China Times (www.chinatimes.net.cn) reporter Song Jie chen feng reported in Beijing
Ride-hailing never seems to be calm. Just when Didi was quietly preparing for the IPO, Shouqi Ride-hailing finally ushered in financing again after more than three years.
On March 18, the Beijing Equity Exchange publicly disclosed that the amount of Shouqi Ride-hailing's financing round was 2 billion to 3.1 billion yuan, and the company's diluted shares did not exceed 20%.
The company temporarily changed the coach at the time of financing, and Gao Jie, general manager of Shouqi Group, took over the position of CEO of Shouqi Ride-hailing. On the same day, Gao Jie accepted an interview with a reporter from China Times and publicly talked about the financing matter for the first time, saying that the company will seek to go public after completing this round of financing.
Series C financing has been listed
According to the listing financing information, the amount of shouqi ride-hailing in this round of financing is 2 billion to 3.1 billion yuan, and the company's diluted shares do not exceed 20%.
It is worth noting that the financing plan of Shouqi Ride-hailing shows in the column "Involving non-public capital increase" that "state-owned and state-controlled or state-controlled enterprises increase capital".
A senior capital market analyst told the "China Times" reporter that this shows that there is another part of the financing of Shouqi Ride-hailing that has not been disclosed, which is related to the capital increase of existing state-owned shareholders, and similar situations generally include cash capital increase or debt resolution.
Gao Jie did not directly reply to this question, he only said that "the landing plan after the financing was confirmed by the board of directors and also recognized by investors." ”
Although he is still reluctant to disclose more information about this round of financing, it is difficult to hide his excitement, saying that the funds come from state-owned assets, financial institutions and PE. At the same time, Gao Jie further said that the investors of the C round of financing were introduced as war investments, which will achieve better development space for Shouqi Ride-hailing. After the completion of this round of financing, Shouqi Ride-hailing will seek to go public.
In Gao Jie's view, Shouqi Ride-hailing can get this round of financing, which is related to always adhering to compliance, and "compliance" is also the word he mentioned the most in interviews.
He said that the existence of non-compliant vehicles in the current market is a historical problem, but compliance is the trend of the times, and other companies are also increasing the proportion of their own compliant vehicles. "Compliance should be the bottom line of enterprises, illegal enterprises will not last long, customers will not recognize, and the capital market will not recognize."
New rivals join the market
The other side of the coin is that the cost of adhering to compliance is relatively high, which is one of the reasons why Shouqi Ride-hailing has been established for 6 years and has formed a debt. It was not until April last year, five years after its establishment, that Shouqi Car announced that the company had achieved an overall positive gross profit nationwide.
Therefore, shouqi car's expectations for this round of financing are not difficult to understand, after all, the last round of financing was already in 2017, and they have waited too long.
In terms of industry, according to the information of Tianyancha, Didi Chuxing has carried out 21 rounds of financing in the past 8 years since its establishment, accumulating 21 billion US dollars in financing, which can be described as a large financing household. But since 2018, the amount of financing has also fallen sharply, dwarfing the previous multi-billion dollar high-light scale.
Gao Jie told reporters that after several years of development in the online car industry, the total plate has appeared relatively saturated on the supply side, the industry has entered the finishing period, and capital has also had a more cautious understanding of it, which is directly reflected in the reduction of hot money.
"Relying on burning money to subsidize users and drivers to obtain more traffic is a faster model in the initial period of enterprises, but it is not sustainable in the long run, and Shouqi Car has also made corresponding adjustments in the later stage." Gao Jie said.
However, the strong enemy Didi was temporarily at peace in front of him, and there were already pursuing soldiers in the back. Recently, T3 Travel, which ranks second in the e-hailing industry in terms of monthly orders, announced that it will land in 27 cities such as Beijing and Shenzhen this year, achieving full coverage of first-tier cities and the top 48 cities that occupy 80% of the e-hailing market, and capturing more than 20% of the market share in all cities it operates.
In the face of rising stars, Gao Jie frankly admitted that there will definitely be an impact on the company, but he said that this also shows that the road taken by Shouqi Ride-hailing has been widely recognized by the industry, and everyone's understanding of the industry development model is the same. There is never a shortage of excellent opponents on a track, and although there is one more cake, the company is confident to accept the challenge.
High-quality development in the future positioning
Gao Jie's confidence may come from the fact that Shouqi Ride-hailing has tried a variety of models in this industry.
In the first two years of the establishment of Shouqi Ride-hailing, the industry is also in its early stages, the market policy has not yet been fully implemented, and Internet traffic is the most important competitiveness of the platform. At that time, Shouqi Ride-hailing adopted a fully self-operated strategy and created an industry benchmark for high-quality services with high investment.
From 2017 to 2018, after Didi experienced a barbaric growth of low prices and subsidies, the market pattern gradually stabilized, Shouqi Ride-hailing began to seek changes, opened up the franchise system, and looked for passenger transport companies, cruise taxi companies and leasing companies in important cities to integrate their transportation capacity and move towards a broader market.
Since 2019, the online car industry has seen a model of renting and purchasing, which has greatly reduced the entry threshold for practitioners, and the supply side has begun to become abundant.
On the whole, Shouqi Ride-hailing is constantly looking for new positioning with the changes in the market. Gao Jie said that after several years of accumulation and precipitation, user habits have been formed, users of high-end travel generally choose clients, commuter travel customers are mostly imported from other aggregation platforms, and the two markets are transformed into each other. At present, the company's order volume has recovered to more than 87% in 2019, although the absolute quantity is not at the forefront of the industry, but the quality is very high. "Shouqi Ride-hailing is no longer blindly pursuing absolute growth, but seeking a new model of online ride-hailing with high-quality development."
Editor: Yan Hui Editor-in-chief: Xia Shencha
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