I can become stronger by paying salaries. I have one billion employees!

Chapter 534 8.5 billion US dollars, it's not like we can't afford it! 88888 units? That's ridiculous!
Inside an office on the top floor of Zhuxianzhuang Science and Technology Park.

Huang Zheng sat opposite Chen Yansen and slowly said, "Oliver of Rocket Internet does have the idea of ​​selling Lazada, but his asking price is 8.5 million US dollars."

Rocket Internet is a "software knock-off" company founded by the three Oliver Thornwell brothers. To put it bluntly, like Ma Wenteng, Ma Liyun, and Li Yanhong, they are just copycats.

To replicate the Silicon Valley business model around the world.

Compared to Oliver, Ma Wenteng's plagiarism techniques are nothing.

They copied eBay and created Alando.

They copied Amazon and created Lazada.

They copied PayPal and launched BillPay.

They copied Spotify and created SoundCloud.

He has always been imitating, never creating anything original, and has had over 100 business projects pay homage to by Oliver.

Copy and paste as quickly as possible, then seize the market rapidly.

Financing!

Burning money!

Land grabbing!

Once a certain scale is achieved, sell if you can, and go public if you can't – everything is about making money!

However, Oliver suffered a major setback in China.

Because the various projects he wanted to copy had already been copied by domestic companies long ago. Search engines include Baidu, Lingxi, and 360; e-commerce platforms include Ali, JD.com, and Pinduoduo; group-buying websites include Kuaipao, Dianping, and Baidu Tuangou; ride-hailing services include Didi and Kuaidi Dache; and music apps include Tencent, Kugou, and Xiami.

Want to copy?

Sorry you're late!
Lazada, which Chen Yansen wanted to acquire, was a knock-off of Amazon.

What were Lazada's sales figures last year?

Chen Yansen asked, neither confirming nor denying.

"US$8900 million, 690 million orders, and business operations are concentrated in Java, Malaysia, Luzon, Siam and South Asia."

Huang Zheng answered without hesitation.

In the two days since returning to China, with the assistance of the strategic investment department, he has quickly grasped Lazada's development history, financing background, equity structure, and platform data.

In his view, whether or not he acquires Lazada is irrelevant.

By leveraging Lazada's existing local merchant resources, logistics system, and self-operated logistics team, we can accelerate our control over the Southeast Asian e-commerce market.

Even if they don't leave, with Pinduoduo's financial and technological strength, they can still create an e-commerce platform suitable for the Southeast Asian market after some effort.

After all, Pinduoduo has already proven the viability of its business model in China, and its core capabilities such as algorithm recommendation and supply chain management are quite mature.

With just a few adjustments to cater to local consumer habits and some time spent building a warehousing and logistics network, it's entirely possible to carve out a niche in the Southeast Asian market.

Moreover, a platform built from scratch can more thoroughly implement Pinbei's strategic philosophy and avoid being constrained by Lazada's existing operational inertia, which may actually allow it to run faster and more steadily.

However, if one were to acquire Lazada, it would indeed be possible to skip the initial preparation steps, thereby saving a significant amount of time and effort.

Besides, it's not like the company can't afford $8.5 million!

The $88 billion raised from the IPO should of course be used to expand the business scope. Why would we just leave it in the bank to earn interest?

"8.5 million US dollars is not expensive, we can discuss it."

Chen Yansen said casually.

He went public before Ali, and with ample funds, he was able to expand rapidly into the Southeast Asian market.

By the time Ma Liyun realized what was happening, he had already established a firm foothold in Southeast Asia.

"The other party wants to start the acquisition process as soon as possible. I have already arranged to meet with Lazada CEO Maximilian at Temasek on December 2nd."

Huang Zheng added.

"Temasek? I happen to be going there soon. Tell Mr. Gao to send a group of people to depart at 2 PM tomorrow."

Chen Yansen thought for a moment and said.

