Chapter 626 - 447: 20 Million Daily Orders, Crushing Qian Du, Leek Master Wu Hongxin

The next day, Monday.

Kuai Pao, Fast Taxi, and Ofo Bike joined forces to enter the Southwest and Northwest markets.

With this, the O2O local life service apps under Senlian Capital had almost achieved full coverage of Hua Country.

Of course, cities unsuitable for operations were temporarily put on hold, pending the right opportunity.

For example, there was no need for a large-scale promotion of shared bikes in Sichuan. The local topography and traffic conditions had already sealed its fate: whoever tried would fail.

Qian Du clung desperately to Kuai Pao’s tail, but its market share could never break past 20%.

There was nothing they could do. Their fundamentals were just too weak!

From product experience to fulfillment quality and after-sales service, Qian Du was inferior to Kuai Pao in every aspect.

On top of that, Pei Yi was constantly pulling shady maneuvers, employing a slew of dirty tricks behind the scenes that made life miserable for Qian Du’s users.

A user would manage to snag a cheap group deal and take a taxi to the store to redeem it, only to be told by the merchant, "We’re not working with Qian Du anymore. Why don’t you place an order on Kuai Pao instead?"

Furthermore, the Qian Du operations staff and investment attraction managers hiding in the shadows and gaming the system for subsidies, along with external merchants and gray studios, had long been raking in cash.

Qian Du’s current situation was being held together entirely by red packets and coupons.

Although Li Yanhong had already realized the core problems with Qian Du’s delivery, group buy, and ride-hailing businesses, features like location accuracy, smart order dispatch, logistics scheduling, and user demand forecasting all required massive amounts of data to build a precise and effective algorithmic system.

How many orders did Qian Du even process a day?

The combined daily order volume of Kuai Pao’s three businesses was already approaching 20 million.

When it came to big data, Qian Du had no advantage.

When it came to technology, Qian Du was even worse off!

Three years ago, Chen Yansen had begun laying the groundwork in big data, cloud computing, and algorithmic modeling.

Although Senlian Capital didn’t offer cloud server and cloud storage services to the public like Ah Li, Penguin, or Qian Du, that didn’t mean it hadn’t built its own large-scale data centers.

Chen Yansen had originally placed his data server rooms in the Zhuxianzhuang Science and Technology Park. But with the successive completion of the Xucheng and Luzhou data centers, Senlian Capital’s strength in this field was now on par with Ah Li, Penguin, and Qian Du.

Therefore, the harder Li Yanhong tried and the more he spent on marketing, the more the market share gap between his company and Kuai Pao widened.

Little did people know, it was precisely Qian Du’s miserable state that made Ma Liyun completely abandon the idea of a full-scale entry into the O2O industry.

Although Lao Ma was quite confident in his own abilities, he was also keenly aware that if Ah Li were to jump into the same pit Qian Du had fallen into, it might not be able to climb out either.

In his view, burning money on subsidies couldn’t buy user retention. Qian Du’s offline team was out of control, and its LBS division might well become the burden that dragged the entire company down.

Besides, Ah Li’s foundation was in e-commerce. Its traffic, operational logic, and the on-the-ground promotional tactics of O2O were completely different.

Ma Liyun sincerely chose Kuai Pao as a strategic ally. This way, he could not only earn a hefty referral commission but also boost user activity on Taobao and Tmall.

As for whether to actually venture into food delivery, group buying, or ride-hailing, Lao Ma was undecided for the moment. In any case, Taodian remained on Taobao’s homepage, processing over ten thousand orders a day and becoming the group’s most pointless project.

Meanwhile.

Chen Yansen had just returned to his office after attending the data center’s launch ceremony when he received a call from Wu Hongxin.

"President Chen, I happen to be passing through Xucheng. I was hoping I could stop by for a visit. I’m not disturbing you, am I?"

Wu Hongxin was eleven years older than Chen Yansen and had been in the internet industry since 2001. His family background was similar to Wang Xin’s.

To put it bluntly, he was a rich second-generation kid who wasn’t afraid of failure and had plenty of opportunities for trial and error.

An ordinary person starting a business would often fall into an abyss after just one misstep.

Wu Hongxin, on the other hand, had failed at over thirty projects in fields ranging from search engines and web portals to stock recommendations and news aggregators.

Even Wang Xin would have to call him ’Big Bro’.

