Why Alibaba fired partner Jiang Fan

A year ago, at the New York Stock Exchange covered with orange LOGOs, Ma Yun ushered in a very shining moment in his life. Alibaba Group's $25 billion IPO broke the record here.

　　With the phrase "dreams still have to be had, what if they are realized", Ma Yun was surrounded by warm applause, and he became the world's brightest entrepreneurial star and a representative of a new generation of Chinese entrepreneurs, who was called "the dreamer of the Chinese dream".

　　Now, when Ali is nearly a first anniversary of its listing, the praise is still in the ears, but the superstar has to face such embarrassment - Ali's stock price has fallen for 10 consecutive months.

　　In the past 10 months, Alibaba's market value has shrunk by $140.7 billion to $153 billion, the first time since Alibaba went public in September 2014 that its market value is lower than Tencent's.

　　At a luncheon at the Economic Club in New York on June 9, 2015, when asked about Ali's listing, Ma Yun was blunt: "If I have the next life, I will keep my company privatized." ”

　　The IPO is like a double-edged sword, and Ma Yun's glory and shackles are placed in a magnifying glass. Now, some investors' optimism about Alibaba's prospects is being replaced by fears of slowing overall economic growth, and people have even begun to question whether Alibaba has peaked and whether Alibaba and its stocks can still be worthy of the current market value.

　　On September 14, 2015, Ali refuted the decline in its stock price, saying that the outside world's doubts about Ali's stock price were mainly based on false data and lacked integrity, professionalism and fair competition.

　　As the helmsman of Ali, Ma Yun continues to weave a huge net to improve the profits and value of this listed company - using Alipay as a medium to encircle land in the O2O field, through continuous alliances with giant companies and even local governments to build a high "moat", by investing in robots to border the intelligent era...

　　Whether before or after the listing, Ma Yun has not forgotten to build a hundred years of Ali, but now what he entrusts is no longer the Ali of 16 years ago. Ali, which is deeply rooted in the soil of China's economy and whose tentacles have reached the world, has become incomparably large. The Dance of the Giants, with a little stumbling or fatal effect.

　　On July 7 this year, Ma Yun delivered a speech at the celebration banquet of legend holdings listing, expressing infinite admiration and envy for Liu Chuanzhi, who has "achieved fame and achievement". "When I am lucky enough to have such a day, Liu Zong will have to come." He said.

　　One year on the market: crackdown, alliances and expansion

　　Since completing a record IPO on the New York Stock Exchange last September, Ma and his Ali have gained strong and efficient financing channels and global popularity, but they have also been accused of online goods sales, falling stock prices and declining net profits.

　　In the year of listing, Ali's stock price reached a maximum of $120, which was the third day after the "Double 11" in 2014, which was almost double the issue price of $68, but it has since fallen all the way down, even falling to a low of $58 on August 24 this year.

　　At present, in addition to advising investors to "forget the stock price" and buy back $4 billion worth of stocks to boost morale, ma Yun seems to have a hard time driving away the haze under the global stock market crash and China's economic downturn.

　　In the past year, Ma Yun and Ali have mainly done three things: cracking down on counterfeiting, alliances and expansion.

　　Fake goods have always been a major problem plaguing Ali, with the pressure of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce on Taobao, the rise of e-commerce platforms such as Jingdong and Jumei Youpin, the pressure on Ma Yun to purify his own online shopping platform has become more and more great, and he also urgently needs to dispel the doubts of investors, but the cure is still being found.

　　"Ali and the Putian government have had in-depth communication, and they hope that Ali can find a way out for the industries and enterprises there." Shao Xiaofeng said in a previous interview with the Times Weekly reporter, "If these problems are not solved, just say which places have fakes, which places to fight (fake), and hit hard, it is still a symptom but not a cure." ”

　　In the past two years, Ali has invested 1 billion yuan to fight counterfeiting, since the listing, Ma Yun's "S.H.I.E.L.D." is also exploring a new strategy to combat counterfeiting, currently taking Putian in Fujian Province as the first pilot, ready to work with local governments to help the local counterfeiting industry upgrade and iteration, and strive to transform those who like to imitate large brands into private brand producers. In terms of traffic channels and brand promotion, this batch of manufacturers will receive the policy tilt given by Ali.

