Author 丨Lius
Editor 丨 Kang Xiao
Produced by 丨Shenwang Tencent News Xiaoman Studio
When Wang Huiwen and Gu Maolu dug Wang Puzhong out of Baidu takeaway in 2015, they may not have thought that the 84-year-old new force would take over him in the future and play a crucial role in the management team of the Meituan.
College roommates, entrepreneurial partners, on campus, rice, meituan, in the past ten years, Wang Huiwen's life and Wang Xing are closely intertwined, the two are not only "partners who work together to start a business and comrades-in-arms who fight side by side, but also lifelong friends who can collide ideas and dialogue with their souls".
Inside the Meituan, Wang Huiwen is known as the "Old King", from the group purchase, takeaway, travel, catering industry upstream and downstream, Wang Huiwen led a number of new businesses of the Meituan from scratch, and then bigger, and was recognized by the outside world as the most critical No. 2 person outside of the Meituan Wang Xing.
At the end of 2020, Wang Huiwen officially retired, and the identity of "No. 2 person" was handed over to Wang Puzhong, the youngest senior vice president since the establishment of Meituan.
From left to right, Mu Rongjun, co-founder and senior vice president of Meituan, Wang Puzhong, senior vice president of Meituan and president of Home Business Group, Chen Shaohui, CFO of Meituan, Wang Xing, founder and CEO of Meituan, Wang Huiwen, co-founder of Meituan, Zhang Chuan, senior vice president of Meituan and president of Zhidian Business Group, and Chen Liang, senior vice president of Meituan
This name is not as loud as Wang Xing and Wang Huiwen, but it is undeniable that after joining Meituan in 2015, Wang Puzhong worked all the way from the head of the takeaway business department to the president of the Home Business Group and the senior vice president of the group, holding the lifeblood of meituan takeaway - this is one of the core businesses of Meituan, contributing about 60% of the company's revenue.
Wang Puzhong pays attention to distribution, and he believes that in the next 5 years, the Internet retail market will change from "Everything Store" to "Everything Now", and the relationship and interaction between retail industry platforms, channels and brands will change.
In the later period, the home business group managed by Wang Pu has hatched the Meituan running errands, the Meituan flash sale, and the good goods of the meituan on the basis of distribution, which is given high expectations by the senior management, which means that in addition to catering, fresh, digital, flowers and other consumer goods can be delivered to home through the transportation capacity of the Meituan.
Wang Puzhong is fully responsible for these new businesses, and in 2021, he will personally lead the team to make good goods, accelerate the sinking, and point the sword at the base camp of Pinduoduo.
"Deep Net" understands that the evaluation of meituan's internal employees is "very grounded", majoring in software engineering, compared with Wang Xing, Wang Huiwen and other executives, although he is not a graduate of a famous school, but he is a practical player, and is one of the key figures who led meituan takeaway to win in important battles in the past.
In addition, the Meituan flash sale, meituan running errands, and good goods he is responsible for represent the future of meituan's new retail.
"Late" once quoted people close to Wang Puzhong as saying that he was good at communication, "Lao Wang (Wang Huiwen) has a very hot temper, and Puzhong is one of the few people in the US group who can communicate with Lao Wang in depth." However, Wang Huiwen expressed a different opinion on this evaluation, he believes that the reason is that "Wang Puzhong's ability is strong."
In a sense, Wang Puzhong and Meituan have achieved mutual achievements. In the early years, he immersed himself in the group buying and catering industry for many years, and successively participated in the early entrepreneurship of Yaza and Baidu takeaway, and was well versed in O2O play, and gradually formed his own methodology.
Those projects that he once participated in were blown into smoke in the wave of O2O, but Wang Puzhong achieved the goal of "all in vertical industries" here with his former competitors.
From 2 people to 1 million people
From managing 20 people when he first joined Meituan, and now managing the 1 million riders active every day on the platform, Wang Puzhong spent less than three years to complete the promotion of meituan's takeaway and delivery leaders to the president of the home business group and the senior vice president of the group.
Wang Puzhong first met Wang Xing in 2011. At that time, Wang Puzhong had just joined Yazuo, which was a startup that mainly made catering cloud, providing SaaS-based catering membership marketing services, which was an important part of catering O2O, and then got financing from Ant Financial in 2015, and fought jointly with Word-of-Mouth and Alipay.
At that time, the successful listing of Groupon, the originator of group buying, was like a stimulant, bringing infinite brightness to domestic group buying. The hand net, 24 coupons, and the US group divided the world into three parts, and burned the thousand regiment war with subsidies.
Wang Xing was very restrained, and later proved that it was precisely because the US group did not burn excessive money that it ensured a good flow of funds in the later stage, and thus successfully ran out. When he first met Wang Xing, Wang Puzhong was "deeply impressed" by him, and the intersection between the two began.
In 2013, after helping Yazuo get back on track from exploring failed businesses and achieving profitability, Wang Puzhong thought that the mission was completed and he was heartbroken.
