Now the business of online car-hailing platforms is getting more and more expensive.
Not long ago, when Shichao took a taxi, it was found that AutoNavi quietly launched a second-delivery business.
The entrance is on the taxi page, click in and enter the address to help you deliver and pick up things, there are two options: two-wheel delivery and four-wheel direct delivery.
In fact, to put it bluntly, it is running errands.
Shichao tried, from the company to Hangzhou West Railway Station about 3 kilometers away, at least 11 pieces were sent, and almost 18 pieces were sent directly.
Interestingly, AutoNavi is not the first ride-hailing platform to do so.
In June this year, Didi also launched a similar Didi Express.
Could it be that online car-hailing platforms are now popular to engage in side hustles?
In fact, errands are not emerging markets that have emerged in the past two years.
Earlier, around 2014, Dada and Flash were established, and then, SF City and UU errands were launched successively, and Meituan and Ele.me also launched their errand businesses Meituan Errand and Hummingbird.
In recent years, the development of the local life business of large factories and the catalysis of the epidemic have added fire to the errand market.
Among these errand runners, they can be roughly divided into two main categories.
One is a comprehensive platform with its own traffic like Meituan and Ele.me, and the other is an independent third-party errand platform such as Flash Delivery and UU errands.
After so many years of development, the errand market has actually formed a relatively stable industry pattern.
According to iiMedia data, Meituan errands (60.1%) is the most commonly used errand brand by consumers, followed by Ele.me errands (29.8%) and flash delivery (27.8%).
In addition to these players, SF City, Dada Express, UU errands, etc. also followed, each guarding their own one-third of an acre.
It can be said that the current errand market is no longer a blue ocean, and it is even very rolled...
But Didi, AutoNavi, these online car-hailing platforms, still have to squeeze in one after another, what is the picture?
The errand market can be popular, naturally because there is demand.
I believe that everyone has more or less had such a situation: after going out, they found that important things were left at home, and the things they wanted to buy could not be bought on the takeaway platform...
According to iiMedia Research, 38.4% of consumers use errands to pick up and deliver items because they forget to bring their belongings, 37.3% of consumers use errands to buy things, and in addition, the demand for queuing (26.7%) and delivering documents (19.2%) is also gradually increasing.
The demand for multi-scenario, non-standardized, and scattered needs such as errands is not so frequent compared to takeaway, but it is also a market that cannot be underestimated.
According to statistics, the market size of the mainland errand industry has increased from 1.3 billion yuan in 2018 to 13.1 billion yuan in 2021, and the market size has increased tenfold.
From the perspective of the supply side, the entry of online car-hailing platforms into the game also provides the possibility of win-win for all parties.
Everyone should also know that taking a taxi on AutoNavi has always been a third-party travel service provider to provide capacity, and what AutoNavi does is just to match users with these service providers.
In the matter of running errands, AutoNavi also copied the same routine as online car-hailing: aggregation.
AutoNavi is connected to Ele.me's Hummingbird errands, SF City and UU delivery, and the four-wheel direct delivery is estimated to be an online car-hailing service on the platform. In other words, AutoNavi does not need to set up transportation capacity in person, so it quickly integrates industry resources to enter the errand market.
Similarly, Didi Express also adopted an aggregation model, which was connected to Dada and Flash as soon as it was launched, and then cooperated with SF Express in the same city and Flash Express, and even aggregated the aggregation platform Malt Field, which aggregated multiple errand service providers, which can be called an errand version of Matryoshka.
This asset-light model has saved a lot of operating costs, and you must know that self-built capacity has always been a "hard injury" for errand service providers.
Taking SF City as an example, the financial report shows that from 2019 to 2022, SF City's labor outsourcing costs will be 2.111 billion yuan, 4.860 billion yuan, 7.918 billion yuan, and 9.634 billion yuan respectively, accounting for more than 90% of the operating costs.
The high labor cost has caused SF to lose money in the same city year after year, and it has just turned around in the first half of this year.
At the same time, the aggregation model cleverly avoids head-on conflicts with third-party errand service providers.
Although AutoNavi and Didi Express seem to be doing errands, they are not in direct competition with these errand platforms.
The online car-hailing platform comes with its own traffic, and the errand service providers such as UU errands and flash delivery can use the online car-hailing platform as a new traffic entrance to gain more users.
In addition, it is also a way for ride-hailing drivers to make money.
In April this year, the online car-hailing regulatory information interaction system received a total of 706 million online car-hailing orders, a decrease of 1.4% month-on-month. However, the number of drivers who have obtained a ride-hailing driver's license has risen to 177,000.
The result of more wolves and less meat is obvious.
In general, AutoNavi and Didi are entering the errand market, on the one hand, out of the consideration of demand growth, and on the other hand, they are also looking for new increments with the help of the advantages of aggregation platforms.
Finally, as we mentioned earlier, although the scale of the errand market is large, it is scattered and random for each order, and these orders are divided by different errand service platforms.
So from this point of view, aggregation may be the way out for errands, and there is nothing wrong with AutoNavi now engaging in errand aggregation.
It's just that online car-hailing will inevitably burn money to subsidize the errand market, but compared with other discounts for breaking bones at every turn, the discount of Gaode second delivery this time is not particularly large.
In addition, the second delivery did not push the stream on the homepage, and there is a high probability that AutoNavi is still testing the water this time, and it will be more appropriate to see it as a small puzzle piece for AutoNavi to expand the travel ecology.
What can be confirmed is that the entry of online car-hailing platforms has once again pushed the entire errand industry in the direction of aggregation.
But there may be a question mark over whether this business model, which has proven successful in ride-hailing, can be perfectly replicated in the errand market.