Then, when QQ became popular, strange, illegible text started appearing in QQ nicknames, status messages, and profiles.

Wu Hongxin keenly sensed the business opportunity within this trend and launched a "Martian language" converter. The tool appeared out of nowhere and made him a great deal of money.

A year later, he developed Meitu XiuXiu. Thanks to its simple operation and low barrier to entry for photo editing, it easily became the largest image processing tool in the country.

Its monthly active users exceeded one hundred million!

No one had to stay up all night practicing tedious background removal and channel-based skin smoothing techniques just for a few nice-looking, flattering photos anymore.

"President Wu, welcome! When will you arrive? I’ll come down to get you," Chen Yansen said, spouting pleasantries without moving an inch from the sofa.

In the mobile phone sector, Meitu could be considered a new underling taken in by Orange Mobile Phone.

Wu Hongxin was more decisive than even Lei Yijun or Zhou Hongyi. He had directly installed the Aurora Future 1.0 system on the Meitu Kiss to gain Chen Yansen’s full support.

As it turned out, his gamble had paid off!

The users who dared to buy a Meitu Kiss phone didn’t care about price or specs, so why would they care about the operating system?

As long as the pictures looked good and the beautification features worked well, that was all that mattered!

"You’re too kind, President Chen. I’m almost there," Wu Hongxin replied casually from a Maybach, glancing at his driver, who was signing in at security.

Chen Yansen stood up and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window. Sure enough, he saw an unfamiliar Maybach and replied, "Alright."

After hanging up, he had Meng Yun go downstairs to greet Wu Hongxin while he himself took out a canister of tea from Mindu and unhurriedly began to boil water and prepare it.

Wu Hongxin stepped out of the car with only one assistant and stood downstairs, hesitating.

The entire Science and Technology Park had eleven office buildings. Looking around, he could see the logos for Orange Mobile Phone, Toutiao, Pinbei, Orange Pay, Celestial Craftsmanship Chip, and other products on the nearby buildings.

In other words, they were all Senlian Capital’s office buildings.

Just as Wu Hongxin was wondering where to go, Meng Yun strode forward and greeted him with a smile. "President Wu, hello. I’m President Chen’s assistant, Meng Yun. Please follow me."

"Thank you for the trouble," Wu Hongxin replied with a faint smile and a nod.

Meng Yun walked on the left, leading Wu Hongxin and his assistant into the elevator bay and straight to the top floor.

With a DING, the elevator doors slowly slid open.

Wu Hongxin broke into a grin, took a large step forward, and greeted him humbly, "President Chen, it’s been a while."

"President Wu, please," Chen Yansen said with a smile.

He and Wu Hongxin had only met once before, at the "IT Leaders Summit" in Shencheng City. Wu had said he wanted to make phones and was willing to use the Aurora Future System.

Naturally, Chen Yansen wasn’t one to turn away a partner who came knocking on his door, and they had sealed the partnership with just a few words.

After all, he didn’t even turn his nose up at 360, so why would he reject Meitu?

The two then walked into the office together.

Chen Yansen gestured for Wu Hongxin to sit and poured him a cup of tea.

"Thank you, President Chen." Wu Hongxin adopted a very humble posture. He then took a gift bag from his assistant, placed it on the coffee table, and said, "I know you enjoy tea, President Chen, so I brought you some local specialties from Mindu."

Chen Yansen didn’t stand on ceremony and gave a slight nod.

Aside from two exquisitely packaged tins of tea, there was also a Meitu Kiss mobile phone.

Chen Yansen smiled and placed it on a display stand to the side.

Wu Hongxin’s eyes were instinctively drawn to it, and he saw a two-meter-tall display cabinet filled with all kinds of mobile phones.

It contained not only the full lineup from Orange Technology but also products from brands like Xiaomi, 360, NetEase, ZTE, and Huawei. There was even a gold-plated iPhone 5.

Clearly, these were all "reciprocal" gifts from competitors.

This was because after every new product launch, Orange Technology would prepare souvenir gifts for its competitors, which included their latest model.

Wu Hongxin had originally thought the Meitu Kiss’s design was rather outstanding, but when placed among dozens of the latest smartphones, it suddenly seemed completely unremarkable.

’This won’t do!’

