Chapter 168: Pin Bei vs. Mama Ali: Sister Chengzi F1 Sold Out

"Kuaipao? Took 30 million yuan in angel-round funding from Senlian Capital?"

In an office in the PT district, Did Zhang Xuhao tapped open a Sohu news article, his brows instantly knitting tight, his heart full of regret.

He hadn't expected Chen Yansen's investment style to be so decisive.

After sensing his own little maneuver, Chen Yansen hadn't given any room for haggling at all—first denying that Senlian Capital had any intention of investing in Ele. me, then turning around to invest in a competing website.

This clearly showed that he, Chen Yansen, wasn't bearish on the takeout model—only on Ele. me.

Zhang Xuhao recalled the scene of calling Zhu Xiaohu of Jin Sha Ventures, who once again refused to add more investment in Ele. me, which shattered his last hope.

"No good! I have to find financing fast—once Kuaipao expands, Ele. me will be in danger."

Zhang Xuhao deliberated for a moment, then made up his mind.

Just as he was actively contacting venture capital firms, investors from Sequoia Capital, Jinshajiang Ventures, and Gao Ling Capital began studying the company Kuaipao.

After all, if Chen Yansen had taken a liking to it, there must be some potential there.

Kang Guodong and Pei Yi, who had just returned to Luzhou, received calls from several venture capital firms one after another.

But the two of them now had only 20% equity left, and with 30 million yuan in funds, no longer worried about money, so they turned them all down.

"Old Pei, this feels amazing!"

Kang Guodong looked at Pei Yi across from him and grinned.

"Once we take Kuaipao public, we'll smack these people's faces hard." Pei Yi was in equally high spirits.

Previously the two had begged and pleaded, only asking investors for a chance—even if it delayed them an hour, just to hear their business plan—but no one paid attention.

After securing funding from Senlian Capital, the venture capital firms immediately changed their attitude, becoming incredibly warm toward them.

The two knew clearly in their hearts that this shift was brought about by Chen Yansen, not by Kuaipao's own strength.

"Let's go, let's check out Luyang District first—the office rents there are low, and it's right next to the pedestrian street…"

Kang Guodong, holding a stack of documents, dragged Pei Yi out of the school.

……

……

"President Chen, last time you didn't tell me the truth." Zhang Lei of Gao Ling Capital, after being turned down by Kuaipao, called Chen Yansen again.

"President Zhang, don't misunderstand! Last time, the moment I heard you out, I had our investment analysts study the takeout industry, felt there was potential, and only then invested in Kuaipao."

Chen Yansen let out a laugh, telling a bald-faced lie with his eyes open.

The implication was that he only conceived the idea of investing in a takeout website after Zhang Lei's reminder.

"When is President Chen coming to Yanjing again, so we can get together?" Zhang Lei actually didn't care, and laughed as he changed the subject.

He only needed to confirm that Chen Yansen was interested in the takeout industry.

"President Zhang, is there something else?" Chen Yansen caught the unspoken meaning and asked with a smile.

"Two things—first, Gao Ling wants to take a stake in Pin Bei; second, we want to facilitate a partnership between you and Mama Ali, to grab market share from Mama Ali together."

Zhang Lei got straight to the point, holding nothing back.

When dealing with someone as sharp as Chen Yansen, speaking directly was more efficient.

"President Zhang, pardon the blunt question—is this Gao Ling's idea, or Liu Qiangdong's?"

Chen Yansen didn't refuse outright, but asked seriously.

Recently, he had heard that Liu Qiangdong was competing fiercely with Mama Ali.

New Fox Tao had scraped the review content of Mama Ali's self-operated products without informing Mama Ali, drawing fierce criticism from Handsome Dong.

As a result, Fox Tao blocked Mama Ali's products, kicked Mama Ali out of the b2c rebate Shangcheng, and teamed up with Dangdang and Suning in an attempt to isolate Mama Ali.

Now, Mama Ali merchants no longer even qualified to sign up for Fox Tao's Super Rebate event.

One must remember, Fox Tao could bring Mama Ali 300–500 million yuan in monthly sales.

This infuriated Liu Qiangdong!

"This is the result of joint deliberation between myself, Tiger Fund, and DST leading capital."

Zhang Lei said slowly.

Gao Ling, Tiger, and DST had jointly invested over a billion US dollars into Mama Ali, and naturally didn't want to see Liu Qiangdong fail.

