi and Uber are far apart from each other, they always have knives in their sleeves and keep an eye on each other so as to attack and counterattack at any time.
For Didi and Uber, they don't have to have winners, but they must not be losers.
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