Two years ago, most of us could only choose to wait or fight for taxis in the cold; two years later, some of us were already accustomed to taxiing with taxi drivers or booking "special cars" and learned how to use them. "Smart travel." Also two years ago, Lv Chuanwei, a senior executive of Silicon Valley Technology Corp., saw the rigid demand behind the “difficulty of getting on with a taxi” from his domestic travel experience. He was enthusiastically determined to go back to China to start his own business because of the enthusiasm of smart travel abroad.

Lu Chuanwei

Today, Lv Chuanwei's group, the Quickwiz Group, already has two fast-paced taxis and one car. Expansion of internationalization, elimination of misunderstandings by drivers, mining of user needs, exploration of commercialization paths, and refinement of product operations... Chairman of the board of directors and CEO of Express Group, Lu Chuanwei, said in an exclusive interview with Jinghua Times that the industry is changing too quickly. There are many things to do next.

future plan

Duopoly pattern remains unchanged for a long time

Jinghua Finance: Can you sum up, from 2012 to now, what changes have taken place in the taxi industry as a whole and in quick taxis?

Lv: The most obvious change in the company is from a team of several people to a company with a size of 800. As the team gets bigger and bigger, the importance of management systems and processes is gradually reflected. At the business level, from the fast taxi to the No. 1 car, it also expands many services related to urban travel.

In the industry, there were more than 30 companies that used taxi applications at the end of 2012 and early 2013. Relatively speaking, they were all regional companies. The competition environment was relatively disorderly and chaotic. By 2014, the taxi taxi application will leave the two companies behind. Now.

Jinghua Finance: What do you think are milestone events in the industry?

Lu: Users did not understand this application when they first started marketing, and they accepted the initial acceptance and then changed the payment model. In addition, it is also a very important milestone to expand from taxi business to car rental business. There are also many changes related to the policy. From the unclear signal from the beginning to the attitude of affirmation and encouragement of the taxi drivers by the relevant leading agencies, it is of great significance.

Jinghua Finance: What do you think about the future pattern of the taxi application industry?

Lu: The overall market structure is a stable duopoly compared with the beginning of 2013. Many things happened in this process. Everybody (fast and drip) has burned a lot of money to cultivate the market, but since 2014, they have had two things. There is not much change in market share, and it will be a duopoly for a long time to come.

Jinghua Finance: What are the main competitions between future taxi drivers?

Lu: There are many things that can be done in the overall urban travel business in the direction of refined operations, refined technologies, and so on. The realization of greater competition is not the competition in the industry, but it is to turn more people who have not yet used the mobile phone taxi application into our users. This is one of the focuses of our work.

Temporary loss is the necessary cost

Jinghua Finance: In the middle of this year, the commercialization of taxi software has been significantly accelerated. What is the current revenue scale of taxis?

Lu: The company's income is basically at a stage of rapid development and has reached a level of tens of millions, but this is not the focus of the current work. We still want to make products, user experience, such as data-driven. How to reduce the rate of running empty cars and increase the rate of order fulfillment based on taxi technology is the top priority of our work. As an Internet company, we are convinced that if a company provides services that can solve users' problems and create additional value, appropriate business models and revenue models will naturally emerge.

Jinghua Finance: Now that the company’s loss rate is decreasing?

Lu: Compared with the subsidy war in the first and second quarters of this year, our losses have been greatly reduced, but how the company develops is also related to the future competitive landscape. We regard the temporary losses as the necessary cost of market education.

Jinghua Finance: Are you planning to connect with Ali's e-commerce and O2O resources?

Lv: We and Ali have discussed this aspect, of which payment has achieved a more mature cooperation. In addition to Ali, we and many other partners are doing more in-depth discussions, including the O2O of urban life. We had planned to work with merchants such as drivers' restaurants and supermarkets to provide incentives to drivers. We also made some attempts, which in fact also belong to the field of local living services. From a static point of view, travel is only connecting point A to point B of urban life, but it can be dynamically activated through product and technical input. The connection between travel and local life is more interesting.

Car service

Special car or revenue source

Jinghua Finance: What is the daily order for fast taxis and No. 1 cars?

Lu: The daily order quantity for fast taxis is one million. There are orders of magnitude difference from last year; the car rental business (car service) has developed rapidly recently, and there is still a great demand for personalized travel.

Jinghua Finance: What are the current revenue models for fast taxis and No. 1 cars?

Lu: The former is mainly advertising, while the latter is mainly divided into commissions. Taxi, we are not rushing to increase the scale of income through fees, because this one has more things to do more solid, and about rent car this profit model or business model is very clear. Car rental business may be relatively new in China, but it is a very mature industry in developed countries. We are now working with qualified car rental companies to achieve revenue sharing. The proportion of shares is not fixed. We need to maintain a high degree of flexibility in different stages and in different geographical markets because the car rental business is indeed very new in the country. .

Jinghua Finance: Will the car rental business become the main source of revenue for the Quickwiz Group?