"President Zhang, let's put the financing aside for now—I want to hear first, how exactly would we cooperate?" Chen Yansen asked.

"Mama Ali can open up 3C digital and home appliance resources to Pin Bei, and Pin Bei needs to open up food, apparel, beauty, and maternal-and-infant category resources to Mama Ali. The specific form of cooperation, we can explore slowly."

Zhang Lei answered.

Chen Yansen sneered inwardly—Zhang Lei and Liu Qiangdong had certainly run a fine calculation.

Although both Mama Ali and Pin Bei were b2c e-commerce platforms, Mama Ali combined self-operation with third-party merchants, while Pin Bei was an open platform with no self-operated business.

According to the cooperation method Zhang Lei described, once Mama Ali had rinsed Pin Bei's merchant resources, that would be the day the partnership fell apart.

"I'm sorry, I don't see any sincerity from Mama Ali." Chen Yansen refused decisively.

Currently, Pin Bei's biggest advantages were, first, the first-tier entry traffic from Penguin, and second, the resources of over 20,000 merchants accumulated during the Fox Tao period.

Peach Treasure claimed to have 5 million sellers, but the true core merchants numbered fewer than 50,000; the rest were mostly c2c individual sellers.

It had always been Chen Yansen taking advantage of others—Liu Qiangdong trying to pry resources from his hands was nothing but a pipe dream.

Zhang Lei was stunned, cursing inwardly: this kid really isn't easy to fool.

He thought for a moment, then said: "President Chen, feel free to share any thoughts you have, and I'll help communicate them to Liu Qiangdong."

This was the benefit of having a middleman—if Liu Qiangdong had come to negotiate in person, by this point the talks would likely have collapsed.

Either one side concedes, or they part on bad terms.

"Cooperation is fine, and I can agree to drive traffic to Mama Ali, but I have two conditions: first, Mama Ali's self-operated business must set up shop on Pin Bei; second, add Sister Chengzi Pay to Mama Ali's payment module."

Chen Yansen replied.

At this time, when Mama Ali users paid, they only had two options: online banking and cash on delivery.

Half a year ago, Liu Qiangdong found Zhifubao's fee rate too high and terminated the partnership.

But when he wanted to apply for a payment license, he discovered the application difficulty had increased several hundredfold — in plain terms, the authorities above wanted to strictly control the number of licenses.

Liu Qiangdong being slow on this one step meant being three or four years behind.

Seeing no hope for the application, Liu Qiangdong planned to acquire a third-party payment license to build Jingdong's own payment tool.

But he was still in the process of screening acquisition targets.

Adding the time needed to develop the payment system, in his previous life it wasn't until 2014 that Jingdong Pay finally launched.

Chen Yansen's thinking was simple: Liu Qiangdong wanting to boost sales was fine, but Jingdong had to help Pinbei fill out its digital and home-appliance categories, thereby raising average order value and product valuation.

As for Chengzi Pay, it was merely mentioned in passing.

He was certain Liu Qiangdong would agree, because the man had already realized just how stupid Jingdong's cash-on-delivery model was.

Chengzi Pay could help Jingdong save a hefty sum in transaction fees, and they wouldn't have to swallow Zhifubao's bullying anymore.

"Alright, I'll pass it along to Liu Qiangdong." Zhang Lei agreed readily and hung up without further fuss.

Chen Yansen put down his phone, walked to the sofa by the window, sat down, and thought: It seems 2011 will be an extraordinarily difficult year for Jingdong and the capital behind it.

Before December even arrived, Jingdong Logistics had already lost over a billion, with profitability still nowhere in sight.

Liu Qiangdong wanting to become China's Bezos — how could it be that simple?

On the other side.

Liu Qiangdong sat in his office and received Zhang Lei's call.

"Chen Yanshen's idea is to treat JD. com as a flagship store entering Pinxiang Mall, but he requires JD. com to promote Orange Pay for him."

Zhang Lei briefly summarized the key points of their discussion and handed the decision over to Liu Qiangdong.

Liu Qiangdong's heart gave a sudden thump — he understood his own thoughts had been seen through by Chen Yansen, but the objective had been achieved.

And regarding the Chengzi Pay issue, he agreed without much hesitation; after all, Jingdong's own payment tool was still nowhere in sight.

