Hello "iteration"

Turning the blade towards themselves, the survivors of the shared mobility war completed another self-revolution.

On April 25, "Hello Travel" made a big move, announcing the removal of the word "travel", upgrading the brand to "Hello", and launching a new brand slogan of "Accompanying Life Every Day".

For a company that already has national recognition, brand iteration can be called a "thrilling leap". But for Hello, this step is particularly important, which means a new stage of development for the company's transformation from a mobility platform to a professional local travel and life service platform.

Founded in September 2016, Haro has gradually expanded from a single shared bicycle business to two-wheel shared services such as Haro mopeds and four-wheeled travel services such as Haro ride-hailing and Hello taxis, as well as emerging local life services. In more than five years, Hello's brand has also completed two major upgrades, and its vision is getting wider and wider.

For the recognition of the company's boundaries, Yang Lei, founder and CEO of Hello, once had such a judgment: in the business environment of the master, it is difficult for any company to live small and beautiful in a small track, either to make itself a super comprehensive platform, or to sell itself. He also confessed, "I'm used to playing bad cards so I can stay hungry." Therefore, Hello has always lowered his center of gravity and charged into the unknown as a challenger.

This article attempts to answer the following question: What does it mean for Hello to renew the brand image? Since the company's inception, what challenges has Hello completed? This time a new challenge, what are the odds?

There are fewer words, and the pattern is bigger

Although the new brand name is only two words, it is a decision made by Hello in the past five years with step-by-step exploration.

From the very beginning of Hello Bicycle to Hello Travel, the company has grown from a shared bicycle company to a mobile travel platform with diversified businesses; after more than three years of precipitation and breakthrough, this time, Hello Travel has "abandoned" travel and aimed at the larger world.

Specifically, the new brand logo follows the traditional blue main color, but replaces the graphic "H" with the word "Hello". It is worth noting that Hello's new brand font adopts a rounded rectangle with a "smile on the mouth". Some users left a message for the first time and asked, "Did you spend money?" And Hello replied, "There is no million design, nor is it a change of loneliness, they do it themselves."

The intention of this change is to focus the user's attention on "Hello/Hello" itself, showing a warm, high-spirited and cordial brand image. In Yang Lei's eyes, brand upgrading is not limited to the change of name, "more implying that Hello will use more reliable products and more intimate services to bring users all-weather companionship."

Users are the foundation of Hello's survival. As of April 25, 2022, Haro's registered users exceeded 550 million, and the products and services launched include Haro Ride, Hello Electric Vehicle, Xiaoha Power Exchange, Hello Ride- ride-hailing, Hello Ride-hailing and Hello Car Rental, etc., with diversified business and increasingly clear layout.

For what the company wants to do in the future, in March 2020, Yang Lei said in an interview with Hurun Report, "Hello's positioning is definitely not to be a shared bicycle company, let alone a two-wheeled travel company, Halo also has a bigger idea, that is, to become China's next generation of platform enterprises." At present, this brand upgrade is a solid step towards a bigger idea.

Hello started from sharing bicycles, this business has long been its pillar business, but Yang Lei has long wanted to understand the truth that it is difficult to support a single tree, he has made a preset, that the sharing bicycle business in the Hello travel business is best to account for only 10%, the rest of the share should be handed over to the new business.

In his mind, there is a constantly rotating flywheel, the initial traffic from the shared bicycle after the input, thereby promoting the growth of other new business, the new business more and more, the flywheel will be bigger and bigger, faster and faster, feeding back all businesses including shared bicycles, so as to achieve a healthy cycle of growth.

Today, the flywheel is showing signs of acceleration. The data shows that in the past 2021, Hello's new business has grown strongly, and the overall revenue has achieved dozens of times of growth, and its proportion in the overall business is further close to that of shared bicycles.

Among them, the rapid development of new businesses represented by electric vehicles has supported the high growth rate of revenue. According to the data, by the end of 2021, The omni-channel sales of Halo electric vehicles exceeded 600,000 vehicles, and the cumulative expansion of more than 3,000 facades was the leader in the industry. At the production end, Hello has completed the production capacity layout of the two major production bases in 2021, and realized the transformation of "intelligent manufacturing-oriented real economic development".