Lu: From now on, this hypothesis is established. It also provides a diversified and differentiated travel plan. With the development of China's economy, the potential of the car rental business may exceed that of taxis.

Jinghua Finance: Is it possible to introduce smart travel services such as carpooling, P2P car rental, and driver's driving?

Lu: This is also possible. We now position ourselves as a platform for urban smart travel. We will have appropriate judgments and deployments at the right time for travel-related businesses. I believe we will not even need to wait until next year, and everyone will see our new deployment.

Jinghua Finance: Does the QuickSense Group consider listing issues?

Lu: We do not have a clear timetable for listing. Listing is only a phased development. We will make products and user experience more solid. This will happen.

Private car is a taxi supplement

Jinghua Finance: Taxi drivers in some localities use unloading taxi software as a means to boycott special-car business. At the same time, there are also some passengers who worry that many bus drivers earn more than their taxi drivers on a monthly basis. This causes taxi drivers to plunge into the special car industry. How do you respond to the reduction in taxi drivers?

Lu: There are many misunderstandings. Although there is a huge potential for car rental business, the taxis in the country range from 1.2 million to 1.3 million taxis, and the daily amount of taxis is between 30 million and 40 million yuan. The amount is almost negligible.

Car rental business that only makes appointments is not a business that attracts business people, and it is much higher than the price of taxis. From the data of No. 1 car, the average passenger unit price is RMB 108/single, which is about 5 times that of taxi users. The unit price of customers is more to meet the needs of differentiating and high-end requirements. About the car rental business directly affects the taxi is still very small. As everyone slowly understands what mode of business the car is in, I believe that misunderstandings will slowly dissipate, because user groups are very different, and car rental is just a supplement to taxi services.

Jinghua Finance: How does the car rental business find differentiated people?

Lu: Currently targeted at high-end crowds, such as law firms, investment institutions and other large companies targeted marketing. At the same time, targeted services are provided to people with special needs such as children and pregnant women.

Driver groups

Persist in not looking for private car resources

Jinghua Finance: Some platforms in the market open up the car rental market by recruiting private cars. Although there are certain policy risks, the number of private cars is considerable, and the speed of development of these platforms is relatively high. The penetration rate of the cities below the second line is also relatively high. How does the No. 1 car respond?

Lu: No. 1 car insisted on 100% cooperation with regular car rental companies. Drivers were all sent by the leasing company through labor agencies. There were no private cars and purely private drivers. Car rental is a new industry. The taxi business does not need to worry about service standards because service standards are set by taxi companies and authorities, but car rentals are much more complicated. Based on this, companies in the car rental industry each have their own rhythm and tactics. For us, we should consider how we can improve service quality, promote marketing, and adhere to our own rhythm.

Jinghua Finance: How to maintain a good relationship with the driver groups?

Lu: We have more taxi drivers and car drivers as our partners. taxi

After the driver used a quick taxi, the income of the subsidy was eliminated, because the single-increased income generally increased by 20%. If we take into account the reduction of the idling rate and reduce the fuel cost of idling, this income is even more impressive. So the driver feels a change in interest and is more direct than anything else. On this basis, we regard the driver as our business partner. After all, we do not own taxi companies, leasing companies and cars. We often engage in taxi activities with taxi drivers around the country to help them solve some problems, such as buying tickets for the Spring Festival, and letting them feel our sincerity. Now it looks like it works well.

Jinghua Finance: How are the drivers and taxi drivers different?

Lu: Taxi drivers are affiliated with taxi companies, and hire drivers are more likely to cooperate with leasing companies through labor contracts. This is a big difference.

Jinghua Finance: Is it hard to find a chauffeur?

Lu: At this stage, it is not difficult. We mainly rely on professional leasing companies to find. Special car drivers have a certain significance for improving the employment rate in cities.

Business expansion

First in market share in Hong Kong

Jinghua Finance: How about the international expansion of taxi and car business?

Lu: Fast taxi to more than 300 cities in China. It is also the only taxi application company that competes with international taxi companies in Hong Kong. Our market share exceeds 30%, which is the highest in the country. The car service has not yet been extended to the Hong Kong market.

Jinghua Finance: How to promote international expansion?

Lu: We rely more on local teams because travel is a highly localized market, especially an international city like Hong Kong. For example, in Hong Kong there will be singles to the airport, drivers will take the initiative to request price cuts and taxis, such things have not happened in the mainland, we will do some product customization for this situation.

In the Southeast Asian market, we are also making some initial plans, but now we mainly want to do a good job in Hong Kong. This is our bridgehead to the international market.

Jinghua Finance: Your business is widely spread. How to ensure the quality of service is a high standard?

Lu: The standard of taxis is relatively mature. In the case where taxis are in short supply, the main requirement of many users is to be able to get in a car if they need a car. We have to do a lot to develop, implement, and supervise car rental service standards. We also need some offline store service points to play the role of market training and operation promotion.