As the game of capital and resources enters a white-hot stage, the competition in the automotive aftermarket is becoming more and more fierce, how can Tuhu Car Tell a different story?
Wen 丨 BT Finance You Li
Recently, a number of media have focused on reports that Tuhu Yangcheng intends to be listed in Hong Kong, once again pushing this automotive aftermarket platform to the cusp of the storm.
Looking back at 2021, the keywords of the investment market must not escape the hot projects such as meta-universe, new energy, and car manufacturing. When the giants are in full swing to open up new battlefields, how should the helpless and limited strengths live on their own? Tuhu Car seems to give a good answer.
As a car maintenance platform serving the automotive aftermarket, Tuhu has received 9 rounds of financing since its establishment in 2014, and not long ago there were media reports that Tuhu Yangche, which is supported by star investment institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Sequoia, Tencent and Hillhouse, is seeking financing at a valuation of $4 billion. According to people familiar with the matter, Tuhu is expected to raise at least $200 million in the new round of financing, and will consider going to Hong Kong or the United States for an IPO in 2022.
Although it was subsequently denied by Tuhu Car, it can still be seen from the expectations of the capital market that investors are optimistic about the online car service model. Song Chunyu, senior partner of Lenovo Venture Capital, mentioned in his speech at the WISE2021 King of the New Economy Summit that technology-enabled consumer industries and emerging consumer brands are business models worth paying attention to, which is why they invested in Tuhu Yangche.
However, as the game of capital and resources enters a white-hot stage, the old Internet giants such as JD.com and Ali and professional players who focus on auto parts such as Zero Run and SAIC Are laying out the automotive aftermarket field.
Tuhu wants to sell cars?
According to the information on the official website of Tianyancha, Tuhu Car was established in 2011, and its main business is tires, oil, car maintenance, car beauty and other businesses, and it is a B2C e-commerce platform that specializes in car after-sales services. As of October 30, 2019, Tuhu Has completed 9 rounds of financing, with a transaction amount of about US$450 million in Series E financing led by well-known investors and enterprises such as Tencent, Carlyle Capital and Sequoia Capital, and participated in the follow-up investment by old shareholders Yuanyi Capital, Qiming Venture Capital and Goldman Sachs.
The interval between the two subsequent rounds of equity financing is only two months, and the amount and valuation of the financing have not been disclosed, which is believed to be a symptom of listing. In fact, since 2020, rumors that Tuhu will be listed have not stopped.
The financial community quoted Blue Whale Financial News as saying that in July 2020, Tuhu Yangche successfully built a VIE structure, that is, Variable Interest Entities, which is usually regarded as a transitional means for domestic entities to achieve overseas listing, and is more commonly used in the venture capital circle.
A more popular example comes from Zhihu, and some insiders said that Zhihu may return to domestic listing, and one of the evidence provided is the plan to dismantle the VIE structure. People in the investment industry said: "With the VIE structure, domestic companies can achieve overseas IPOs under the premise of meeting local regulatory requirements. Over the past two decades, this structure has become a common tool for Chinese companies to go public in the United States. ”
Although there were constant rumors that Tuhu Yangche was promoting the equity pledge process, at that time, Tuhu Yangche only responded: "The VIE structure was built to optimize governance, the company has sufficient capital reserves, and there is no listing plan." The habit of keeping a tight mouth has been followed to this day, and after the latest listing, Tuhu Yangche responded with "I have not received the relevant notice from the company." ”
Compared with the low-key restraint of Tuhu Car, the investment community is more concerned about its listing process. This is actually not difficult to understand, first of all, the existence of Internet platforms such as Tuhu Car has effectively hit the consumer's demand for convenient and cheap vehicle maintenance. Wei Yuan, a car enthusiast, once said that whether it is in a repair shop or a 4S shop, he has stepped on a lot of thunder and encountered many pits before. The advantage of Internet car maintenance is that the schedule can be booked, the price is more transparent, and the service is guaranteed. After the trial, he said that he was used to maintenance and modification in the Internet car store, "The technicians in the shop have good skills, few routines, and the most important thing is to understand the car." ”
According to the latest data released by the Ministry of Public Security, as of September 2021, China's motor vehicle ownership is close to 400 million, of which cars account for 76.2%, and the corresponding asset value exceeds 30 trillion yuan. At the same time, the number of motor vehicle drivers is 476 million, including 92.14% of car drivers, which shows that China is a well-deserved automobile consumer. The services derived from the automotive category are naturally of exceptional value.