To ride Pinbei's traffic, paying some price was only natural.

"President Zhang, no problem on my end." Liu Qiangdong replied immediately.

"Alright, I'll push this forward. Send someone to Xucheng to sign the contract and get it online as soon as possible."

Zhang Lei said with a nod.

Sure enough, just as Chen Yansen had predicted, Liu Qiangdong agreed to the cooperation without much deliberation.

This kind of cooperation model might have seemed novel in 2011, but a decade or so later, it was already commonplace.

Mama Ali and Suning, Jingdong and Yhd — all followed similar cooperation models.

After receiving Zhang Lei's reply, Chen Yansen handed this cooperation over to Gao Weilin and Song Yuncheng to follow up on together.

"Boss, cooperating with Jingdong may bring negative impact on the digital and home-appliance merchants in Pinbei, which isn't good for cultivating our own merchants."

Song Yuncheng listened to Chen Yansen's arrangement, frowned slightly, and directly raised her objection.

"We're a platform — what exclusive merchant resources do we have? Just hand it over to the algorithm based on parameters like sales volume and gross margin. Whoever sells well gets the traffic."

Chen Yansen knew perfectly well that merchants had no real loyalty — they went wherever the money was.

If Jingdong's digital and home-appliance products could sell tens of millions or even hundreds of millions on Pinbei, the brands hiding behind them would proactively come forward, bypassing Jingdong to establish cooperation with Pinbei.

"Alright, I understand." Song Yuncheng stood and pondered seriously for quite a while before nodding in agreement.

"Lao Gao, how are things going on the Kuaipao side?"

Chen Yansen hummed an acknowledgment and looked toward Gao Weilin.

"Still busy renting office space and recruiting, but Pei Yi poached about 20 former employees from a bankrupt group-buy site. These people have plenty of restaurant resources in hand and are very familiar with offline business expansion — once the preliminary prep work is done, future development won't be slow."

Gao Weilin answered with a smile.

As his actual first investment project, Gao Weilin naturally paid a bit more attention.

"Alright, keep a close eye on the technical integration for me — don't let anything go wrong."

Chen Yansen nodded slightly and gave Song Yuncheng further instructions.

With Chengzi Tech and Pinbei's business volume surging, Chengzi Pay was in urgent need of operations engineers, security experts, and risk management specialists.

Wang Xueting, Xiong Li, and Zhang Junjie — the three of them had been recruiting like crazy lately, and to save time, they had set their sights squarely on Zhifubao.

Headhunters camped outside Zhifubao's headquarters building every day, and whenever they saw employees leaving after work, they'd approach and ask: "Mr., any plans to jump ship?"

For a time, Ma Liyun couldn't stand it either and called to warn Chen Yansen to rein things in.

Chen Yansen agreed verbally, but in secret kept doing things his own way.

After Song Yuncheng and Gao Weilin left the office, Chen Yansen picked up Pinbei's weekly business report and flipped through it casually.

User registrations hit 40 million, daily active users 10 million, single-day orders exceeded 4 million, and daily sales approached 300 million.

Of course, Chengzi phone sales accounted for sixty percent of that.

In terms of real strength, Pinbei's volume was roughly one-fifth of Jingdong's and one-twentieth of Taobao's.

This was also the main reason Chen Yansen had agreed to cooperate with Jingdong.

He didn't want to be as extreme as Pinduoduo, capping the platform's growth ceiling.

So from the very start, he had planned to use low-priced products to drive traffic and high-priced goods to elevate the platform's tone, so as not to leave users with a bad impression of cheap and shoddy.

As for product quality, the platform had a deposit mechanism — if merchants passed off inferior goods as good ones, Chen Yansen showed absolutely no mercy in punishing them.

That day, before getting off work, Liu Zhicheng from Jiushen Net's marketing department called to discuss cooperation.

Chen Yansen didn't refuse and handed it to Song Yuncheng to handle.

Platforms like Jingdong, Jiushen Net, Suning, and Gome — Chen Yansen was very happy to cooperate with them.

They wanted to leverage Pinbei's traffic and high conversion rate to boost sales, and he wanted to use these platforms to build Pinbei into a comprehensive e-commerce platform.

He walked out of the first-floor lobby and had just gotten in the car when Cao Dahua sent a message: Chengzi F1 is almost sold out!

(End of this chapter)