　　In addition to cracking down on counterfeiting, in order to break the bad impression of the Ali online shopping platform in the outside world, Ma Yun and his e-commerce team also continued to supplement the platform's high-quality supply, signed contracts with more than 100 brands, and pulled giant supermarket chains from the United States, britain, Germany, and Japan, Suning in China, and even the American e-commerce giant Amazon to open a flagship store on Tmall International, and launched the Tmall Korea Pavilion.

　　Ma Yun keenly seized the opportunity of economic growth and stock market fever to push Ali to the market, when China and even the global economy entered a downturn, Ma Yun will not fall into too passive position. In the context of the tide of department store closures, this group of well-known giant retailers even hopes to leverage Ma Yun to eliminate some of the sense of crisis by creating online and offline combined sales. For Ma Yun, this alliance can not only stabilize his e-commerce status, but also easily allow Alipay to communicate with a huge number of online and offline customers, and the alliance of overseas merchants is also a kind of help for their own development of cross-border e-commerce and overseas expansion.

　　As early as before Ali's listing, Ma Yun expressed his desire to vigorously expand overseas markets. This year, during a downturn in global stock prices, Ma recruited Michael Evans, a former Goldman Sachs chairman who is familiar with global markets, as president, and earlier appointed former GE executive Eric Pelletier as vice president and head of international government affairs. Ali's AliExpress became Russia's number one shopping site before its listing, and this year Ma yun invested in two American e-commerce and retailers, two Indian e-commerce and payment companies, and also posted Singapore Post. Ma even invested in a translation company in China, hoping to help small and medium-sized entrepreneurs at home and abroad break down the language barrier, just as he himself benefited from mastering fluent, globally available English. However, in the context of the weak global economy, the tariff policy has not been fully liberalized, and the memorandum of cooperation between Amazon China and the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, Ma Yun's "global selling, global buying" abacus seems to be difficult to meet.

　　Since Ali's listing, Ma Yun has spent more energy on the vertical and horizontal, relying on strong cash flow and flow resources, and constantly expanding the scale in the O2O field, rural e-commerce, and cross-border e-commerce enclosure.

　　Liu Lejun, product manager of Ant Jubao, said in an interview with the Times Weekly reporter, "In the fiercely competitive (Internet wealth management) market, because there are too many competitors, it is difficult to hit all the points with one product, at this time, we will deal with such competition through product portfolio."

　　Within the Alibaba Group, Ma Yun integrated the online pharmaceutical business into Alibaba Health, launched a travel platform, and established the Ali Sports Group, the Music Group and the Automotive Division in an attempt to penetrate into more industrial chains to stabilize his urban e-commerce empire. Ma Yun also accelerated the layout in the logistics field where Liu Qiangdong, the president of JD.com, was good at, invested in Yuantong, opened supermarket distribution centers in southwest and east China, and launched same-day and three-hour delivery services.

　　This year, Ma Yun finally realized his 23-year dream of banking. While pouring the bitter water of the difficulty of borrowing at the beginning of entrepreneurship to the public, he pulled Shi Yuzhu, chairman of Giant Group, Guo Guangchang, chairman of Fuxing Group, Shen Guojun, chairman of Yintai Group, and other rich merchants in Jiangsu and Zhejiang to establish an online business bank. He also separated Ant Financial, the most imaginative business segment, so that the Internet finance company is no longer interfered with by foreign intervention and control disputes like Ali.

　　"Alibaba and Alibaba Finance will essentially be a data company in the future." In a previous interview with the Times Weekly reporter, Ma Yun hoped to establish a data platform that includes all consumption-related data, and then build a data trading center center with this platform as the center.

　　"Yu'e Bao is aimed at the fragmented financial needs of grassroots groups; Ali Small Loan is to meet the fast and convenient financing needs of small and micro enterprises; and the purpose of Tmall installment is to reduce the consumption threshold and meet consumer demand; so we have always provided services point-to-point, and through online business banks, we hope to provide complete and systematic service solutions for Internet business." Ge Ruichao, a public relations expert in the brand and public communication department of Small and Micro Financial Services (the predecessor of Ant Financial), told the Times Weekly reporter.

