The former logistics innovation enterprise and the same-city supply chain distribution platform "Cloud Bird Technology" is falling into the storm of "bankruptcy and running away".
On November 1, some Employees of Yunniao Technology provided Nandu reporters with an announcement signed "Beijing Yunniao Technology Co., Ltd." circulating in its company group, which mentioned that Yunniao Technology "has been seriously affected by the epidemic since 2020, and although it has been difficult to get rid of the operational difficulties after efforts and fundraising by many parties, the current cash flow has dried up", "the company decided to apply for bankruptcy", and the follow-up will promote the treatment of creditor's rights and debts. However, as of press time, in response to the above statement, the company's official has not yet given a formal response to the outside world.
In August, it was reported that the capital chain was broken, and the employees' wages could not be paid normally?
Just two days ago, on the evening of October 30, the official Weibo of Beijing Yunniao Technology Co., Ltd. released a status that said: "Han Yi, CEO of Yunniao, has no money and will go bankrupt and liquidate", confirming the previous "bankruptcy" rumors. According to the messages of employees and drivers from Yunniao Technology across the country, the company has not paid salaries for several months, and more than 1,000 employees, tens of thousands of drivers and over 100 million deposits of freight have not been settled. But since then, the microblog has been deleted, and on November 2, Nandu reporters searched again and found that the microblog had been cancelled.
According to public information, Beijing Yunniao Technology Co., Ltd. was established in November 2014, focusing on the pain points of the urban distribution market dispersion and vehicle and cargo information matching, providing regional and intra-city distribution business for customers such as B2B, O2O, chain commerce, distributors, brand owners, manufacturers, B2C, express delivery and other customers, and cargo owners and drivers can match transportation needs through bidding and bidding on the platform. Previously, Yunniao Technology operated in 50 first-tier and second-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, and the driver capacity pool exceeded 1 million at the most.
According to the official information of CloudBird, Wutong and Thunderbird are the two core plates of Cloudbird Technology. Among them, Wutong takes urban distribution as the scene, takes the service driver as the core, based on the Internet of Vehicles technology and big data processing platform, and unites the supply chain around the main engine factory, bank, insurance, financial institutions, after-vehicle maintenance, training institutions and so on. Under the personalized matching mechanism, the driver obtains income by joining the platform to receive orders, and the platform matches the relationship between the driver's vehicle and the customer to recommend more suitable users for the driver. Thunderbird is a truck rental platform for enterprise and C-end customers. According to the company's employees, the driver's franchise fee, the driver's commission of the source of running goods, and the rent of the car rental are the main sources of profit for the platform.
Nandu reporter noted that in fact, in August and September, there was news about the rupture of the capital chain of Yun bird technology, employee wages were owed, and drivers could not refund the deposit. Zhang Jing (pseudonym), an employee who just joined Yunniao Technology in July this year, told Nandu reporters, "At the end of September, the basic salary for August should have been issued, but he (Han Yi) said at that time that the company was tight on funds and needed to be issued after the National Day, but after the National Day, some cities withdrew from the city, and the salary was half paid, and it was said that it was paid at the end of October." "A few days ago, it was suddenly declared bankruptcy liquidation, and the employees did not receive any notice, directly laid off employees, and kicked employees out of the organizational structure."
Another Yunniao driver revealed that he had previously signed a service contract with Yilu Xingchen (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. (Yunniao Technology Affiliated Company), and after paying a service fee of 4,000 yuan, the platform would give it logistics and transportation resources, and if the driver was not satisfied, he could apply for a refund in the month after payment, and the service fee had not been refunded so far. According to a number of employees, the number of drivers who have encountered similar situations has reached thousands or even tens of thousands. At one point, the company also used the form of a staging agreement to pay employees and refund drivers as a compromise plan.
On October 11, Yunniao Technology issued an announcement to refute the rumors of "running away": due to the company's strategic adjustment, Yunniao has optimized the business of some cities to integrate resources to better serve drivers and customers, and said that there are corresponding business personnel in the business adjustment cities to ensure the normal development of the business; for the employees and drivers involved in the business optimization process, it has negotiated with the representatives of the city branches and given the "priority payment" + "installment payment" plan.
As one of the employees of Yunniao Technology, Wang Ping's (pseudonym) branch was one of the branches that were retained after the so-called "strategic adjustment" at that time. He told nandu reporter that at that time, the company directly closed nearly 20 cities, did not sign an agreement with employees, after the National Day, the office space went to the empty building, so the branch employees of the branches of the country's various guancheng launched rights protection and retained 13 cities, "these cities basically have about 100 to 200 employees, and the profit in October is close to 800,000, which is completely possible to pay the salary of the previous month (September), and the result is unexpected, the CEO suddenly said 'no money, no point'. "The company is not operating normally now, all employees are basically in arrears for more than 2 months of wages, han Yi can not find anyone now."
