Although Fang Li had already analyzed the situation clearly to Zhu Xiaohu, Zhu Xiaohu finally decided to invest, so Fang Li naturally had no reason to stop him and asked him to talk to Cheng Wei by himself.

Cheng Wei didn't expect that one day he would be troubled by investing too much. There was no way to find him, either an old friend who had invested in Didi before, or a financial tycoon like Sequoia Capital and Hillhouse Capital, and his shares were really not enough.

There was no way, Cheng Wei could only modify his initial plan to only go online for first-tier cities, including second-tier cities such as Wu City and Jinling, and suddenly it surged from the initial four cities to twenty cities simultaneously.

The 20 "Qingju" cities launched simultaneously also made ofo and Yubai, who was already nervous, feel a huge threat.

Ofo's David began to frequently contact Alibaba's senior management. Soon Alibaba announced a strategic investment of 100 million yuan in ofo. This move quickly caused shock in the entire financial circle, because the largest single investment of shared bicycles was only 15 million yuan. In less than half a year, Alibaba made this price too high to an incredible level.

You should know that at this time ofo was only operating in colleges and universities, and before it even accepted the inspection of the commercial market, Alibaba spent 100 million yuan, which inevitably discouraged many small and medium-sized venture capital institutions.

Of course, for some venture capital institutions with strong capital, chasing the rise or not the fall, Alibaba's entry just shows that there is hope for this industry and they have begun to take action.

However, the sensation caused by Alibaba's investment in ofo has not subsided. Mobike has released another news, claiming that it has reached an investment intention with Penguin. Two days later, Penguin announced a high-profile strategic investment in Mobike, with an amount of up to 120 million yuan.

The successive large-scale investments not only made the financial circle crazy, but even the Internet circle crazy. Many people spend 20,000 or 30,000 yuan to make a simple app and began to submit business cooperation plans to various investment banks. However, most of them were wasted, and only some entrepreneurs with entrepreneurial experience have obtained angel investment.

This has also led to the rapid growth of shared bicycle brands on the market from more than a dozen before to nearly fifty. Some went directly to first- and second-tier cities to compete with Mobike, Qingju and ofo for the market, while others implemented the rural surround city strategy in some inconspicuous small cities.

However, no matter how much investment you get, Internet entrepreneurship is about gaining user efficiency. Sometimes it doesn’t matter whether the product is good or not, and the user experience is not important. There are many excellent user experiences on the market, and projects with highly praised products are swept by some garbage products.

So what method is the most efficient for users? It is obvious - subsidy.

The first one to provoke the challenge was ofo. In order to launch a large-scale subsidy activity from "campus to city", ofo launched a large-scale subsidy activity, with the first order free.

The free charm is naturally unstoppable. In just three days ofo claimed that it had increased by 500,000 users.

Mobike is not to be outdone. Isn’t your first order free? I just made it free on the first day. Soon, Mobike relied on its original user advantages in the city to suppress ofo’s momentum. Mobike also found that the first day free brought quite objective user growth.

Penguin is also very satisfied with Mobike's performance, because this will undoubtedly bring many new users to QQ Payment. The current status of QQ Payment is extremely embarrassing and offline payment scenarios are urgently needed to maintain it. Mobike is obviously a good choice.

So Mahuateng waved his hand and allocated a special fund of RMB 50 million to Mobike.

Compared with the frequent big moves of ofo and Mobike, Qingju’s shareholders are inevitably a little anxious because Qingju doesn’t want to burn money so far.

"Mr. Zhu, don't be anxious first. Sometimes it doesn't have to rely on burning money to win users." Cheng Wei smiled.

Zhu Xiaohu said: "Mr. Cheng, you spent a lot of money when you started Didi. This is how the market and users do it. If others make moves, we have to continue."

Cheng Wei shook his head and handed a document to Zhu Xiaohu: "Mr. Zhu would better look at this first."

Zhu Xiaohu took it suspiciously. At first he didn't care, but the more he turned, the more strange the look on his face became. After a while, he closed the document and asked with a serious face: "Mr. Cheng, are the data you showed me real?"