In terms of four-wheel business, Hello Taxi adopts a combination of self-operation and platform opening, and its current service scope has covered more than 200 cities across the country; the total number of orders completed by Hello Downwind Travel, which has been established for more than 3 years, has reached 300 million, and the number of certified car owners has reached 18 million.

At the same time, Hello's two-wheel power exchange brand "Xiaoha Power Exchange" has completed multiple rounds of financing in the past two years, and its business has landed in more than 300 cities across the country. It is worth mentioning that the car rental business, which has only been online for less than 1 year, has become the "new force" with the first growth rate of the car rental platform.

Challengers trained by hunger

Although the word "travel" was removed from the brand this time, whether it is Hello or its founder Yang Lei, they are all strong teams and sharp soldiers in the field of travel.

As Yang Lei said, when Hello was born, the cards he held in his hand were indeed not good. In April 2016, when he rode a shared bicycle for the first time in Shanghai and was surprised to admire that "this idea is too good", the shared bicycle market has already killed the two giants of Mobike and Ofo, both capital and users, are rushing towards them.

At that time, Yang Lei only wanted to find a way for his team to live, and he did not think too much about how bloody the war ahead was. Almost all investors have asked Yang Lei, how do you win against Mobike and Ofo. And more than one told him that the world only remembered the story of the first and second places, but Haro stubbornly went out of his way.

From the first car launched and the first city entered, Hello was a challenger posture, but if he wanted to face it without the support of a large amount of capital, he also lost the opportunity in time and had no chance of winning.

"I know they've raised a lot of money and the coverage is overwhelming, but we're very strong in the application of technology." Yang Lei told the media that 90% of the more than 200 employees in the initial period of Hello Travel were technical personnel, whether it was the underlying Internet of Things technology foundation, or the operation and operation ability of the middle connection, or the various businesses grafted at the front desk, which made him full of confidence in the fact that he would do the sharing of bicycles.

In just one year, Hello Bicycle has completed 30 million registered users, 100 cities stationed, and successfully promoted to the front-line camp of shared bicycles. In the end, with the innovation of technical layout and model, the "latecomer" Hello became the "survivor" of the smoke dissipation of the shared bicycle war, and used the results to tell the market how a player who started so far behind could complete the counterattack while still leaving its name in the public mind for a long time.

In this process, Hello has not encountered difficult moments. Around the Spring Festival in 2017, Yang Lei was once faced with the situation of not being able to pay wages. The bad card here is not a reason for judgment, but an incentive to take another step forward and rewrite fate. In order to keep the company alive, he even thought about providing technical services to Ofo to make money.

But it didn't take long for the whole market to drop. According to media reports, ofo, who was in a desperate situation in 2018, once contacted Hello to discuss mergers, but Was rejected by Hello.

"Keeping hungry" is the answer given by Yang Lei after crossing the war and trough. Sometimes, it is the hunger that creates the desire to win, a little more than the opponent, and the victory will be on your side.

Hello has not stopped at the success of the bicycle business, starting from 2019, Haro has successively explored some new businesses, successively launched travel service businesses such as hitchhiking, small Ha power exchange, taxi, etc.; in 2021, it is also an active entry into the household electric vehicle industry. In addition to travel, it also includes new businesses such as lesser-known hotels, attraction tickets, and express delivery.

Each successful hunt in the new business has accumulated grain and grass for Hello's next new exploration, and has also given the commanders at the table the greatest confidence.

It turns out that the cards in Hello's hand are getting better and better. In 2021, Hello received multiple rounds of financing and completed financing of 500 million US dollars during the year. In the two rounds of financing last year, Hello received the first shares of CATL and Ali respectively. In addition, many well-known investment institutions such as Ant, GGV Jiyuan Capital, Becoming Capital, Fosun Group, Primavera Capital and Greater Bay Area Fund have formed a luxury investor front.

