Ma Yun returned, Yu Yongfu withdrew: Gaode map could not alleviate Ali's anxiety

Investor.com

2024-05-13 18:05Published on the official account of Shanghai Investor Network

"Investor's Network" Wang Jianfan

There are five products with more than 700 million monthly active Internet users in China: WeChat, Douyin, Taobao, Alipay, and AutoNavi Map.

Behind the AutoNavi map, it has always been led by the same leader - Yu Yongfu.

In 2014, Alibaba acquired UC, and Yu Yongfu, then chairman of UC, became a partner of Alibaba. In the same year, Alibaba spent $1.45 billion to buy AutoNavi Map.

In 2024, Alibaba Group CEO Wu Yongming issued an all-staff letter saying that Yu Yongfu will step down as his chairman and CEO of Local Life Group on March 31.

This is the tenth year that Yu Yongfu has joined Alibaba, and when he handed over power, Yu Yongfu was only 48 years old.

Yu's exit didn't cause much of a stir, and the public's attention was clearly more concerned about Jack Ma and Tsai's reflections on Alibaba.

With the slow turn of Alibaba's sprawling ship, a change in the position of a manager seems to be just one of many reforms. However, behind the scenes of this series of changes, there is the helplessness of AutoNavi Map.

"Ali Prince" Yu Yongfu withdrew for the second time

At the end of March 2023, Jack Ma suddenly returned to China and embarked on the largest transformation of Alibaba since its establishment, dividing it into a "1+6+N" system according to the scale and maturity of its business.

At the same time, Daniel Zhang's powers and responsibilities were gradually decentralized, and the transfer of power was completed within half a year. Tsai Chongxin and Wu Yongming took over the positions of Chairman and CEO of the Group from Daniel Zhang, respectively, marking the founding team's full control of the company.

A year later, Jack Ma concluded, "We made a decisive and clear choice about what we wanted and what we didn't want."

Perhaps no one expected that the first person to be abandoned was Yu Yongfu, who had always been deeply believed by Ma Yun and was once called "Prince Ali". He stepped back from the core of the company's power and returned to eWTP for the second time to do investment business.

In 2017, Yu Yongfu took a step from Gaode to take charge of the newly established Dawen Entertainment Group. Due to the performance did not meet expectations, less than a year later, he left the position of chairman of Dawen Entertainment Group and joined the newly formed eWTP investment team. Between 2018 and 2021, Yu Yongfu rarely appeared in public and gradually faded out of public view.

However, in 2021, with the merger of AutoNavi, Fliggy, and Ele.me into the new local lifestyle segment, Yu Yongfu was once again recalled to take reins of the local lifestyle business, and at its peak, Yu Yongfu was in charge of almost all of Alibaba's non-e-commerce businesses.

From returning to being marginalized again, it was only three years.

"It's too fast, didn't you just come back?" This is the first reaction of many Alibaba employees when they hear about this personnel change.

Dominate AutoNavi, from the edge to the lead

AutoNavi has always occupied a special position in Yu Yongfu's career. This is not only the home of his passion for technology, but also the field where he has really invested in his entrepreneurial passion since joining Alibaba.

The story of Yu Yongfu and Gaode Map is a two-way journey.

Only one month after joining Alibaba, Yu Yongfu was appointed to integrate AutoNavi in a critical manner. When he took over, AutoNavi signed a VAM agreement with Alibaba Group, which included "achieving 200 million daily active users within three years".

At that time, AutoNavi's DAU (number of daily active users) was less than 10 million, and the domestic map navigation market was almost completely monopolized by Baidu Maps.

Time waits for no one, and under the heavy burden, Yu Yongfu quickly sorted out the business and won considerable management autonomy from Ma Yun.

In terms of management, he shelved Alibaba's inherent hierarchical management culture, and all decisions were guided by business needs. In addition, AutoNavi under the leadership of Yu Yongfu set up a 100-person project team to set up a performance bet, for which the team members gave up three years of incentive compensation.

Strategically, Yu Yongfu made a bold move and formulated a new strategic direction for AutoNavi: focusing on user needs, committed to creating the best map navigation products, and focusing on the research and development of map navigation technology. He also publicly wrote that AutoNavi will remove advertising and focus on map navigation.

The first concrete action he took was to terminate AutoNavi's O2O (online-to-offline) business.

The decision was risky at the time, especially at a time when the O2O boom in China's internet industry was on the rise, with Baidu's Robin Li even announcing that he would invest 20 billion yuan to develop O2O.

However, with Jack Ma's support and Yu Yongfu's firm reverse strategy, AutoNavi has gradually shown its edge, and compared with Baidu Maps, which is constantly expanding its O2O business and is becoming increasingly bloated, AutoNavi has gained a significant advantage in user experience.

Yu Yongfu won, and the DAU of AutoNavi Map increased by more than 100 million, reaching 280 million at its peak, successfully surpassing Baidu Map and becoming the industry leader.