However, Tuhu also has its own problems, and the lack of layout of the new energy sector is very critical at present.
In 2021, Huawei, Baidu, Xiaomi and other Internet manufacturers have cross-border car manufacturing, the new energy industry has been identified as the next gust of wind that will blow in the capital market, and there are only a lot more people in the beach market. Upstream car manufacturing is hot, downstream business will inevitably bear its benefits, Founder Securities analyst Duan Yingsheng said: "The previously weak profitability of the new energy industry chain is expected to improve, while deriving some emerging business areas." "Maintenance, vehicle sales business belongs to the field that Duan Yingsheng is optimistic about, if Tuhu car is not replenished in time, it will inevitably appear weak when competing with tmall car and Beijing car club.
Perhaps aware of the problem, Tuhu Yangche established Xinxiang Yuhu Information Technology Co., Ltd. in August last year, and its business scope involves auto parts wholesale and new energy vehicle sales. Some people in the technology community believe that although this can bring greater imagination to Tuhu Car, the laying and performance of the supply chain are challenging, and from this perspective, the uncertainty has not been eliminated.
A place where soldiers must fight
In addition to the industry iteration that requires Tuhu to innovate and adapt, the newly added opponents are also coveting the position of Tuhu car.
In October 2021, JD.com launched the "JD Auto Parts" APP, which focuses on the omni-channel B2B trading platform, and the app introduction said that the APP comes from Jingdong Group to empower the automotive aftermarket and provide distribution and retail business.
It is understood that this is not the first time that JD.com has laid out the automotive aftermarket. In 2017, Jingdong announced its entry into the automotive after-sales service market, and in the first half of 2020, it directly faced the "58 yuan fully synthetic maintenance package" promoted by The Anti-Tuhu Car in the Zhengzhou market with the "100 yuan maintenance package" of the Beijing Automobile Association. At that time, the development of 100-yuan service projects was also accompanied by Alibaba's Tmall car and car enjoying home relying on SAIC Group, and for a time there was smoke and smoke, and the weaker opponents were either squeezed out of the field or enlisted, making the competition a wrestling field for the giants.
According to data, as of September 2021, the scale of Tuhu car app users exceeded 70 million; Tmall car franchisees nationwide more than 24,000, more than 1,500 stores have been opened; and more than 1,000 Beijing Auto will also sign up to join the opening. Although In terms of professionalism and concentration, Tuhu's strength in car breeding is deeper, Ali and JD.com, which are big and big, also have their own advantages.
Liu Chang, who has long been concerned about JD.com, proposed that JD.com has won a large number of brand fans for JD.com with high net worth and trustworthiness as the label in the e-commerce industry, and the double guarantee of speed and quality accumulated over the years has won JD.com. As we all know, the key to determining the life of the car is the quality of the factory, the second is the fine degree of maintenance, three points with seven points of the car in the minds of most consumers is still a valuable product, they usually pay more attention to maintenance and care, but also more willing to choose a famous, large-scale brand.
Liu Chang said that this is actually the advantage of all large factories, "car owners tend to choose stores with high popularity, large scale and professional service when choosing car service stores, with brand endorsement support, it will be easier to get the trust of car owners." ”
In addition, JD.com's brand effect not only plays a role on the C-end consumer side, but also when facing B-end suppliers, JD.com's reputation usually improves their bargaining power, which is very thorough in the use experience of JD auto parts APP. According to the description of experiencers, the Jingdong Auto Parts APP covers a number of auto parts commodity categories, and it is not uncommon for suppliers of large brands to settle in.