Hello is no longer the most questionable character at the beginning, it has run out of tomorrow for itself. It's just that from the present point of view, tomorrow is far from an end, and Hello is still on the road.

Let the right seeds take root and sprout

"After years of business exploration, Hello has established the development direction of 'travel-based inclusive life service platform'," Yang Lei revealed, "Hello" new brand carries the company's vision of accelerating the construction of "travel + local life" service ecology and long-term deep ploughing in the field of life services.

What you can see is that the flywheel is still spinning.

Over the past year, Haro's user structure has undergone quite a few meaningful changes. According to the data, among the more than 500 million users of Hello, the proportion of users who have used two or more services has increased from 34% at the end of 2020 to 40% at the end of 2021. This also means that the business synergy and penetration of Hello multi-scene have been further improved, and the flywheel effect has gradually emerged.

The reality to be seen is that whether it is a two-wheel shared service, a four-wheel travel service or an emerging local life service, Hello has so far faced more than one competitor. In addition to the field of shared bicycles, when Hello enters almost every track, it will also face "soul torture": competitors are earlier and more senior than you, do you still have a chance to enter the field at this time? If so, how can you win?

Yang Lei's past successes are either humbled as "lucky" or attributed to "insisting on doing the right thing." Choosing to compete in non-first-tier cities in the sharing of bicycle wars, or decisively transforming from a single bicycle company to a travel platform, all show the importance of direction selection.

This time, Hello still wanted to gamble. Even if it is difficult to compete with strong enemies, it is necessary to plant the right seeds in order to hope that it will take root and sprout and blossom bright flowers.

Taking Hello Hitchhiker as an example, since the pilot in six cities including Hangzhou and Chengdu in January 2019, the cumulative total mileage of downwind travel has reached 20.2 billion kilometers. Through the sharing of tiny empty seats again and again, the travel of individual private cars and other trips has been reduced or replaced, and carbon emissions have been reduced by about 4 million tons. In the peak consumption season of "Golden Nine Silver Ten" in 2021, the daily transaction volume of The Hello Ride-hailing Platform exceeded 100 million, becoming the first business of Hello with a daily trading volume of more than 100 million.

The hitchhiking industry has experienced many accidents and twists and turns. In order to provide users with more compliant and safe travel protection, Hello Ride has completed tens of millions of car owner face verifications in 2021 alone, permanently banning more than 50,000 owners with abnormal comprehensive backgrounds and rejecting more than 730,000 users with abnormal identities. In addition, before, during and after the trip, Hello Ride has established a sound supporting mechanism and system, with a total of 294 safety products or measures launched, and manual and intelligent customer service intervenes more than 70,000 times a day on average. At the same time, Hello Ride has linked up with the dynamic car background review of the public security departments of many cities and regularly implemented travel safety education.

Another example is the Official Entry into the Halo Electric Vehicle Business of its own brand in July 2020. Prior to this, the intelligent track of domestic two-wheeled electric vehicles has poured into many players, according to Hello, it has created the industry's first VVSMART super-networked car machine system by defining hardware in a software-defined way.

Through the hyper-connection between the mobile phone and the two-wheeled electric vehicle, Hello can realize the keyless car, induction start, and create a mobile content and service platform to truly realize "loading the car into the mobile phone". Throughout 2021, Hello Electric Vehicle launched three fully self-developed models, namely A80, A86 and B80.

A key factor in judging whether seeds are planted correctly is soil, and in China, shared motorcycles are a fertile enough soil. The CITIC Securities report pointed out that by 2025, the sales scale of smart cars in China will reach 7 million, while the market size of Chinese motorcycles is expected to exceed 50 million in 2023.

Public data show that the number of electric bicycles and motorcycles has reached 400 million, and there are 46 million increments every year, and two-wheeled electric vehicles are the preferred means of transportation for 80% of the people, which also gives Haro the most direct data support for entering the two-wheeled electric vehicle market.

After the makeover, Hello is still speeding up. This time, will it be able to outperform time and obstacles and create a counterattack miracle again?