"Yes, boss," Huang Zheng replied quickly.

"That's all for now. Leave the specific acquisition details to Lao Gao. You're in charge of assessing Lazada's business status."

Chen Yansen waved his hand and then made arrangements.

"Boss, I understand."

Huang Zheng immediately understood, left the documents, and got up to leave the office.

After Huang Zheng walked away, Chen Yansen brought up the system panel.

Last month, there was a quarterly bonus, and the number of Humanity's Flame was significantly higher, totaling 952091 strands, which can be combined into 95 strands of Immortal Flame.

"synthesis!"

With a thought, the almost liquid white mist condensed into a purplish-black mist in the blink of an eye, and then entered his brow.

Three seconds later, his mental strength increased from 104.41 to 105.36!

The diameter of the divine sense detection has been extended to 35 meters, and the weight limit of the mentally controlled objects has also soared to nearly 460 kilograms!
He carefully estimated that, at the current growth rate, once his mental strength reached 200, he would be able to lift a car with his mental power.

"This dog system may cost money to use, but its abilities are also incredibly powerful."

Chen Yansen commented to himself.

He then tried activating the Planck Clock talent, holding it for a full eight seconds before feeling mentally exhausted.

Eight seconds!

Chen Yansen squinted, shook his head slightly, a satisfied smile on his face, and muttered to himself, "Eight seconds, I'm really amazing!"

The following morning, Wu Hongxin announced that the Meitu 1 Pro smartphone was officially on sale.

Users can purchase it on Meituan Mall, Pinduoduo, and Kuaipao Flash Sale Store for 4888 yuan.

Holding a Meitu 1 Pro, Yang Tianbao uploaded three promotional videos to Douyin in one go.

There was nothing I could do; Mr. Wu had given me too much.

Xiaohongshu, Smzdm, and Toutiao also feature soft ads for Meitu 1 Pro.

After all, it's a powerful tool for fleecing consumers; how could it possibly sell without promotion and marketing?
Half an hour before the release, Jimmy Lin posted teardown photos of the Meitu 1 Pro on Weibo. The post was full of boastful claims, clearly indicating he had been paid to do so.

But in the eyes of potential users, the Meitu 1 Pro's double V design and oversized camera are simply too beautiful.

It features a 5.5-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen, a Tiangong A100 chip, and the Aurora Future operating system, along with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.

Most importantly, the front camera has 1600 megapixels and the rear camera has 1300 megapixels.

Even within the mobile phone industry, this is considered an anomaly.

It also claims to use a Super Light Rhythm AI beauty technology that can achieve functions such as dynamic beauty enhancement, holographic skin texture correction, color spectrum mapping, contour rhythm enhancement, and skin texture light field sculpting.

In other words, a face that scores 59 points can be photographed to achieve a 99-point image quality.

In reality, the algorithm that Wu Hongxin touted as miraculous is simply the latest photo optimization technology on the Yao Cheng X2.

Based on the original settings, relevant parameters have been adjusted. Although the resulting photos may be more distorted, they may be more popular with users.

Limited to 88888 units for the initial release!
With the production capacity of Orange Phone Factory, hundreds of thousands of units can be manufactured, but Wu Hongxin is worried that if the price of Meitu phones increases from 2699 yuan to 4888 yuan, retail investors may hesitate.

To the astonishment of domestic mobile phone manufacturers, all 88888 Meitu 1 Pro units were sold out before noon, despite the sale starting at 10 a.m.

Users who missed out even went to the comment section of Yang Tianbao and Wu Hongxin's Douyin (TikTok) account to request more stock.

Even a pre-sale would be fine!

"What a bunch of lunatics!" Zhou Hongyi nearly choked on his words upon hearing the news.

He worked hard selling mobile phones, but after deducting after-sales costs, he only made a few dozen yuan per phone.

Based on his understanding of the material costs of the Meitu 1 Pro, it would cost at most 2000 yuan.

