来源：天天IPO（ID:pedailyIPO） 作者：刘博
Finally stumbled into the market.
Investment community - daily IPO news, after five sprints to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Tick Travel finally officially landed in Hong Kong stocks today, with an issue price of 6 Hong Kong dollars per share, without much suspense, the opening was broken, with a market value of more than 5 billion Hong Kong dollars.
This is an entrepreneurial story that began in the era of group buying. In 2010, Song Zhongjie, who left Google, founded a group buying website with his friends, Tick Group, but lost in the battle of 1,000 groups. In 2014, the company changed from carpooling to the field of travel, and then the ride-hailing business quickly sprung up, and a team of investors was assembled behind it.
But what impressed the circle the most was that Song Zhongjie had a deep friendship with Li Bin, the founder of NIO, who had refilled Dida Travel for four consecutive rounds, and its subsidiaries Weilai Capital and BitAuto.com were the largest and fourth largest external shareholders of Dida Chuxing, respectively. Just like Li Bin, a number of upstarts in car manufacturing have invested in innovation and excellence, and have begun to harvest IPOs in batches.
01
Five old friends joined forces to start a business, and the road to IPO was bumpy
The story of ticking travel starts with 5 programmers.
Song Zhongjie graduated from Beijing Institute of Technology with a major in computer software in his early years, and then started his career at Hewlett-Packard, where he worked for 12 years. In 2006, Song Zhongjie joined Google China and became the only director-level business executive in Google China at that time, and single-handedly built Google's agency channel.
During this period, Song Zhongjie got to know three important business partners in the future: Li Jinlong, then Senior Channel Manager of Google China, Zhu Min, then Project Development Manager of Google China, and Li Yuejun, then Channel Account Manager of Google China. In 2010, the tide of mobile Internet began to rise, and at that time, the O2O model became more and more popular in China, and Song Zhongjie, who left Google, decided to "catch the tail of the entrepreneurial dream." ”
So, Song Zhongjie teamed up with Li Jinlong, Zhu Min, Li Yuejun, and brought Duan Jianbo, an old colleague of Aibang.com, who had worked in Baidu, to co-found the group buying website "Tick Group". However, at that time, the entire group buying industry had entered the period of "Thousand Group Wars", and the competition was intensifying. At its peak, Tick Group, which was the third largest in the industry, only received a total of $9 million in financial support, including bridge loans. The pace of financing was too slow, which directly led to the company's gradual defeat in the competition of mainstream group buying websites.
By the end of 2013, Song Zhongjie and his team were thinking about how to transform and save themselves, and there were four roads in front of them: P2P finance, online education, home O2O and travel. Finally, the team focused on mobility. At that time, Didi and Kuaidi were fighting hotly, and how to avoid encountering these travel giants head-on became the most urgent task in front of Song Zhongjie.
Until January 2014, one day Song Zhongjie came out to take a taxi after a meeting at the Beijing International Trade Center, and stood for half an hour without getting a car, but there were many empty private cars passing by in front of him. "At that time, I thought, there are so many empty seats, I want to take a taxi but can't get a taxi, should I use those empty seats to solve this problem." So, he and his team decided to start with ride-sharing services and enter the field of mobility.
On May 1, 2014, the Tick Carpool APP was officially launched, and it soon rose in the subdivision track. Then, in September 2017, Tick Carpool, which has a keen sense of smell, announced its entry into the taxi field, becoming a mobility platform for taxis and ride-hailing.
Subsequently, Tick Carpool was officially renamed Tick Travel. There was an important turning point here, when the Didi Hitchhike scandal allowed Dida Travel to seize the opportunity and quickly accumulate a large number of users in a short period of time.
However, the road to the IPO of Tick Travel has been very bumpy. In October 2020, Dida Chuxing submitted its listing application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for the first time, and although there were frequent reports of new IPO developments, Dida Chuxing did not make an official announcement until the application expired. In April 2021, the company resubmitted its listing application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and updated its business situation and related data, but it was also invalid subsequently. Since then, Dida Travel has successively submitted prospectuses to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in February and August 2023, but there was no follow-up until the fifth application was submitted in March this year.