At that time, when Baidu wanted to use the entrance of map traffic to realize O2O monetization, Wang Puzhong joined the business team of Baidu LBS Business Department to do O2O direction. He has operated Baidu's star project map car, and has also done catering, hotel reservations, and attraction ticket business, and has won the title of "Baidu Best Manager" in half a year after joining the company.
Baidu is just a transit station.
In the Spring Festival of 2014, the war of subsidies ignited the online ride-hailing industry represented by Didi and Kuaidi, and new entrants had no chance to speak of. After "deep reflection", Wang Puzhong "decided to be all in a vertical industry".
After the Spring Festival, with four product managers and two BDs from Baidu Maps, Wang Puzhong set up the earliest team of Baidu takeaway in a closed conference room.
"The strategy is very clear, basically there is no detour, and it has become a star project of Baidu O2O in half a year." The aftermath is that it suddenly becomes a big team and suddenly there are too many people paying attention. Wang Puzhong said later.
Also during this period of Baidu takeaway, Wang Huiwen often talked to him about some business problems, including solving countermeasures and his own confusion, and repeatedly poached Wang Puzhong. Although each has its own responsibility, the two can still maintain simple communication.
Wang Puzhong later recalled that during that time, he spent more time communicating with Wang Huiwen than with his boss.
After nearly two years, Wang Huiwen finally got his wish in April 2015 and dug Wang Puzhong into the US group.
Later, it turned out that Wang Huiwen's vision was very accurate. Wang Puzhong was responsible for products and some technologies in the early days of Meituan, and in the second half of the year, he was responsible for the takeaway business department, and the technical team originally brought to the team, and built the back-end system of Meituan takeaway.
In 2017, due to a major strategic mistake, Wang Puzhong's previous owner, Baidu Takeaway, was finally taken into the pocket by Hungry Mo after several difficult negotiations. At that time, the dream that could not be realized in Baidu takeaway was realized here by competitor Meituan.
Two odd moves
When Wang Puzhong was in charge of meituan takeaway, he did two important things: one was to lead the transformation to the white-collar market, and the other was to build a special delivery + distribution system.
Looking back, this not only plays a crucial role in expanding the scale of the market, but also brings more home-to-home scenarios for meituan - which may become a new profit point in the future.
2015 is a crucial year in the development of Meituan Takeaway. This year, Meituan Takeaway completed the transformation from the campus market to the white-collar market. Prior to this, although the Market share of Meituan Takeaway was large, it was not as good as the high-end Baidu takeaway in the white-collar market, when the unit price of Baidu Takeaway was 69 yuan.
In an earlier interview with Geek Park, Wang Puzhong mentioned that Meituan had long proposed to AI business analysis. This allows more than 2,000 cities across the country where Meituan Takeaway is located to provide practical improvement suggestions based on the basic understanding of the industry and combined with the current situation of their own business.
This mode of thinking is top-down. "Late" once reported that people familiar with Wang Puzhong commented that there was a strong "business sense". When the community e-commerce business started in 2020, he judged that Pinduoduo was the most powerful opponent.
Wang Puzhong is accustomed to using innovative diffusion theory to apply the development node and play rhythm of Meituan takeaway. The theory of innovation diffusion is one of the classic theories of the study of the effects of communication, proposed by the American scholar E.M Rogers in the 1960s.
Rogers likens the path of innovation diffusion to an S-curve in which there are innovators and early adopters in each product area, followed by more and more consumers adopting the product until product sales peak, and when there are few consumers left to adopt the product, sales begin to decline.
Wang Puzhong judged that 2015 was the first inflection point of the takeaway market ("Deep Net" note: market share of about 10%), entering a steep scale growth stage; when entering the peak inflection point of the S curve, it is time to talk about profitability.
Since the first half of 2015, Meituan has entered the white-collar market with high income, high consumption frequency and high unit price. By the end of the year, Meituan takeaway ranked first in the white-collar market share.
Nearly a year of white-collar market raids, the single monthly transaction volume of Meituan takeaway exceeded 2.3 billion yuan at the end of the year, and the daily order volume exceeded 3 million. Wang Xing personally announced the results.
The breakthrough of the white-collar market has brought an improvement to the overall plate. In the first half of 2015, meituan's takeaway transaction volume was 47 billion yuan, and in 2017, the transaction volume has increased to 171 billion yuan.
The market size of the original business has been opened again, what new value can be generated next? Wang Puzhong decided to focus on logistics distribution, expand business categories, and achieve "everything to home".
Since the first half of 2015, Wang Puzhong has built the Meituan Distribution Division, leading the delivery system of special delivery + express delivery, matching self-operated and crowdsourced.
Based on his previous work experience in the early days of Baidu takeaway and Meituan takeaway, Wang Puzhong is very concerned about delivery. According to reports, when Wang Puzhong switched from Baidu takeaway to Meituan, Wang Xing asked him how he was willing to make up his mind to come to Meituan takeaway, and Wang Puzhong replied that Meituan had to pay 2 billion yuan to do same-city delivery.