Even with high celebrity endorsement fees and large advertising investments, making a 50/50 profit per unit is absolutely no problem.

Meitu's success has opened up a completely new avenue for many competitors.

Since Meitu is making beauty-enhancing phones, they should also make gaming phones, office phones, and music phones, pushing a particular feature to its limit before ruthlessly exploiting consumers.

"I'll make secure phones?"

Zhou Hongyi muttered to himself.

It's true that he wants to use 360 ​​Mobile to acquire users, but then again, who would complain about having too much money?

Companies like OPPO, VIVO, Meizu, and Coolpad were extremely envious when they saw Wu Hongxin filling sacks with money.

At noon, the pre-sale link for Meitu 1 Pro went live, and sales continued to surge.

In no time, the total sales volume of spot and pre-ordered products exceeded 10 units.

At 1 p.m., The Paper and Huxiu.com reported that the general manager, director and three supervisors of the foreign investment department of Dongguan were taken away by the inspection team.

The news immediately caused a stir in the e-commerce industry.

This is a complete wipeout!
Half an hour later, new information came out that the inspection team had taken several senior executives from the advertising business department away from Baidu's headquarters.

A quick-witted person can immediately guess most of the situation.

at the same time.

Chen Yansen sat in the cabin of the Gulfstream 550, scrolling through the screen and glancing at the news report.

"Handsome Dong acted quickly; in less than three days, he had them all in jail."

Chen Yansen pondered to himself.

Next, Li Yanhong will lose another source of advertising revenue.

Baidu's food delivery business previously relied on search traffic and advertising revenue to barely maintain its market share.

With advertising revenue now drastically reduced, coupled with his aggressive "wolf pack" policy, Li Yanhong's situation will only become more difficult.

Instead of focusing on their perfectly good search business, they insist on trespassing on my turf. I doubt Li Yanhong will learn his lesson until he gets a few slaps in the face.

Just as Chen Yansen flew to Temasek to hijack Lazada's acquisition, Ma Liyun was busy communicating with underwriters in North America about the details of the prospectus and the things to pay attention to during the roadshow.

the other side.

Temasek, 8 Stephens Road, behind a quiet courtyard in the heart of the city.

A middle-aged man in his forties, dressed in loose loungewear, lay on a rocking chair, his eyes slightly closed, savoring the sandalwood fragrance wafting in the air.

It is said that an ounce of agarwood is worth an ounce of gold, but the agarwood he used sells for 1.2 yuan per gram, which is much more expensive than gold!

But he usually suffers from insomnia and has many dreams, and he can't fall asleep without burning agarwood.

With his wealth, he could even use agarwood as firewood.

"You really want to sell the company to him?"

Suddenly, his wife spoke up and asked.

"You know I don't care."

Upon hearing this, the middle-aged man opened his eyes, picked up the cup on the coffee table, and took a small sip.

At forty, he was once the richest man in China, with a net worth of tens of billions.

It's just a small company, not making much money, so selling it to Chen Yansen wouldn't be a problem.

Once his wealth reached a certain amount, no matter how hard he spent it, the balance in his account continued to rise.

“Chen Yansen is a very shrewd businessman,” his wife commented. “Just like you were when you were young.”

“I am self-aware. The reason I was able to succeed was simply because I caught the wave of the times. But Chen Yansen seems to be creating the wave.”

The middle-aged man chuckled self-deprecatingly.

“The industry he’s interested in must be profitable. Should we invest more money and start our own business?” his wife suggested.

"Forget it, let's just consider it making friends. I'd really like to meet a new friend."

The middle-aged man refused without hesitation.

The same piece of tofu, cooked with different seasonings and by different chefs, can have vastly different tastes and textures.

He knew in his heart that he wasn't cut out for it!
At the same time, the head of Temasek's central office, upon receiving news of Chen Yansen's visit, immediately sent someone to the airport to wait for him.

(End of this chapter)