The annual number of active buyers is 788 million, surpassing 779 million in Ali and 472 million in JD.COM. Pinduoduo has become an e-commerce platform with the largest number of users in China. In 2020, the cumulative number of new buyers exceeded 200 million, equivalent to half of JD.COM.
17 In March, when Pinduoduo released its financial report for the fourth quarter of 2020, its founder Huang Zheng announced an important decision: he resigned as chairman of Pinduoduo and was replaced by CEO Chen Lei.
At this point, Ma Yun and Liu, the founders of the "Cat and Dog Wars" (Ali, Pinduoduo) in the e-commerce market, all retired behind the scenes. Compared with Ma Yun, who knows his destiny, and Liu, who has passed the age of no doubt, the post-80 s retired earlier.
While the outside world is discussing why Huang Zheng has abruptly retired, another topic that is more critical to the industry competition is, what will happen to the three-legged e-commerce company headed by Fan Jiang and Xu Lei in the next decade after Chen Lei takes over as the chairman of Pinduoduo?
Last July, as chief technology officer, Chen Lei succeeded Huang Zheng as CEO of Pinduoduo. After more than half a year, Chen Lei was promoted to the position of chairman, and Chen Lei, who was born as a code farmer, was officially in command. Like the low-key Huang Zheng, before he took over as CEO of Pinduoduo last year, many people didn't know that he was a founding partner of Huang Zheng in 13.
From 65438 to 0996, four middle school students represented China in the International Informatics Olympiad and won the gold medal. Chen Lei is one of them, and his teammate is Sogou CEO Wang Xiaochuan. In 20 15, Huang Zheng launched two social e-commerce platforms, Pinhao and Pinduo, with Chen Lei as the technical director of Pinhao. A year later, Pinduoduo and Pinhao merged, and Chen Lei became the co-founder and CTO of Pinduoduo.
From CEO to chairman, Chen Lei's technical accumulation is his trump card in leading troops to fight, and he led Pinduoduo to win many firsts.
Q3 financial report in 2020 shows that Pinduoduo made a profit of 466 million yuan for the first time in a single quarter, which is the first financial report since he became CEO. In this Q4 financial report, the number of active buyers for many years reached 788.4 million, making it the first e-commerce platform for users.
No one knows algorithms better than the people who do them. Chen Lei led the research and development of distributed artificial intelligence technology in Pinduoduo. From the very beginning, Chen Lei designed Pinduoduo as a platform focusing on mobile experience, and later created the model of "Farmland Cloud Fight". There are 900 million farmers in China, which is obviously a large enough market.
However, Pinduoduo also realized that the user growth brought by the crazy10 billion subsidy will soon reach the ceiling after surpassing Ali.
Huang Zheng once said, "Pinduoduo can't escape Ali's suffering." .
The business model of burning money for users has low competition threshold and unstable user loyalty. How to increase user stickiness and improve user retention rate is a problem that Pinduoduo has to face.
Pinduoduo's financial report shows that its total operating expenditure in the fourth quarter was 65.438+07.0694 billion yuan. Among them, sales and marketing expenditure1471300 million yuan, up 59% year-on-year, mainly due to the increase in advertising expenses, promotion and coupon expenses. Compared with the same period last year, it was only 9.273 billion yuan. It can be seen that Pinduoduo keeps burning money in order to gain more users.
At the same time, Pinduoduo, which has been deeply involved in the sinking market for a long time, is trying to expand the high-end market. Previously, Tesla and Apple were accused of "touching porcelain", which triggered a heated discussion. Comparatively speaking, Ali and JD.COM have accumulated high-end brand cooperation for more than ten years, and it is difficult to upgrade their brands only by subsidies.
On the other hand, in the field of e-commerce, platform, logistics and payment are three important pillars. In addition to Tmall, Ali has Alipay, Three Links and One Reach, JD.COM has Jingdong Logistics and JD.COM Mathematics. Although Pinduo cooperates with Polar Rabbit, logistics and payment can't keep up with the development of the platform.