　　Analysys International analyst Wang Xiaoxing analyzed the Times Weekly reporter that Ali's large-scale layout in the financial field is on the one hand to make up for the shortcomings of the industrial chain, and on the other hand, it is also based on a financial grand strategy. "But the limitation is that the ants and online business banks established by Ali are not traditional financial institutions, which will lead to its business restrictions." Wang Xiaoxing said that Ma Yun was a little helpless at the moment.

　　Weaving a Giant Web: How Behemoths Are Born

　　In 1999, Ma Yun, an English teacher who ran China's Yellow Pages, summoned 17 people to form an 18-Luohan team and started a business again for 500,000 yuan. Benefiting from China's economic growth and demographic dividend, Ma eventually created the world's largest e-commerce group and a record IPO.

　　Now, Ali has become a huge business empire, and this behemoth was created by Ma Yun, who deliberately pursued scale.

　　In 2011, Ma Yun upgraded the big Taobao strategy to the big Ali strategy, in 2012 "double eleven" Taobao, Tmall transaction amount exceeded 100 million, Ma Yun accelerated the layout of the big Ali territory, split the company into 25 business units, put forward the "platform, finance, data" ten-year strategy and three waves of listing plan, Ali thus assumed the role of e-commerce collaboration service provider rather than just e-commerce platform.

　　Looking back on the 16 years of entrepreneurship, Ma Yun may have never imagined that he would weave a huge network with e-commerce as an incision in the future, and his service tentacles extended to almost all areas of life in Chinese. According to the grand strategic plan, in recent years, he has acquired or invested in at least 50 companies, including television, mobile phones, taxis, social networking, video, maps and other entrances, as well as all the fantasies of the outside world about Chinese stocks.

　　After the listing, Ma Yun's investment momentum was even stronger. According to a September 2014 report by Caijing magazine, Alibaba acquired and invested in 30 companies from 2011 to the pre-listing period. According to public statistics, in the past year alone, Ali has disclosed that it has invested in 25 companies, of which 10 are overseas companies.

　　In recent years, Ma Yun and his Ali have invested in China's largest group-buying network Meituan, the largest video network Youku Tudou, the largest taxi giant Kuaidi, the largest home appliance retailer Suning, the largest private film and television company Huayi Brothers and Light Media, the largest Weibo platform Sina Weibo, the largest monetary fund Tianhong Fund, the earliest P2P company Paipai Loan, the earliest Internet insurance company ZhongAn Insurance, and also invested in media giants First Financial Media, Huashu Media and large smartphone manufacturer Meizu Technology. The well-known football club Evergrande Football and the large chain department store Yintai Department Store have acquired map giant AutoNavi Map and browser giant UC, and their investment tentacles have also reached the United States, India, Singapore, Japan, Israel and other places.

　　However, how Ma Yun wants to integrate these complex businesses and clarify related party transactions is still a big challenge. But as Ma Yun's giant network continues to expand, Ali's control over several industries in China is bound to become stronger, and this control will increase its leverage in the game with the government and other giants.

　　The first batch of weavers of this giant network, Ali 18 Luohan, now 15 are still in ali positions, Ma Yun together with chief financial officer Cai Chongxin and chief human resources officer, the current Ant Financial CEO Peng Lei has become a prominent star of the Halo Center, other relatively low-key founders are also in operations, design, products, technical directors and other positions, Ma Yun's wife Zhang Ying has become a full-time wife, Peng Lei's husband Sun Tongyu has become an angel investor, and Taobao engineer Zhou Yuehong has emigrated abroad.

　　The Bundle Economy: Jack Ma's Delicate Balancing Technique

　　In addition to the commercial sector, the growth of Alibaba's listed companies closely follows the pace of China's economic development. Alibaba's network brings Together Chinese exporters and foreign wholesalers to harness China's vast exports to drive the growth engine of the economy, alibaba has followed suit and turned its attention to Taobao as it shifts to a consumption-driven economy. Now, Ant Financial is keeping up with the rise of the mobile Internet and the government's "Internet +" strategy.

　　Ma Yun's Ali is called BAT together with Ma Huateng's Tencent and Robin Li's Baidu. Although they are all among the top three Internet giants in China, compared with Tencent, which emphasizes the social gene of games, and Baidu, which emphasizes the gene of search technology, Ali, which has the attributes of e-commerce, is most closely tied to the Chinese economy.

