After Didi was fined, Cao Cao Chuxing received 3.8 billion yuan in financing

China Economic Weekly- Economic Network News (reporter Lu Jiangtao) Once, Didi's near-monopoly market position made the presence of other online ride-hailing platforms very low. With the recent series of penalties suffered by Didi Chuxing for serious violations of laws and regulations on the collection and use of personal information, its competitors have also ushered in an excellent window period. First, Meituan, which has been off the line of taxi APP for two years, restarted the taxi business, and then T3 Travel accelerated its operation in more than ten cities such as Shenzhen, Haikou, Taiyuan, Taizhou, and Xuzhou.

The most interesting thing is that Cao Cao Travel recently announced the completion of the B round of financing, amounting to 3.8 billion yuan. This round of financing is not only the first domestic equity investment obtained by online ride-hailing enterprises this year, but also the largest single financing obtained by online ride-hailing companies in China since 2020.

At the press conference, Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holding Group, said that the layout of big travel is one of the key measures in the transformation strategy of Geely Technology, which will be innovatively applied to the field of shared travel with the world's leading internet of vehicles, automatic driving technology and new energy technology, empower Cao Cao travel in an all-round way, adhere to the low-carbon, healthy and shared life circle of people and vehicles, create the world's leading technology travel platform, and provide more users with a safe travel experience of all scenarios and depth and intelligence.

In this regard, Internet analyst Ge Jia believes that Cao Cao Travel has received such a large investment at this time, showing that capital values it. After the Didi APP was regulated, it did give other online ride-hailing platforms a lot of room for development, and Cao Cao Travel has the strong capital support of Geely Group behind it, which does usher in a good opportunity for development.

The monthly active activity exceeded 10 million, and the registered users exceeded 60 million

According to the data, Cao Cao Travel was established in 2015, invested and controlled by Geely Technology Group Co., Ltd., and has now been stationed in 62 cities. In terms of financing, Cao Cao Travel completed a round of financing of 1 billion yuan in January 2018, and the investors were Sanchuan Investment, Zhejiang Venture Capital, Paradise Silicon Valley, Longqi Investment and other institutions.

On September 6, about 3 and a half years after the A round of financing, Cao Cao Chuxing announced the completion of the B round of financing, with a financing amount of 3.8 billion yuan, and the investors were Suzhou Xiangcheng Financial Holding Group, Suzhou High-speed Rail New City State Holding Group, Suzhou City Investment Company, ABC International Suzhou Company, and Soochow Innovation Capital.

Gong Xin, CEO of Cao Cao Travel, said that the B round of financing will help enterprises increase their efforts in key tasks such as technology research and development, business expansion, service quality improvement, and driver group protection, so as to further enhance the competitiveness of enterprises and expand market share.

At the press conference, Gong Xin also announced Cao Cao's new travel strategy - "N3 Strategy". Among them, "N3" (N cube) refers to New Car (customized car), New Power (new energy), and New Ecosystem (ecosystem). The "N3 Strategy" proposes that Cao Cao Travel will rely on the two advantages of Geely's large-scale travel ecology and Suzhou's industrial ecology to create a development plan for integrated travel.

When talking about why Cao Cao travel is invested at this time, Lu Zhidong, chairman of the investor Xiangcheng Financial Holdings, said that the focus of investment is to choose the track, travel is just needed, the Internet travel industry does not have absolute exclusivity, whether it is a short-term window or a long-term competition, there is still room for competition. Therefore, the leading enterprises in the industry are still the preferred targets at this time.

Lu Zhidong also believes that the shareholders of Cao Cao Travel have a good background and are optimistic about its good interaction with Geely Ecology. At the same time, as an investor, it also values the operation and management team of Cao Cao Travel's ability to execute the plan.

Dong Wei, chairman of ABC International Suzhou Company, said that in terms of data and information security and passenger services, Cao Cao Travel has always been an excellent benchmark in the industry. Cao Cao Travel is positioned in green travel, which is in line with the current concept of environmental protection development and will help promote the development of the shared travel industry in the direction of environmental protection, economy and efficiency.

Some industry analysts pointed out that Cao Cao Chuxing can obtain the largest single financing in China since 2020 since 2020, and the capital values its recent super high development speed and huge development potential in the future. From May to July this year, Cao Cao's travel orders increased explosively. In July, Demand for CaoCao Travel orders hit a record high of 150% from the same period last year. Three months before the benchmark, the number of orders received in July more than doubled. According to Yiou data, Cao Cao Travel's monthly active users in July have exceeded 10 million.

Aurora Big Data's "2021 Q1 Mobile Internet Industry Data Research Report" also shows that Cao Cao Travel's MAU reached 5.679 million this year, a substantial increase of nearly 140% over the same period last year. Gong Xin also revealed that through continuous refined operation, Cao Cao Travel currently has more than 60 million registered users.

Capital investment, Cao Cao Travel national headquarters settled in Suzhou

Following the official announcement of the financing news, the national headquarters of Cao Cao Travel was also officially settled in Suzhou Xiangcheng District.

In this regard, some senior industry insiders have analyzed that the close cooperation between Cao Cao travel and Suzhou in this round shows that this investment reveals The official industrial construction plan of Suzhou to a certain extent. As a traditional manufacturing city, Suzhou should be optimistic about the future of the industrial Internet economy, and will invest heavily in the Internet travel platform project incubated by the main engine factory.

