Chen Liang, senior vice president of Meituan's entrepreneurial team, recently resigned

Text|Dong Jie Editor|Qiao Qian, Yang Xuan

36Kr learned from a number of independent sources that Chen Liang, senior vice president of Meituan and member of the S-team, the highest decision-making body, has recently resigned, and his current status on Meituan's intranet has been shown as leaving.

Many insiders were not surprised by Chen Liang's departure. As early as the internal adjustment at the end of January last year, Chen Liang had detached from the front-line business and began to focus on organizational construction and strategic research.

At that time, an insider close to Chen Liang told 36Kr that "Brother Liang is already preparing for retirement, and he has been thinking about it for more than half a year." According to 36Kr's understanding, in the past year, Chen Liang has gradually faded out of Meituan's daily operation and management, and no longer participates in the company's specific affairs.

Chen Liang joined Meituan in 2011 and is a junior high school classmate with Meituan CEO Wang Xing, and has created business with Wang Xing and Wang Huiwen. In 2011, after Taofang.com, which he founded with Wang Huiwen, was acquired by Meituan, Chen Liang and Wang Huiwen and more than ten other people joined Meituan.

During his 12 years at Meituan, Chen Liang has been responsible for mobile, wine tourism, fresh food and community group buying, and is the core pioneer of Meituan. Many insiders described him as "elegant and calm, but resolute and combative." In the OTA field, he "grabbed food from the hands of industry leader Ctrip" and successfully expanded Meituan Wine Hotel, which is Chen Liang's most praised stroke in Meituan.

Some insiders described Chen Liang as good at "following good practices and capturing people's hearts". In the community group buying war that began in the second half of 2020, Meituan was the latest to enter the game, but as the person in charge of the selection, he pulled up a team of nearly 10,000 people internally in a short period of time and launched an impact on giants such as Didi and Pinduoduo.

At the beginning of the war, when Pinduoduo and Didi relied on low prices to run crazy, Chen Liang repeatedly emphasized internally that "the essence of community group buying is retail, and the basic skills of supply chain and performance must be laid first", until now the quality and performance of Meituan's preferred goods are more recognized by the industry.

In October 2021, Meituan integrated its businesses such as Preferred, Kuaidonkey, and Grocery Shopping, and established a G-Team (Commodity Group), with Chen Liang as the team leader. However, three months later, Chen Liang handed this responsibility to Guo Wanhuai, vice president of Meituan, in the adjustment.

After Guo Wanhuai took over, the Preferred Business Group also entered the adjustment period, withdrew from a number of regions with poor performance, and completed multiple rounds of personnel optimization. An insider told 36Kr, "In addition to Chen Liang's own idea of retiring, as a pioneer, he is also more suitable for the process of business from 0-1." ”

In 2022, Meituan Youxuan began to gradually get rid of the label of community group buying and transform to "Tomorrow Dayup Supermarket", which achieved 120 billion GMV in 2022, almost no year-on-year growth, "The improvement of UE is not obvious, and the internal concern is declining", a Preferred employee told 36Kr, "Xingge has not asked about this business for a long time." ”

If Chen Liang is included, this is the fourth member of Meituan's highest decision-making body, S-team, to leave in more than two years. Previously, many generals, including Meituan co-founder Wang Huiwen, senior vice presidents Guo Bin and Liu Lin, retired or left Meituan.

At present, the members of S-team also include CEO Wang Xing, co-founder Mu Rongjun, President of Home Home Business Group Wang Puzhong, President of Zhidian Business Group Zhang Chuan, CFO Chen Shaohui, Head of Preferred Business Group Guo Wanhuai, and General Manager of Meituan Platform Li Shubin.

After Wang Huiwen retired, Meituan ushered in the battle of community group buying. With the fade out of many core executives last year, a number of Meituan executives, including Wang Xing, have taken on more work. The heads of the Meituan platform, Al platform, and basic R&D platform that originally reported to Wang Huiwen also turned to report to Wang Xing; After Guo Bin left, Zhang Chuan also took over the cycling business department, overseeing the three businesses of stores, wine hotels and cycling.

At the moment when Chen Liang left, Meituan faced more embattled surroundings. The erosion of Douyin's local life and takeaway fields has gradually made Meituan nervous, and last year's GTV after Douyin's local life write-off reached 1/8 of Meituan's stores, and this year it has set more aggressive goals internally.

According to 36Kr, because the share of in-store arrivals in some cities began to be caught up by Douyin, at the beginning of the year, Meituan's in-store catering employees have started intensive front-line research work, "I haven't felt such a strong pace of work for a long time, and weekends are almost non-stop", an insider described it.

In the community group buying track, Meituan Youxuan is also being thrown off by Duoduo Grocery Shopping, which reached 180 billion GMV last year, 1.5 times that of Meituan Youxuan, and the overall cost is more than 5% better than Youxuan. It is reported that in Shandong, Hubei, Guangdong, Jiangxi and other regions to buy more vegetables have achieved UE positive.

Wang Xing has put forward a set of "difficult theory" internally, that is, the path of human growth is - have fought, won, fought hard battle, won hard battle, and if you look at the business cycle, the core senior management within Meituan has almost completely completed this path.

Before Wang Huiwen retired, Meituan had begun to set up a middle and senior management development department, which was led by Mu Rongjun, co-founder of Meituan, mainly for middle and senior managers of Meituan, overseeing cadre training and development, selection and transfer, evaluation and assessment, and incentives. However, with the gradual fading of the older generation of executives, Meituan's talent system has more or less appeared a fault, except for Zhang Chuan, who joined in 2017, and Li Shubin, who joined in 2019, there are not many capable talents cultivated within Meituan.

In the past 10 years, Meituan has repeatedly proved its fierce combat effectiveness to the outside world, but in peacetime, this label seems to be weakening. The weakness of the community group buying campaign has begun to make the outside world question whether Meituan's "combat effectiveness is still there".

In today's complex competitive environment, it is time for Meituan to show its toughness again, which not only tests the leadership ability of the management, but also has the confidence of the outside world in Meituan's business.