As the founder of Meitu XiuXiu, Wu Hongxin had a deep understanding of user psychology. A Meitu Mobile Phone’s performance could be terrible, and its app ecosystem could be incomplete, but its design absolutely could not lose.

He immediately made up his mind: the next version of the Meitu Mobile Phone had to win on looks.

"Has the Meitu Kiss sold over a million units yet?" Chen Yansen asked unhurriedly after sitting back down.

He knew the Meitu Kiss’s production volume but not its specific sales figures.

"We just passed 800,000 units. I have you to thank for that, President Chen," Wu Hongxin said sincerely.

Those 800,000 units shouldn’t be underestimated; the profit wasn’t any lower than that from five million Redmi 1s.

The net profit per unit was as high as 700 yuan, even more than what the Orange C3S made.

"It’s a win-win partnership," Chen Yansen said dismissively.

Meitu was profiting, but Orange Technology wasn’t losing out either.

When all was said and done, Wu Hongxin and Meitu would be the ones taking the heat, while Orange Technology remained perfectly hidden in the background.

"President Chen, I actually came this time mainly because I want to use the content seeding functions of Douyin, Toutiao, and Xiaohongshu to further increase the Meitu Kiss’s online shipment volume," Wu Hongxin said seriously.

He wanted a full-funnel marketing plan, preferably one that used articles and videos to subtly brainwash users.

Chen Yansen understood. Wu Hongxin wanted to negotiate an annual framework agreement. He was willing to spend money, but he also wanted a discount.

Normally, this was the kind of thing that could be handed over to Liang Bo.

But since Wu Hongxin had come in person, it wouldn’t be right to refuse him outright.

It wasn’t uncommon in the industry for bosses to negotiate partnerships themselves. When the people with the most authority on both sides communicated directly, they could often work out unexpectedly large deals.

Previously, during the FoxTao phase, Chen Yansen had also met face-to-face with the heads of platforms like Sunning’s Zhang Jindong, Jingdong’s Liu Qiangdong, Yihaodian, and Yixun.

"No problem. I’ll have Liang Bo talk to you this afternoon," Chen Yansen replied simply.

"Thank you, President Chen." Wu Hongxin was a smart man. Some things didn’t need to be spelled out for him to understand Chen Yansen’s meaning.

Chen Yansen picked up his teacup. The temperature was just right, and he took a gentle sip.

Just then, the phone on the table rang.

He glanced at the caller ID: Ge Yue, the Managing Director of Apple’s Asian Region.

Chen Yansen excused himself, picked up the phone, and answered the call.

"Cook? Yes, that’s fine. But the Deep Blue Battery production line is still being calibrated, so there are no samples..." Chen Yansen replied nonchalantly after hearing the purpose of the call.

He had no intention of refusing Apple’s request for a partnership.

Although the Deep Blue Battery’s performance was strong, even good wine fears a deep alley. If he could get Apple to take the lead in using it, it would undoubtedly serve as excellent publicity.

Two weeks ago, Gao Weilin had transferred all of his shares in Desai Battery to Shencheng State-Owned Assets. In one fell swoop, he had netted a profit of 470 million yuan.

’It wasn’t that he was intentionally trying to steal clients from Desai. He couldn’t just kick a potential buyer out the door, could he?’

After arranging a meeting time with Ge Yue, Chen Yansen hung up.

Beside him, Meng Yun silently noted the time, preparing to add it to President Chen’s schedule later.

"President Chen, I’ve heard people mention the Deep Blue Battery. Is it true that it can double the battery capacity for the same physical volume?" Wu Hongxin asked curiously.

"In principle, yes. But the performance of lithium-sulfur batteries degrades in low and high temperatures, so it’s 90% at best," Chen Yansen answered seriously.

’Ninety percent?’

’In other words, for a battery of the same capacity, wouldn’t a Deep Blue Battery be even smaller?’

’A smaller battery means a thinner phone, and it would also help optimize heat dissipation.’

Wu Hongxin’s interest was instantly piqued. Upon learning that the Deep Blue Battery was about to go into production, he immediately said, "President Chen, Meitu’s next model will have to use the Deep Blue Battery as well."

"A new model?" Chen Yansen was slightly surprised.

’The Meitu Kiss has only been out for a few months, hasn’t it?’

’That’s not how you harvest leeks!’

"I just decided. I plan to develop a high-end model, preferably priced above 4,000 yuan," Wu Hongxin said frankly.