In addition, in recent years, the Xiangcheng District Government has focused on the development of the intelligent car networking industry, gathering more than 70 related enterprises in the Internet of Vehicles industry chain, which has formed a certain first-mover advantage, which may also be one of the important reasons why Cao Cao Travel's national headquarters chose to settle in Xiangcheng District of Suzhou City.

In addition to Cao Cao Travel, Geely Holdings also continued to expand its layout in Suzhou. According to previous information, in January this year, Geely Automobile's intelligent driving global R&D center settled in Suzhou High-speed Rail New City. The center is a joint venture established by Geely Automobile Research Institute and Hubei Yijiatong Technology Co., Ltd., with a registered capital of 300 million yuan, and is the only subsidiary of Geely Group in the field of technology research and development and industrial operation in the field of automotive driverless driving.

In March this year, Geely's "Little Greyhound Travel" signed an investment cooperation agreement with Suzhou High-speed Rail New City, and Little Greyhound Travel and the state-owned enterprises under Suzhou High-speed Rail New City jointly invested in the establishment of a joint venture company to operate car rental-related products and vehicle management services, and carry out new energy vehicle government and enterprise customers' official travel and C-end customer travel business. The Little Greyhound Travel Project is expected to put into operation about 7,000 electric vehicles in Suzhou within 2 to 3 years, with the goal of developing into a listed company in the field of car rental platforms.

As a leading investor, Suzhou Xiangcheng Financial Holdings Group has invested a lot in the automotive field.

According to the data, Xiangcheng Financial Holdings was established in 2017 with a registered capital of 1 billion yuan and is one of the six state-owned enterprises in Suzhou Xiangcheng District. According to the information, in addition to Cao Cao Travel, Xiangcheng Financial Holdings has also invested in the intelligent parking application Xiangcheng Parking, Shunyun Technology, which is an automotive engineering industry simulation software, and Haizhibo Electronics, an auto parts manufacturer.

In fact, not only Cao Cao travel, but also in the location of many "unicorn" enterprises, we can see the practice of "financial investment" or "capital investment".

The most well-known case in the automobile industry is the headquarters of Weilai settled in Hefei, and Hefei state-owned assets injected 10 billion yuan. According to the analysis of industry insiders, the characteristics of the Hefei model are "to lead with investment", relying on the state-owned assets platform, and creating a closed loop of "introducing the team - leading the state-owned assets - landing the project - equity exit - circular development" around the whole chain of investment.

Industry insiders believe that the close cooperation between Cao Cao travel and Suzhou in this round shows that this investment reveals Suzhou's official industrial construction plan to a certain extent. As a traditional manufacturing city, Suzhou should be optimistic about the future of the industrial Internet economy, and will invest heavily in the Internet travel platform project incubated by the main engine factory.

In terms of commuting demand, Suzhou has more than 17 million urban service population, and there is a strong demand for convenient and comfortable travel. In terms of industrial development, the output value of Suzhou's automobile and parts industry is nearly 200 billion yuan. Looking forward to the future, Suzhou's intelligent networked automobile industry can continue to grow bigger and stronger, and make a brand.

Incremental competition turned to stock competition, and online car competition entered the second half

Overall, the current general pattern of the ride-hailing market is B2C, C2C, and aggregation. Among them, Caocao Travel and T3 Travel are B2C online ride-hailing platforms, Didi and Meituan are C2C travel platforms, and Baidu Map and AutoNavi Map are aggregate platforms.

On the night of July 4 this year, the Cyberspace Administration of China directly released a blockbuster document announcing the removal of the Didi Chuxing APP. On the evening of July 9, due to serious violations of laws and regulations to collect and use personal information, following the removal of "Didi Chuxing" from the entire network, 25 other apps under Didi were also required to be removed from the shelves by the Cyberspace Administration of China.

The "annihilation" of Didi's software has obviously created an excellent window period for competitors. The market boss suffers setbacks, but the demand will not disappear, and the market share will be divided up by the players of the second echelon.

According to the 48th Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet Network released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), by the end of 2020, the scale of online ride-hailing users in China will be 365 million, accounting for 36.1% of netizens.

From the perspective of the urban penetration rate of online ride-hailing, the penetration rate of first-tier cities is the highest, reaching 50.3%, the penetration rate of new first-tier cities is 20.3%, and the penetration rate of second-tier cities and below is low, less than 10%. From the perspective of the layout of Cao Cao's travel cities, second-tier cities and below account for a relatively high proportion, how to fully tap the travel needs of these emerging markets is the challenge and potential of Cao Cao travel.

Industry insiders believe that the competition in the online car market has shifted from incremental competition to stock competition. Faster order picking up speed and high-quality transportation capacity have become the key to order retention and user conversion, and high-quality transportation capacity and perfect management system will become the long-term competitive advantage of the future ride-hailing industry.

Previously, Didi, AutoNavi, Meituan and other platforms have been ordered by their superiors to rectify some of their own violations, resulting in a certain impact on their market share in the field of travel, while Cao Cao Travel has hardly had similar violations, which is also the advantage of Cao Cao Travel in the future competition.