According to industrial and commercial information, Han Yi, CEO of Yunniao Technology, holds 17% of the shares, is the largest shareholder of the company, and he is also the founder and CEO of the short video KOL trading platform Weiboyi. However, on November 1, Weiboyi issued a statement saying that Han Yi no longer participates in the company's operation and management, is only one of the company's many shareholders, the company and Yunniao Technology are completely independent legal entities, and there is no business relationship or financial transaction between the two.
Intensive recruitment of rapid expansion, funds can not make ends meet
Some Employees of Cloud Bird Technology believe that the financial problems of Cloud Bird Technology are related to the rapid expansion of cloud bird technology in the early stage. Judging from the financing process of Yunniao Technology, the company has successively obtained financing from gsand jiang venture capital, Jingwei venture capital, Sequoia China, Warburg Pincus investment and other star investors from 2015 to 2017, with a cumulative amount of more than 200 million US dollars in the A~D round. Among them, in 2015, Cloud Bird Technology obtained financing twice in 7 months. This year, under the mediation of sequoia Capital, a co-shareholder, Cloud Bird Technology also reached a cooperation with Yunmanman, one of the predecessors of Manbang Group, to build the largest Internet intermodal transportation network.
But until now, Cloud Bird Technology has not had new external funds integrated for 4 years. As of 2016, its driver capacity once reached more than 1 million at its peak, but now it has dropped to more than 10,000. In the last financing in 2017, Yunniao Technology had claimed that this round of financing will be mainly used for scientific and technological investment and development, in-depth strengthening of service capabilities and quality, and will further focus on urban expansion, which is expected to open to 30 cities in 2017.
In 2019, Yunniao Technology was listed on the Hurunchuang list with a valuation of 7 billion yuan. Nandu reporter noted that in September 2020, Yunniao once opened 16 new cities in less than 10 days. So far, the number of cities has shrunk from about 50 to only 13.
Some Yun bird technology employees revealed that after the end of this year, the company is still expanding rapidly, basically every month there are nearly a thousand new people, "In July and August, in the case of tight financial information and capital turnover, it is still frantically recruiting employees, and by September, more than 1,000 new employees have been added nationwide." And employee Zhang Jing mentioned to the Nandu reporter that the company has the indicator of recruiting drivers every month, "more than 100 drivers need to be signed, and almost 200 have to be recruited to interview, (indicators) have not been completed." Some people familiar with the matter believe that the recruitment of drivers is actually to fill the funding gap that the company cannot make ends meet by collecting more driver deposits.
There are also industry analysts that the financial problems of Cloud Bird Technology are related to the previous cooperation with Ofo Xiaohuangche. Official information shows that Cloud Bird Technology and Ofo Xiaohuangche have previously cooperated nationwide to provide vehicle scheduling and transportation services. However, Nandu reporter previously reported that with the sharing bicycle industry entering a period of contraction at that time, ofo small yellow car closed down, due to transportation contract disputes and other factors, ofo has been SF, Yunniao, Debon and other logistics business undertakers to seek arrears, the amount of arrears can reach tens of millions or even hundreds of millions.
According to a statistical report by a third-party agency, China has the world's largest road transport market, and the market size will reach 6.2 trillion yuan by 2020. The pain points of urban logistics distribution with scattered transportation capacity structure, low information transparency and high distribution costs have spawned more and more "Internet +" vehicle and cargo matching platforms. In June this year, Manbang Group landed on the US stock market, Ri RiShun and Fuyou Truck submitted a listing prospectus, and the information of the listing was repeatedly transmitted by Lala and Kuaigou Taxi, and Didi Freight also completed a new round of financing at the beginning of the year.
However, as far as the disclosed financial data is concerned, Fuyou Truck and Manbang are in a state of loss year by year. Some insiders said that under the fierce market competition, whether it can have a wide network scale, stable transportation capacity, full chain service capabilities, and sufficient financial and technical support will become the key to the competition of freight urban distribution platforms.
iResearch research and analysis said that for Yunniao Technology, which is mainly oriented to the B-end market, it is in the middle of the upstream supplier and downstream delivery end in the freight market, and it not only needs to face the pressure from customers and the supply side of transportation capacity, but also faces the impact of cross-domain logistics giants entering the market. B-end city distribution is essentially similar to the traditional circulation logistics, the customer's personalized requirements are high, the service is not standard, and multi-SKU, multi-link operation, different from the simple standardized operation of express express, the logistics requirements between different categories have specialized barriers, it is difficult to apply one or more service solutions to win the market, with the evolution of demand and service experience upgrades, the future will be towards the development of heterogeneous competition in the market.
Written by: Nandu reporter Fu Xiaoling