However, Alibaba's original intention was to build AutoNavi into a core platform for local life services. As its leading position in the navigation market is increasingly consolidated, Ali's burden on AutoNavi is getting heavier and heavier.

The growth dilemma expected by Ali's "super" APP

At this time and then, in 2021, Yu Yongfu, who has returned to the mountain, will no longer talk about only focusing on map navigation.

On the contrary, he said that "the map is the best carrier of the whole real world", and he hopes that AutoNavi can use a map to carry food, clothing, housing and transportation, so that users can not only refuel and recharge on the map, but also find food destinations and book hotel tickets, becoming another super APP for local life.

Analyzing Alibaba's financial report for the fourth quarter of 2023, in the three years since Yu Yongfu returned to the helm of AutoNavi, it has adopted a more active capital investment strategy, vigorously entered the online car-hailing market, integrated word-of-mouth, wine and tourism and other in-store businesses, and is committed to strengthening the competitiveness of local life.

Now, when you open the AutoNavi Map APP, the homepage not only provides navigation, but also covers a dazzling array of services such as taxis, hotel reservations, peripheral tours, eating, drinking and playing, as if it wants to become the second "Meituan".

However, despite the rapid expansion of AutoNavi's map business, it is still not profitable.

Analyzing its business logic, in addition to advertising occupying the main source of revenue, AutoNavi's commercialization strategy focuses on the local life field, which is divided into two main paths: one is to develop the aggregate online car-hailing business and catch up with Didi; The second is to expand into store services and compete with Meituan. 

According to relevant media reports, people close to AutoNavi said that AutoNavi is currently mainly concerned about taxi services, and nearly half of its employees are engaged in this business. In 2022, AutoNavi Taxi will be profitable for the first time and become the leading aggregate taxi platform in the market.

However, although AutoNavi is positioned as an aggregation platform, it is closer to traditional online car-hailing in practice, so it often faces regulatory challenges and fines, and the final direction is still unclear whether it will end up with a license or continue to grow savagely.

In this context, although AutoNavi's in-store business is highly anticipated by Alibaba, its development results have never reached the expected level.

Although AutoNavi's daily active users are on par with Meituan, and Alibaba has mature merchant resources, whether it is the "AutoNavi Dianping" launched in 2020, the "Soaring" combination of geolocation services jointly created with Fliggy and Ele.me in 2021, or the integration of word-of-mouth in 2023 to unify Alibaba's local life in-store business, the results are mediocre.

In this regard, the general view of industry analysts is that AutoNavi's integration logic is not clear. "Map tools should not be used as the main traffic entrance for in-store business, and Meituan's rise is not based on map services. From the perspective of tools, AutoNavi should focus on guiding users to reach the destination accurately, rather than attracting traffic through coupons and other means, which is not in line with the functional positioning of a tool software. ”

Clearly, AutoNavi is feeling the pressure to grow in his local life.

From the early launch of the controversial feature of "Racing Circle", to the direct "competition" for the field of brother departments in November 2023, the "AutoNavi Second Delivery" intra-city errand service was launched. In April this year, AutoNavi tried to promote paid co-branded themed car models, but it caused misunderstanding and controversy around paid navigation services.

Although the attempts are frequent, the market is not buying it. On the contrary, there are many business lines within the Alibaba system, and the boundaries of competition and cooperation between teams are blurred, and it is difficult to form effective collaboration.

With a money-burning business on the one hand and a loss-making business on the other, AutoNavi is in a dilemma and can only seek to reduce costs and increase efficiency in ride-hailing services while bearing regulatory pressure, so as to continue to support the expansion of its local life business.

However, when reducing costs and increasing efficiency has become the consensus of the industry, the increasingly bloated products and increasingly vague positioning seem to have become their helpless choices.

With the continuous "weight gain", the map of AutoNavi became more and more bloated, gradually deviating from its essence as a "tool", and gradually evolved into the appearance that Yu Yongfu had tried to avoid.

Write at the end

In that year, when Alibaba acquired UC, Yu Yongfu and He Xiaopeng joined Alibaba at the same time. However, the torrent of time washed away their common footprints, leaving behind two very different paths

Three years later, He Xiaopeng chose to leave and devote himself to the new energy vehicle industry. And Yu Yongfu chose to stick to Ali.

The fates of the two former fellow travelers gradually diverged. Xiaopeng Motors, founded by He Xiaopeng, has risen rapidly, not only successfully listed on the New York Stock Exchange, but also completed the "redemption" of Ali this year.

At the same time, although Yu Yongfu has always been favored by the outside world, he has never been recognized by the core power level within Alibaba, and finally left his beloved Gaode again.

The time given to Yu Yongfu is too short, and Gaode's problem is still difficult to solve. (Produced by Thinking Finance)■

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