Looking back on the road of entrepreneurship, Song Zhongjie once sighed, "We are taking a difficult road, this road will not make you successful easily, what you need is patience and persistence." More importantly, you need to be one step ahead of others to see the future and the endgame. "Of course, going public does not mean going ashore, and everything still needs time to verify.
02
Hitchhikers propped up an IPO, and Li Bin invested four rounds in a row
According to the prospectus, as a pure information service platform, Tick Travel does not own or lease fleet vehicles, nor does it need to bear any expenses related to holding vehicle assets, and at the same time, because hitchhiking is a travel mode for owners and passengers to share travel costs and mutual benefits, compared with online car-hailing, the platform does not need to pay a large amount of subsidies to facilitate orders.
According to the Frost & Sullivan report, in terms of total transaction value and number of ride-hailing trips in 2023, Dida Chuxing ranks second among China's ride-sharing platforms, with market shares of about 31.8% and 31.0% respectively. Since its inception, Dida Travel has served about 69.4 million rideshare passengers.
The asset-light model is the magic weapon for the rise of Tick Travel. According to the prospectus, from 2021 to 2023, Dida Chuxing's operating income will be 781 million, 569 million and 815 million yuan respectively. The corresponding adjusted profit was RMB238 million, RMB85 million and RMB226 million, respectively. Among them, the ride-hailing service fee is the most dependent source of income for Tick Travel, accounting for as much as 90%.
However, the ride-hailing business has also brought challenges to the development of Tick. According to the prospectus first submitted by Dida Travel in 2020, in 2019, Dida Travel became the "leader" of this market segment with a market share of 66.5%. However, a few years later, Tick's market share has shrunk by nearly half.
Safety and compliance issues have always been a sword of Damocles hanging over the head of Tick Travel. According to the prospectus, due to the lack of licenses applicable to the licensing system of online ride-hailing services, a total of 57 administrative penalties have occurred on the Tick Travel ride-hailing platform since 2020. Among them, 36 cases have been subsequently revoked, and the remaining 21 cases have been fined from $5,000 to $30,000, totalling about $550,000.
Looking back on the growth process of Dida Chuxing, there is a person who is often mentioned - Li Bin, who has multiple identities such as BitAuto, the founder of NIO and the managing partner of NIO Capital.
Li Bin and Song Zhongjie first met in 2015, when Dida Travel was seeking Series B financing. Song Zhongjie was introduced by a friend and met Li Bin, who was still doing Yiche at the time, but he didn't expect much before meeting Li Bin. "His easycar network is for car information, and I do carpooling, which I didn't think was reliable at the time." Song Zhongjie once recalled.
But the truth was beyond Song Zhongjie's expectations.
The two sides only talked for an hour at the Kunlun Hotel in Beijing's East Third Ring Road, and Li Bin decided to invest. A week later, Li Bin, who was quite sincere, made another appointment with Song Zhongjie for another meal, and finalized all the investment details such as valuation and amount at the dinner table. So in February of the same year, BitAuto completed the B round of investment in Dida Chuxing, with an investment amount of 20 million US dollars.
Since then, Li Bin has made three consecutive rounds of injections on Dida Travel through BitAuto and Weilai Capital, and Weilai Capital is also the largest institutional shareholder of the latter. Tianyancha shows that in May 2015, Dida Travel received $100 million in Series C financing, which was jointly invested by IDG Capital, Schunk Investment, Zhixin Capital, and BitAuto.
According to the prospectus, in August 2017, Shanghai Weiyu, managed by Weilai Capital, made an exclusive D round investment in Dida Chuxing, totaling 200 million yuan. In 2018, Tick Travel ushered in the E round of financing, with a total financing of about 900 million yuan. In this round of investment, about 318 million yuan was subscribed for the first phase of NIO Capital Fund, about 128 million yuan was subscribed for the second phase of NIO Capital Fund, about 128 million yuan was invested by Hillhouse, and about 128 million yuan was invested by JD.com.
Although Li Bin only serves as a non-executive director of Dida Travel, in fact, Song Zhongjie invited him to join Dida as chairman in 2018. It can be seen that Li Bin's importance to ticking travel is self-evident.