In fact, it’s no wonder Zhu Xiaohu doesn’t believe that Qingju has not made any moves these days, but the user growth and the bicycle usage rate is much higher than that ofo and Mobike. How is this possible? Will those users just want to use paid ones for free?

Cheng Wei said seriously: "It's true, I guarantee it with my personality."

"But, how did this be done?" Zhu Xiaohu couldn't figure it out.

Cheng Wei smiled and said, "There are two points. First, although ofo and Mobike have free activities, users have to pay a deposit when using it. Qingju only needs to pay 500 points in credit points to get 500 points, so the deposit is exempted. Compared with the free discount on the first day, a deposit of one or two hundred yuan will obviously make many users give up using it."

"The second key is the bicycle usage rate. Ofo and Mobike have focused all their energy on promotion. However, in fact, most of the promotions in the shared bicycle industry are ineffective promotion. There is a prerequisite for real determining whether users use your shared bicycle. Your shared bicycle appears in the scenario where users need to use their cars."

"At present, most of the people who use shared bicycles are office workers. Their demand for shared bicycles is the company - subway station - home, three points and one line. Only when our shared bicycles appear in these three points, will they use them. Otherwise, no matter how well the advertisement is, it will be useless for users to not see the car offline."

"So I would rather spend my money on the scheduling of shared bicycles. In the twenty cities covered by Qingju, each second-tier city has thirty dispatch teams, and each first-tier city has 50 dispatch teams, responsible for collecting and scheduling shared bicycles in the area to ensure the utilization rate of shared bicycles."

Zhu Xiaohu gave a thumbs up when he heard this and smiled: "So that's it. It seems that I've taken advantage of investing in Qingju."

However, Cheng Wei is not as optimistic as Zhu Xiaohu. The more he knows about the shared bicycle industry, the more he is worried about the profits of shared bicycles.

Shared bicycles are different from online car-hailing. Online car-hailing is the owner who uses the idle time of the car to pick up and drop off passengers, which is barely a shadow of the sharing economy. Shared bicycles are not so much a sharing economy as a rental business that is spread over the sharing economy. Shared bicycles do not rent idle bicycles to users, but specially customize bicycles to meet users' car needs. Even if the cost of a bicycle is much lower than that of a car, it is still a huge cost burden.

And as Fang Li said, the faster the development and the larger the scale, the heavier the burden. Cheng Wei has now decided not to develop those third- and fourth-tier cities for the time being.

Qingju's failure to follow up also attracted the attention ofo and Mobike. No one would think that Qingju has no money or is reluctant to spend money. Even if Tianyuan Technology does not give it money, with Cheng Wei's qualifications, it would be too easy to invest.

Qingju doesn't move at all now, but it makes ofo and Mobike confused. Even Ali and Penguin behind them are confused.

However, once the money-burning mode is turned on, it is difficult to stop. Ofo and Mobike have tasted the sweetness by burning money, so naturally they have to expand the market size by further burning money.

Other shared bicycle brands also need to spend money to maintain their own data growth, otherwise what should they use to tell stories to investors?

Therefore, the shared bicycle industry started from the first order for free, the first day for free, and the first day for free, and the first day for free, and finally started the seven-day free mode, and even had the activity of riding a bicycle to win red envelopes. Not only did it not charge a fee, but it also made money.

For a time, the entire industry was like crazy, spending money on marketing, and on the other hand, customizing vehicles and investing on a large scale. This has indeed driven the development of the entire industry.

Many young users began to tend to ride bicycles, and the reasons were also very high-quality, low-carbon, environmentally friendly, and sporty. When riding on shared bicycles, they could immediately get a lot of praise. Gradually, shared bicycles were also labeled as fashionable.

It is actually difficult to define what fashion is, but when many people around you are doing things, if you don’t do it, you may be labeled as “low” and “outdated”. So even in order to make yourself less withdrawn, many young users don’t ride shared bicycles at all, and they will find a shared bicycle on the street to take photos, just like when you arrive at a tourist attraction, you must take photos and check in.

By mid-November, ofo issued an announcement stating that ofo had put 15 million shared bicycles into the market.