Liu Chang said: "JD.com and many well-known auto parts manufacturers have reached cooperation, which can ensure the quality and authenticity of spare parts products from the source; Jingdong's strong logistics and warehousing capabilities can be used as support during the transportation process, and the operation efficiency of auto parts is also guaranteed." ”
If JD.com and Ali are blatant, then the existence of new car-making forces is eroding the cake in silence. Some people engaged in automobile research and development pointed out that electric vehicles do not require maintenance compared with fuel vehicles, and a series of chemical reaction processes of fuel engines from intake jets to ignition exhaust are very complicated, which leads to the failure rate of fuel vehicles being naturally higher than that of electric vehicles.
The energy conversion process of electric vehicles is relatively simple, and a car company sales pointed out that electric vehicles only need to routinely check the system once every 10,000 kilometers, and do not involve equipment replacement and complex professional maintenance processes. Fewer maintenance times, reduced replacement frequency of auto parts affect the profitability of Tuhu car, the new energy industry is in the initial stage, so that the profit space is greater, in order to grab traffic, subsidies to obtain customers in order to let consumers patronize their own stores is not difficult, so that the window period left for Tuhu will only be narrower.
Can there be a good business in the subdivision category?
It's not entirely a bad thing that there's competition on the track and opponents, on the contrary, it proves profitable from another aspect.
Analysts engaged in mobile Internet product analysis believe that the development of the automotive field so far, vertical categories have been divided into very fine, including automobile violations, automobile information, automobile trading, after-car services, car owner services and other industries.
According to Analysys Qianfan's "Special Analysis of China's Online Car Owner Service Market 2020", the e-commerce model of after-car service of online transaction and offline service collaboration has become an important form of the maintenance market, and the lack of transparent maintenance process and lack of objective comments on offline stores for reference are always user pain points that need to be solved.
This is the same as the real estate transaction market in the past. The chaotic price scale, the erratic service quality, and the difficulty of intermediary strength are the characteristics of the real estate market before the Internet platform joined, but with the passage of time, the layout of enterprises such as Chain Home, Shell and Settlers has changed the situation, and many people in the investment community believe that it can even be said that the existence of Shell and the ACN model it implements have promoted the standardized development of the entire real estate market. In this way, the digitalization of the supply chain has great potential for the maintenance market.
According to the data, the "after-car service" represented by "Tuhu Car" has an overall monthly active number of 9.1913 million people in July 2021, and the number of active people in the "owner service" of "Nissan Zhilian" and other car manufacturers in the same month is 5.6824 million, and the difference in magnitude between the two is nearly double.
Compared with July 2019 before the impact of the epidemic, the number of active users of after-car services increased by 33.88%. As of July 2021, there are four automotive information platforms in the top 10 active apps in the automotive field, two platforms responsible for driving learning and auto tools, as well as Tubu Yangche, which represents sub-category after-sales services, and Guazi used cars that cultivate auto trading.
Compared with car information, the user time and frequency of car maintenance and transaction are weaker, so the list of Tuhu car breeding and melon used cars undoubtedly means that the market segment is hot, as long as it is what the user thinks, there is always business to do.
Of course, the automotive aftermarket is still an immature and imperfect format so far. According to the "Research on the Development Strategy of China's Automotive Talents", the demand for talents in China's auto industry is growing year by year, and it is expected to exceed the mark of 5 million people in 2022 and reach 7.76 million in 2026. Not only requires excellent professional quality, but also the pursuit of a superior service attitude of the automotive aftermarket is particularly urgent.
The addition of Internet manufacturers, the extension of the service chain of car giants, and the new maintenance requirements brought about by the popularity of new energy vehicles are all variables that can be seen in the development of the automotive aftermarket, and in this era of change, there will inevitably be more unpredictable influencing factors.
Tuhu's deep cultivation in the automotive aftermarket has laid a foundation for it, but how long can the country be defended? How to better meet the needs of the world? How to break through the profit point as much as possible in a limited time? Answering the above questions requires not only time, but also firm, error-free action.
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