At the beginning of 20 19, Pinduoduo launched the electronic face sheet business, which is considered to be the beginning of Pinduoduo's layout in the logistics field. Previously, Pinduoduo had been buying and using rookie noodles. Last June, 5438+ 10, Pinduoduo CEO Chen Lei revealed that the average daily parcel volume in Pinduoduo exceeded 70 million, accounting for about one third of the country. In terms of logistics infrastructure, compared with Ali JD.COM, Pinduoduo is still in its infancy.
In the field of financial payment, in June 5438+10 last year, Pinduoduo got a piece of PayPal and got a payment license. In June+10 of the same year, he introduced many wallets. Originally, he planned to use the opportunity of CCTV Spring Festival Evening to cooperate with the red envelope of the Spring Festival Evening to attack "out of the circle". Later, due to Pinduoduo's reputation and image in the public opinion field before the Spring Festival, it was temporarily replaced, and the red envelope of the Spring Festival Evening was urgently replaced by Tik Tok.
Improving user stickiness and repurchase, building logistics and payment facilities, tearing off low-end labels and expanding high-end markets are the next challenges that Pinduoduo led by Chen Lei will face.
As Huang Zheng said in his letter to shareholders when he resigned as chairman of Pinduoduo, "Pinduoduo itself is still very young, with thick and long snow slopes, and there is still room for rapid growth for a long time, but if we want to ensure its high-speed and high-quality development after 10 years, then some exploration now is just the right time."
For Fan Jiang, who is in charge of three business segments of Ali e-commerce (Taobao, Tmall and Ali Mama), the internal and external challenges are not easy.
Before the scandal with Zhang Dayi broke out last year, Fan Jiang's career had been smooth and smooth, and he was once called "Prince Ali". Fan Jiang joined Google China after graduating from Fudan University. After successively holding the research and development positions of Google Maps and search quality, it is a success for young people to resign and set up Youmeng. Ali took Fan Jiang under his command after winning the alliance. In Ali 20 14' s "All in Wireless" strategy, Fan Jiang, as a core member, has contributed to the wireless transformation of Taobao.
In 20 17, Fan Jiang officially took over Taobao and became the president of Taobao. In 20 19, he also served as the president of Tmall, took over Ali's mother and became a partner of Ali at the end of the year. At this time, Fan Jiangnian was only 34 years old and was the youngest of 38 Ali partners.
After the scandal, although Fan Jiang was removed from the position of Ali's partner, he still kept his original position.
In the four years before he became the president of Taobao, Fan Jiang led Taobao to attack in the incremental market of e-commerce, making mobile phone Taobao the largest mobile e-commerce platform in the world and the content ecology of "super consumer media platform".
When the number of users is close to sideways, how to maintain strong growth to stabilize their advantages? Retain users in the limited stock market and increase their use time? These are all problems that Taobao must face. So last year, Taobao made a revision, strengthened the information flow recommendation mode of Taobao homepage, and moved closer to the recommended traffic.
In addition to catching up with Pinduoduo, Taobao also faces competition from short video traffic platforms such as Tik Tok and Aauto Faster E-commerce.
A year ago, Wang Xing, founder of Meituan, commented in a circle of friends, "In the next few years, we will see how Pinduoduo CEO Huang Zheng and Taobao President Fan Jiang compete. If Fan Jiang can win this battle, he is the worthy successor of Ali CEO.
Now, this competition has become a competition between Chen Lei and Fan Jiang. When the number of active users in Pinduoduo has surpassed Taobao, the battle has reached a critical moment.
Although Taobao and Pinduoduo have been active users for many years, Pinduoduo has maintained a user growth rate of 30% to 50% last year, while Taobao's data hovered around 10%. It is obviously not easy to make a new breakthrough.
It is worth noting that Ali plans to open a Taobao special edition applet on WeChat and open up a new traffic portal. The effect is unknown. It is not easy for Fan Jiang to lead Taobao Tmall to maintain its stable position in the field of e-commerce.
At an internal meeting, Liu once said to a group of executives, "Whoever refuses to accept me will refuse to accept me." Liu's words are enough to show Xu Lei's affirmation, but Xu Lei didn't let him down.