03
The upstart of car manufacturing is investing in IPOs in batches
Tick's IPO ambition is an indispensable part of Li Bin's travel map.
In the circle, Li Bin is often called "the man behind Mobike", when Mobike founder Hu Weiwei took the team to meet Li Bin, about the idea of sharing bicycles, the two coincided, that night, Li Bin also came up with the name of the brand: Mobike (a compound of mobile and bike), the Chinese name is Mobike. After receiving Li Bin's angel investment, Hu Weiwei started his own business.
Later, the bike-sharing war came to the middle of the game, Meituan bought Mobike for $3.7 billion, and Li Bin's original investment of 1.46 million yuan was exchanged for 1.34 billion yuan - a huge return of nearly 100 times in more than two years.
In the past 8 years, NIO Capital has invested in a number of star companies such as CATL, Rongbai Technology, Inceptio Technology, Momenta, Pony.ai, and Qianchen Automobile. Among them, Momenta's IPO in the United States has been filed with the China Securities Regulatory Commission and is expected to become another IPO of Li Bin.
Looking at it, several heads of new domestic car-making forces have all started VC and expanded their IPO territory.
In December last year, Zhixing Technology successfully landed on the Hong Kong stock market, the most notable of which is Li Auto's two rounds of investment in Zhixing Technology. In December 2017, Li Auto participated in the Pre-A round of financing of Zhixing Technology. At that time, Li Xiang, the founder of Li Auto, entered the field of car manufacturing and began to accumulate autonomous driving capabilities. Therefore, Li Xiang decided to invest in Zhixing Technology to strengthen Li Auto's autonomous driving technology. In July 2020, Li Auto once again participated in the B round of financing of Zhixing Technology.
Back in February 2022, an announcement announced the birth of a super battery unicorn - Sunwoda Power received a new round of investment, with a total of 19 investors participating, among which it is rare to gather the three major new car-making forces of Ideal, Weilai and Xiaopeng. In July 2023, Sunwoda announced that it plans to spin off Sunwoda Power to be listed on the GEM, and recently it has been reported that it will be listed in Hong Kong.
Xiaomi Lei Jun's IPO results are even more eye-catching. The latest scene In April this year, Jiachen Electronics went through counseling and registration with the Hubei Securities Regulatory Bureau, and planned to make an initial public offering of shares and go public. As early as 2021, the change of industrial and commercial information shows that Xiaomi, Walden Technology, Huagong Venture Capital, and Huace Education Investment appeared in the lineup of shareholders of Jiachen Electronics. At the same time, Jiachen Electronics also has another identity - Xiaomi car supplier.
I still remember that in February 2023, Hesai Technology officially listed on NASDAQ, becoming the first LiDAR stock in China. Hesai Technology is surrounded by many investors, among which Xiaomi Group was one of the lead investors in the Series D financing in 2021, and later invested an additional $70 million in November of that year.
Zongmu Technology also has a deep relationship with Xiaomi. In June 2021, Zongmu Technology officially completed a Series D financing with a cumulative amount of US$190 million, of which Series D3 was led by Xiaomi Yangtze River Industry Fund. At that time, Lei Jun announced his entry into the smart electric vehicle market, and Zongmu Technology became the first related company invested by Xiaomi after the official announcement of car manufacturing. In April this year, Zongmu Technology also officially submitted a prospectus on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Why are upstarts so keen to invest? An important logic lies in the layout of the upstream and downstream supply chain of car manufacturing. When the shortage of core automotive components affects product delivery and causes a significant increase in costs, car companies will turn into CVCs, they will definitely focus on improving the stability of the supply chain and improving the delivery capacity of factories, such as the investment of new energy vehicles in power batteries and chip projects. This is a super track related to the national games, and every link contains opportunities.
As Li Bin said before, the Chinese market will have more opportunities in the period of great change when the automotive industry has once again become the commanding heights of scientific and technological innovation. "Thanks to the times, it has given entrepreneurs a very imaginative opportunity to start a business in a big industry and a big track. Instead of being anxious, we should act. ”
There is no doubt that the territory of this group of upstarts is winding away.
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