Hungry Mo word of mouth was exploded and laid off Ali's local life

Economic Observation Network reporter Feng Qingyan On January 4, 2022, the whirlpool of public opinion on the layoffs of the big factory fell on ali's local life. On this day, according to market news, Ali's local life is about to start a round of sharp layoffs, and the layoffs involve almost all business lines of Ele.me, including regional branch personnel, excluding third-party riders.

In this regard, the economic observation network reporter asked Ele.me and Ali officials for verification, and the Ele.me official told the Economic Observer Network reporter, "The news is not true, we have no so-called layoff plan, and we have made a clear plan for the next step of development." The relevant person of Ali Group said that the official reply was subject to the reply of Hungry Mo.

Caught in the layoff storm

The Economic Observer Network reporter asked a Hungry Rider in the Beijing area about the situation, and the rider said that he had been a rider on the Hungry Platform for more than two years, belonged to the crowdsourced rider, and did not know about the layoffs of Hungry Mo.

For the layoffs of Hungry Mo's reputation, an industry insider close to Hungry Mo told the Economic Observation Network reporter that Hungry Mo was laying off employees, but she did not know the specific circumstances of the layoffs, and another industry insider told reporters that the scale of layoffs was not large, and it should be similar to the business optimization and adjustment of recent large factories. "This is not unusual, in the past year, hungry adjustments have been very frequent."

Cui Lili, executive director of the E-commerce Research Institute of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, saw that Ele.me's market share has not been very high, especially in the area of evaluation and word of mouth. "Ali's business line has experienced rapid expansion in previous years, and it is bound to shrink in the economic downturn and strong regulatory market environment." Cui Lili analyzed the reporter of the Economic Observation Network.

Ele.me is a takeaway platform that was acquired by Ali in April 2018, and in October of the same year, Ali established a local life service company, merging Ele.me and its original reputation into this company to form a local life service platform. In July 2021, Alibaba launched a new round of organizational upgrading, and the local life service platform, together with AutoNavi and Fliggy, formed a life service sector, which was managed by Yu Yongfu on behalf of the group and reported to the chairman of the board of directors and CEO of the group Daniel Zhang.

Pressure on market share

Along the way, Ali can say that he has done his best for Hungry. Not only did it support Ele.me's acquisition of Baidu Takeaway in August 2017, but alibaba directly spent a huge amount of $9.5 billion to acquire Ele.me, and then merged it with word-of-mouth, and later Ali let Alipay help the local life service platform.

The past decade has been a decade of soaring size for the entire takeaway market. On August 27 last year, the 48th "Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet Network" released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) showed that as of 2021, in less than ten years, the market size of China's takeaway industry reached 664.62 billion yuan, an increase of 30 times. Online users grew from 0.63 million to 456 million.

But the result of Ali's support for Hungry Mo was not ideal. In 2017, when Ele.me and Baidu Takeaway merged, it was its highlight moment. According to Bida Consulting's 2017 Q1 takeaway market report, Ele.me has a market share of 36.5%, Meituan takeaway 33%, and Baidu takeaway 17.3%. After the merger is completed, Ele.me + Baidu takeaway market share exceeded 50%.

However, after that, Ele.me's market share began to decline, from 55% to 50% to 48%, 43%, 40%, 38%... According to the data compiled by the Prospective Industry Research Institute in July 2021, the transaction volume of the takeaway platform accounted for 26.9% in Q1 2020, and the Ele.me star selection accounted for 4%. This phenomenon was also asked on the intellectual, "Why did the market share of Ele.me decrease after Ali acquired Ele.me?" ”

Cui Lili also saw this phenomenon, she told the Economic Observation Network reporter that now everyone's dependence on the US group is getting bigger and bigger, especially the selection of restaurants, the choice of restaurants is also a natural dependence on the choice of takeaway, plus the red envelopes and other subsidies of the Us group takeaway are also very strong. "I feel that if there is not much change in the model or service, it may be difficult for Ele.me to regain market share."

Cui Lili also said that Ele.me is a company born in Shanghai, and companies born in Shanghai often have more than enough creativity, but they are not wolf-like, and their execution and ambition in attacking the market are not enough. "In fact, it is the same within the Meituan, Dianping, which was originally a start-up enterprise from Shanghai, could not match the original business line of the Meituan within the Meituan." Cui Lili said.