　　Alibaba controls about 80 percent of China's electronics retail market, and in Hangzhou, people call the Internet company "Ali Province." In 2014, Alibaba's total revenue exceeded 70.8 billion yuan, and its tax payment accounted for 16% of its revenue, and its total revenue was fast catching up with the total annual GDP of the Tibet Autonomous Region.

　　There are 34,000 Alibaba employees, 250 million active buyers, 8 million online merchants, 50,000 Taobao models, and 900,000 couriers shuttling back and forth across China's largest e-commerce network.

　　Ma Yun and his Ali have greatly improved China's business ecology and even social ecology, and liberated the local economy. In 2014, there were more than 300 billion-yuan Taobao counties in the country, covering 25 provinces and municipalities, of which more than 100 were 100 billion-yuan Taobao counties from the central and western regions, while 21 were state-level poverty-stricken counties that became 100 million-yuan Taobao counties.

　　With the implementation of the "Internet +" strategy, more and more local governments are uniting with Ali to bring about the local e-commerce atmosphere and economic vitality. The Administrative Committee of Zhejiang Ningbo Free Trade Zone has signed the "Strategic Cooperation Agreement on Cross-border E-commerce" with Ali, the two sides intend to build an "online free trade platform", and Hangzhou is also declaring to the state to establish a "Hangzhou Online Free Trade Zone" in an attempt to work with Ali to promote the liberalization, facilitation and planning of cross-border e-commerce.

　　In the past year, Shaanxi, Shandong, Fujian, Yunnan, Xinjiang, Tianjin and Suzhou, Jiangsu, have all reached strategic cooperation with Ali, and Hainan Governor Liu Cigui also personally met Ma Yun at the just-concluded Xiamen International Trade and Investment Forum, hoping to implement the cooperation between the two sides. These local governments are eager to promote the development of local Internet enterprises, modern logistics, rural e-commerce, modern finance, big data, etc., as well as cultivate young innovative talents.

　　"You do things according to my rules under my account, and when you get bigger, you must abide by the law and discipline, don't mess around." Wang Xiaoxing, an analyst at Analysys International, explained the logic of local government regulation of enterprises. In the view of Cao Lei, director of the China E-commerce Center, Ali's foreign holding background also brings certain hidden dangers to its image, online payment and information security. "From a national perspective, economic security and data security must be guaranteed. Moreover, the state also hopes that the industry will blossom, rather than one or two. Cao Lei said.

　　It is the nature of businessmen to chase after profit opportunities, but entrepreneurs who go big and far often have to prevent themselves from hitting the iceberg. Binding the local economy is a balancing act for Ma Yun.

　　The Innovative Question: How to Become Great?

　　The vast Ali empire is increasingly like a traditional enterprise, relying on investment to expand its territory. It is enjoying the dividends and conveniences brought by the huge, and it is also facing the reality of losing the vitality of innovation because of the huge.

　　"In the context of the decline in pure e-commerce into the scale of revenue, Ali's volume has been large enough, but the high-speed growth of Ali has become a thing of the past, it is no longer possible to continue to maintain crazy growth, but this does not mean that This indicates that Ali has peaked." Hong Bo, a partner at Five Seasons Consulting, said in an interview with The Times.

　　Ali's latest financial report also partially confirmed Hong Bo's statement. Ali's revenue in the second quarter of this year increased by 28% year-on-year, which is still enough for a company with a market value of nearly $200 billion to highlight the giant's market strength, but the growth rate in the quarter is also the lowest revenue growth rate in Ali's at least 3 years.

　　"Just because high-speed growth has passed doesn't mean the golden period has passed. In fact, many times, a company that does not grow fast can still create very good value. Hong Bo said. However, Hong Bo also said that the investment mentality that expects Ali to maintain high-speed growth is not realistic at the moment, and the paradox is that, in general, investors tend to invest in a high-growth company rather than a very stable large enterprise.

　　On June 29 this year, on the podium of the graduation ceremony of Tsinghua School of Economics and Management, Ma Yun said: "Ali and Jack Ma have today because of the changes in China in the first 30 years. ”

　　In his speech, he reiterated the point he had repeatedly mentioned: the world is moving from the era of IT (information technology for short, meaning information technology industry) to the era of DT (short for Data, meaning data industry).