Wang Puzhong, senior vice president of Meituan and president of The Home Business Group, delivered a speech at the 2021 Meituan Flash Sale Digital Retail Conference
In 2017, Meituan went online meituan to run errands, went online for three weeks, and the growth rate was rapid; in 2018, meituan's distribution business layout flash sale, and now flash sale has become an important part of meituan's retail layout; in 2019, meituan will release Meituan distribution as a separate brand, and open up distribution capabilities, at this time, meituan's 25 million daily orders, there have been millions of orders from supermarkets, fresh foods, pharmacies.
Five years later, two battles
Wang Puzhong's internal promotion is very closely related to the important battles experienced by Meituan Takeaway in the past. To some extent, his joining the US group is "sending charcoal in the snow".
In 2015, six months after Wang Pu transferred to the Ustuan, Meituan Dianping officially merged, and the takeaway market pattern has since been completely rewritten, forming a temporary advantage.
Ali, who has coveted a local life for a long time, will not be indifferent, coupled with the gradual suspicion with the US group at that time, Ali turned around and chose to support the takeaway market.
At the end of 2015, Alibaba became the largest shareholder of Ele.me with an investment of US$1.25 billion, followed by another US$400 million in April 2017.
Taking a large amount of money, and having a giant as a backer, Hungry launched a fierce attack on the US group. A protracted subsidy began.
36Kr has reported that on the eve of the Spring Festival in 2016, Wang Huiwen, Wang Pu and other high-level takeaway executives of the US group held a meeting, and they decided to use subsidies to keep riders during the Spring Festival to ensure the transportation capacity during and after the Spring Festival.
At that time, Wang Puzhong believed that after the Spring Festival, it coincided with the peak of employment, and many people went from their hometowns to other cities to work. So the US group grabbed the time point and recruited riders in a big way, as long as this time to enter the company, there will be a bonus to take. This helped Meituan Takeaway restore full capacity before the Lantern Festival and open up its market share again in 2016.
At the end of 2016, Ele.me started a winter campaign to try to regain the market share surpassed by Meituan, but Meituan Takeaway strictly guarded against it; in the summer of 2017, Ele.me also tried to achieve a reversal through the breakfast business abandoned by Meituan Takeaway, and finally failed to achieve its wishes; until July 2018, it was wholly owned by Ali.
In terms of market share, Analysys data shows that in the first half of 2015, Meituan takeaway accounted for 41.24%, Ele.me accounted for 38.75%; at the end of 2017, the proportion of Meituan takeaway increased to 46.1%, and Ele.me dropped to 39.5%.
The battle between Meituan Takeaway and Hungry Mo lasted from the end of 2015 to 2018, and finally ended with Hungry Mo selling ali. Wang Puzhong was thus promoted to president of the Home Business Group and senior vice president of the group in January 2018.
After this round, the takeaway competition entered the second half. It seems that the US group takeaway has achieved a stage victory, but behind it is the beginning of the confrontation with Ali. The takeaway war is not over, and Wang Puzhong's mission has not yet been completed.
Wang Puzhong believes that takeaway is divided into three stages: from 2013 to 2016, the takeaway business will be run through and the business model will be verified; from 2017 to 2019, the business will be turned into a lifestyle, integrating catering, flowers, fruits, cakes, fresh food, etc.; the next step is to shape the entire industry. From a more macro level, the march to the whole industry means that there will be more intersection with Ali.
On the other side of the tension rope, Ali did not slacken off in the slightest. The acquisition of Ele.me is just the beginning of Ali's local life, and since then it has continued to increase and speed up.
In November 2018, Ali packaged Ele.me and Koubei to set up a local life service company, focusing on the two scenarios of takeaway and in-store respectively, to further consolidate local life.
This means that the local life service company and the plate within Ali's original ecosystem can produce synergy and linkage, and new retail, membership system, marketing, logistics, and finance can all open up to each other.
In other words, the enemies of the US regiment upgraded their armor.
In March 2020, in order to make the local life play more focused, Ali adjusted the integration of word of mouth and Ele.me to three business groups of home, store, merchant middle office and innovation, as well as three business departments of instant delivery, new retail and life services, and even the homepage of Alipay also added takeaway, hotel, supermarket and other entrances.
At almost the same time, Wang Puzhong returned to the front line to personally lead the takeaway business, which was regarded by the outside world as a battle against Ali.
Compared with the last time with Hungry Mo in the takeaway business, the battle five years later is more difficult.
In addition to the expansion of external competition with Ali from takeaway to retail, commercial supermarkets radiate all categories of local life, the takeaway business is still facing the problem of slowing down the growth rate under the influence of the epidemic.
Meituan's 2021 third-quarter financial report shows that the catering takeaway revenue was 26.5 billion yuan, which basically met market expectations, an increase of 28% year-on-year, but compared with the growth rate of 59% in the second quarter, it fell sharply.
The rate at which profits have fallen is equally staggering. After achieving a record high net profit of 2.4 billion yuan in the second quarter, the profit of food and beverage takeaway in the quarter was 870 million, a year-on-year growth rate of only 14%, and the profit margin also fell by 7.3% to 3.3% from the second quarter.
The next task of the new No. 2 person who has returned to the front line of takeaway will be more arduous.
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