Entertainment: I just want to be the boss behind the scenes

Chapter 190 The next Taobao?
Huang Zheng has been a little distressed recently.

Last year he was sick and stayed at home for several months to recover. It was during this period that he discovered a new business opportunity.

The number of Internet users is increasing, but the growth of online shopping users on e-commerce platforms has reached a bottleneck, which shows that the current e-commerce model does not fully meet the needs of new users.

So, after recuperating, Huang Zheng led his company's game team and, starting with the WeChat mini-program, created an application called "Pin Haohuo".

Customers who want to buy fruit can enjoy discounts by buying in a group with another customer in the app.

If you can’t wait for another customer, you can share it with your friends and ask them to help. The more you share, the bigger the discount you will get.

After all, it is a transformation of the gaming team, and doing e-commerce is also a gaming operation model.

Because of its low prices, easy group buying, and direct refunds if there are any product issues, "Pin Haohuo" achieved 10,000 orders in the first month after its online promotion.

This month is the season when lychees are on the market. Riding on this wave of popularity, the transaction volume this month has exceeded 100,000.

As a startup brand, achieving such monthly active user growth in the early stages of its business is a very impressive achievement.

However, even such excellent data has not been favored in the capital market.

The reason is very simple. It's 2015, and you're still thinking about building an e-commerce platform. Isn't it a bit too contemptuous of Taobao and JD.com, which are already fighting each other to the death?

"The bonus period of e-commerce platforms has ended, and it depends on which of the two can survive to the end," this is the consensus of the entire capital market.

Standing up and saying that you want to do e-commerce at this time is no different from "joining the National Army in 49".

So let alone outsiders, even Duan Yongping, Ding Lei and Wang Wei, who have a very good relationship with Huang Zheng, invested a small sum of money in him because of their personal friendship.

Even the requirements for him are very low, as long as he can hold on until the next round of investment without losing money.

Huang Zheng is helpless. He does not think that the domestic e-commerce market has reached its peak. On the contrary, he believes that there is still a lot of room for growth.

But there is no way, capital does not care what you think, it only cares what he thinks.

During this period, he has been in contact with various venture capital companies, but basically they were very interested at first, but politely declined after listening.

But at this time, Mr. Meng from a company called Ming Venture Capital contacted him and said he wanted to talk about investment.

Huang Zheng asked around through someone he knew and found out that Qiming Venture Partners had just been established. The capital behind it was a film and television company, and its last investment project was Leshi Films.

The amazing thing is that this investment was cashed out just before the stock market crashed, which can be described as a "fire exit."

Call it luck or vision, he became interested in the "operator" behind the company.

What's more, given the current situation of "Pinhaohuo", we are not in a position to be picky.

So he quickly made an appointment with that "Mr. Meng" to have a face-to-face chat.

"Deng Deng."

There was a knock on the door, and the girl at the company's front desk pushed open the door and said, "Mr. Huang, there are a few guests outside. They said they have an appointment to visit you."

"Are they here?" Huang Zheng quickly stood up and went out to greet them.

When he arrived at the reception room, he looked at the people in the room and couldn't help feeling a little confused.

The "Mr. Meng" who contacted him was a man, so the mature woman in an OL business suit and glasses and the girl who looked like a high school student were definitely not. The two middle-aged men sitting in the lower position were dressed in black suits and looked more like lawyers.

The only one left was the young man sitting in the first seat, wearing a casual suit and rimless glasses.

As Huang Zheng expected, when the young man saw him coming in, he stood up and walked over, smiling and said, "Hello, Mr. Huang, I am Meng Bai, the head of Qiming Venture Partners who contacted you before."

"Hello, Mr. Meng." Huang Zheng shook his hand and sighed, "I never thought that Mr. Meng is so young and promising."

"Haha, Mr. Huang, when you started your business, weren't you also a young man?"

Huang Zheng couldn't help but smile when he heard this. Indeed, he could be considered a young celebrity. Even now, he was only in his thirties.

After a few polite words, both parties sat down.

Without further ado, Huang Zheng asked directly, "Mr. Meng said he wanted to invest in our Pinhaohuo. I'm curious, why do you think highly of our e-commerce platform?"

Meng Bai said slowly: "With the two successful cases of Taobao and JD.com, doesn't it mean that e-commerce platforms are a good track?"

Huang Zheng frowned: "Taobao and JD.com are indeed very successful, but at the same time they are too successful. They basically occupy the entire market."

"Have they really taken over the entire market?" Meng Bai smiled and shook his head. "On the contrary, in my opinion, the e-commerce online shopping market is just in its infancy and there is still a lot of room for growth."

Huang Zheng's eyes suddenly lit up when he heard this, and he couldn't help but ask with some joy: "Why do you say that?"

"According to their respective published data, Taobao currently has 1.5 million users, JD.com has 4.5 million users, and the total number of users without duplicates is 13.8 million, which is basically all the current online shopping users." Meng Bai said: "The total population of China is 4 billion. Even if one-third is excluded, there are still nearly million people."

The blank market of 4 million people is enough to support a second Taobao.

Huang Zheng suppressed his emotions and continued to ask, "Where is this 'blank market' that you are talking about, Mr. Meng?"

Meng Bai smiled and said, "Mr. Huang mentioned it in his prospectus. The low-income young people in third- and fourth-tier cities, small towns, and vast rural areas, the older netizens who have just come into contact with the Internet, and the farmers who have gained initial consumption power due to poverty alleviation efforts, are all the 'blank markets'."

A close friend!
Huang Zheng clenched his hands excitedly. In the past six months, apart from his teammates, this was the first outsider who understood him so well.

From the very beginning, its target users were different from those of platforms such as Taobao and JD.com that target first- and second-tier cities.

What are the characteristics of Pinhaohuo? Group buying.

What is the purpose of group buying? Cheap, very cheap.

To put it bluntly, what Huang Zheng wants to do is to do business in the lower-tier markets where the money is not so great, following the route of "surrounding the cities from the countryside."

Without waiting for Huang Zheng to calm down, Meng Bai continued, "In my opinion, the Pinhaohuo model just happens to have found the pulse of the times."

"The widespread promotion of 4G networks and the popularity of mobile phones have become the basis for reducing users' online shopping costs. The convenience of mobile payments and the nationwide logistics infrastructure have made online shopping more and more convenient."

"JD.com has been targeting high-quality users since the beginning. Although Taobao started out as a mid- to low-end company, it is now also beginning to transform into a high-quality product route. For low-spending users in third- and fourth-tier cities and county towns, what they need is cheaper products with more categories and styles."

"When the elderly who have just learned how to use WeChat suddenly find that they can buy cheap products so conveniently, they will naturally become platform users and spontaneously involve relatives and friends through methods such as 'group buying' and 'sharing'."

"Perhaps in the near future, we will see a very interesting phenomenon: those sophisticated white-collar workers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are spending high-end money on Taobao and JD.com one second, and the next second they will open Pinduoduo to offer a group purchase to their parents and relatives far away in their hometown."

"I believe that by then, Pinhaohuo will truly become a new generation of e-commerce that is no less powerful than Taobao and JD."

(End of this chapter)