　　In Ma Yun's view, in the open and transparent DT era, the challenge and opportunity lies in how to combine the Internet with traditional industries, otherwise Internet companies will not live well. It is not difficult to understand Ma Yun's several major layouts after the listing. The first is to invest 28.3 billion yuan in Suning, the second is to invest 6 billion yuan with Ant Financial to set up a local life service reputation network, and the third is to invest 6 billion yuan to increase capital in Alibaba Cloud.

　　But in the wave of global shifts to the mobile Internet, Big Ali seems to be losing its leading position, although it always wants to maintain the heroism of the boss. Ma Yun deployed multiple entrances, but he still did not find the entrance with the largest number of users and the most frequent users. Contacts are increasingly marginalized, UC's Shenma search does not seem to have made a breakthrough, and the mobile portal app that the Us search engine company Quixey is going to design has not yet surfaced.

　　Now, Ma Yun still pins his hopes of migrating to mobile on Alipay. On September 7, 2015, Alipay changed from orange to blue, and Alibaba intends to turn Alipay, which has a payment function, into a popular chat tool to compete with Tencent's WeChat, which has a 700 million active user base.

　　"WeChat is a super APP, Ali also wants to make Alipay into such a product, but it does not seem to be successful, people's initial understanding of Alipay is a payment tool, after the formation of this established impression, it is difficult for you to change it." Analysys International analyst Wang Xiaoxing told The Times Weekly.

　　In the year of listing, although Ali also invested in the Japanese SoftBank robot SBRH and released the DTPAI visual artificial intelligence platform, it strives to border the era of intelligence and the era of mobile, but to compete with Tencent and Baidu in these aspects, Ma Yun seems to be very passive. Tencent's WeChat has a large-scale commercial imagination space, while Baidu's layout in big data and artificial intelligence is taking the lead. Recently, Baidu released a "secret" intelligent robot product that detonated the Internet circle, saying that it can provide users with secretarial search services, making Baidu evolve from connecting people and information to connecting people and services.

　　Before the listing, Ali was regarded as an innovative enterprise by the outside world, and repeatedly developed Taobao, Alipay, And Balance Bao, which are phenomenal products that keep pace with the times, and also put forward ideas that inspire users such as Juhuasuan and "Double Eleven". But after the listing, it has not released a blockbuster product that has excited the market.

　　According to Ali's financial report for the second quarter of 2015, its product research and development expenses were 3.241 billion, accounting for 16% of sales, which can be described as a relatively large expense in Ali's multiple expenses, which is nearly double the cost of 1.952 billion yuan in the same period of the previous fiscal year. However, according to the financial report, the reason for the increase is not invested in research and development of new products, but mainly the share compensation and the copyright fee paid to Yahoo.

　　BAT operates behind the Great Firewall and is protected from competition from foreign companies like Google, Twitter and Facebook, but veneer competition will eventually migrate over time. In the jungle of the global market, if any Internet company cannot keep up with the trend and maintain innovation, it will be difficult to stand out in the hot competition between inside and outside.

　　When the outside world expects That Ali, which represents China's new economy, to eventually go abroad and become a world brand, can Ma Yun, who is currently entangled in stock price haze and innovation fatigue, get rid of the crisis and continue to write a legend?

　　The capital market always likes to compare Ali's recent situation with its other listing. Alibaba Network (Alibaba.com), Alibaba's first public company, was listed in Hong Kong in 2007 and rose to its highest level on the first trading day, but then fell all the way down for five years until it finally had to be embarrassingly delisted. So many people have warned that if Ali is not curbed today, Ali's stock price decline may be similar to its unfortunate predecessor.

　　After a company becomes a listed company, catering to investors' expectations for high-speed growth is bound to continue to create stories to expand the scale, and ignoring investors' expectations will plunge itself into a stock price crisis.

　　But if Ali does go private, will it become safer and stronger as a result?

　　Jack Ma raised this question, but may not be able to answer this question, whether willing or not, Jack Ma and Ali can only move forward, he needs to turn Alibaba from huge to great.