On June 18 last year, JD.COM went public in Hong Kong for the second time, becoming the largest IPO of Hong Kong stocks during the year. It turned out to be a gong instead of Liu.
Xu Lei, who insisted for a long time, was in charge of brand and product network promotion in Lenovo, and was the general manager of Ye Hao Network, the largest network marketing service provider in China. Later, the founder of Today Capital introduced him to Liu's people. 2065438+In July 2008, the first JD.COM shopping center succeeded Liu as the rotating CEO; 20 19 1 month, first appeared as CEO at the annual meeting of JD.COM Mall; In the same month, JD.COM Mall was upgraded to JD.COM Retail Group and became the CEO of the retail group.
Supply chain technology has always been the top priority of JD.COM and the moat of JD.COM. At the annual meeting of business leaders in China in 2020, Xu Lei once said that JD.COM is not an internet company or a virtual brokerage company, and JD.COM is positioned as a technology and service company based on supply chain.
It is urgent for JD.COM to gain more traffic while consolidating its supply chain advantages. An obvious change is that JD.COM in the Xu Lei era is getting traffic from the sinking market and moving closer to live e-commerce.
Unlike Pinduoduo's rising period, JD.COM has been desperately expanding the declining market. JD.COM's Q4 financial report in 2020 shows that the number of active users has increased by 1. 1 100 million, of which 80% of the new users come from the sinking market. This is due to the sinking market main force "Jingxi". On June 5438+ 10 last year, "Jingxi" was connected to the first-level portal of WeChat, and was upgraded from the business department to "Jingxi Business Group" on February 65438+February.
Meanwhile, JD.COM. COM's investment in the sinking market has gradually increased. After the Double Eleven last year, JD.COM You Xuan was launched, Meicai.com, a fresh platform, was acquired, and Qixian brand was established as a joint venture, which was in a favorable position to cooperate with China.
The super traffic attribute of live broadcast is obvious, and Xu Lei personally serves as the live broadcast platform. In May last year, JD.COM Zhongjun Yunjingtai real estate self-operated flagship store began to sell houses on the spot, and Xu Lei personally went out. In just 1 hour, the number of live viewers exceeded 4 million, and the turnover was 2.6 billion yuan. After the first show, Xu Lei's live broadcast became more frequent. On the eve of 6 18, He, Ma Dong and Theway opened their own refrigerators at the "Love Together" live party on 6 18. That night, 269.2 billion yuan was a new GMV record set by JD.COM 618.
It is worth mentioning that in May last year, the cooperation between JD.COM and Aauto Quicker was undoubtedly aimed at increasing traffic. It's faster in Aauto, and you can directly place an order in JD.COM. COM, while enjoying JD.COM. COM distribution and after-sales service. Xu Lei, then CEO of JD.COM Retail, said in a circle of friends: "Openness has a future, and you must take it first."
Xu Lei has tattoos, earrings, little suits and pink shoelaces ... which broke the stereotype of entrepreneurs. Last year, when he approached Shuang 1 1, he led his colleagues in the business line to talk about talk shows.
It can be seen that under the leadership of Xu Lei, JD. COM's gameplay has changed. It is more open, inclusive and younger. Followed by more eye-catching results. The financial report shows that in the fourth quarter of 2020, JD.COM's total revenue reached 224.328 billion yuan, up 365.438+0.4% year-on-year.
The market value has been surpassed by Pinduoduo, which is outside the Fifth Ring Road, and the gap with the old rival Ali is still not small. The e-commerce of automobiles and Tik Tok is booming. How did JD.COM get stuck in this traffic situation, deuex? This is a problem that Xu Lei needs to face.
Looking at the e-commerce in the past ten years, the basic dishes of Taobao are clothing and cosmetics, JD.COM. The basic dish of COM is 3C electric appliances, and the basic dish of Pinduoduo is agricultural products, forming a tripartite confrontation.
The new decade after the e-commerce giants changed coaches is also a war for a new generation of traders. In the end, who can win this "arm-wrestling" war and become the new king of e-commerce?
(Wang Wenhui Ying Xue Yujie Technology Planet)