Interestingly, ofo's main supplier, Fujita, had an annual output of only over 10 million before. After cooperating with ofo, Fujita's production has more than doubled.

Many netizens on the Internet jokingly say that shared bicycles are not a sharing economy, but to save a sunset industry.

It is actually a bit exaggerated to say that bicycles are sunset industries. After all, although the global sales of bicycles have not been high in recent years, only more than 50 million vehicles, the entire market has been stable and has not shrunk significantly.

Mobike is not showing any weakness. The overall share bicycle launch has reached 13 million units. Mobike has also cooperated with manufacturers such as Foxconn and Emma to significantly increase the shipment of shared bicycles.

Qingju still did not make any moves, keeping the number of releases of these six million units unchanged, so that Hello, which has just been established, almost surpassed Qingju in releases.

Cheng Wei and Fang Li were not anxious, but some people were anxious. The leaders of Wuhan City found them and asked about the situation. Only then did the two realize that the leaders were bringing orders for the Wu City Bicycle Factory.

Fang Li couldn't help but feel a little amused, and Cheng Wei could only smile bitterly.

"Leader, the bubble in the shared bicycle industry is too big. Such uncontrollable investment will definitely not last long. At that time, the payment for the bicycle factory may be wasted. My suggestion is that the bicycle factory should not rashly increase its production capacity."

The reply received by the leader from Fang Li couldn't help but disappoint him, but he still told Fang Li to "try to" hand over Qingju's order to the Wushi Bicycle Factory, so that the fat and water will not flow to outsiders' fields.

After receiving Fang Li's affirmative answer, the leader left with satisfaction.

"Qingju is doing well, but your strategy should be discovered soon. What are you ready to do next?" Fang Li also took this opportunity to chat with Cheng Wei.

Cheng Wei nodded: "There is no good idea. The soldiers come to block the water and the soil, and the ultimate depend on the ability of the ground-pushing team."

"You're mentally prepared."

After being unfortunately told by Fang Li, ofo and Mobike's offline promotion team soon discovered Qingju's "trick".

Ofo's David was very troubled by Qingju's practice of using Easy to pay credit points to waive the deposit. Now there are two ways in front of him. Either follow up or continue to let Qingju take advantage.

However, these two choices are not a good thing for David, because following up means ofo will lose the deposit pool and may even trigger a run on the deposit by users. With ofo's current cash flow, it is impossible to face such a run.

In the end, David decided to ask Alibaba for help, and through the introduction of Alibaba executives, Alibaba Ma met David.

After David reported the situation, Alima waved his hand disregardly: "Isn't it just money? It doesn't matter how much Alibaba is missing to make up for you, as long as you use Ant Credit Points."

Originally, this kind of "small business" of hundreds of millions of yuan would not alarm Alibaba, but Qingju's founder was Cheng Wei.

As for Cheng Wei, the "traitor" of Ali, Alima, had long wanted to get rid of it quickly. Unfortunately, Cheng Wei was as slippery as a loach. He first defected to the penguin, and then he turned to Tianyuan Technology when things were not good.

Although Fang Li only gave Cheng Wei a coo position, which saved Alima a little face, Alima was very unhappy when she thought of this guy's betrayal.

Before, Cheng Wei had been hiding in Tianyuan Technology, and Alima had no choice but to do anything about him. Now this kid has actually come out to start a business again, so Alima naturally wants to give him some color.

David was overjoyed when he heard this. After getting Alibaba's money, he immediately started to act and began to waive ofo's deposit. As he expected, once this event was launched, the users who refunded the deposit once crowded the server.

Fortunately, the increase in the number of users after the deposit is exempted is also quite obvious.

On the other hand, Mobike also found Penguin, and Mahuateng was not stingy either. He directly sent Mobike some money so that old Penguin users could ride on Mobike bicycles without a deposit.

But this way, other shared bicycle brands will be in trouble. Following up will definitely lose a large amount of working capital. If you don’t follow up, the three largest companies in the market don’t need a deposit. Why do they collect deposits?

Some venture capital institutions have just begun to compete in this industry and have begun to think about whether this path can really continue.

However, more capital is still lost in the growing number of shared bicycle users.
Chapter completed!