Chapter 265

June 10, 11: 0 p. .

Hong Jun, head of the Marketing Department living near Kuai's headquarters, Zhou Xia, head of the R&D Department, and Xie Rui, head of the Testing Team, immediately rushed to the company upon receiving the risk-control alert SMS.

At this moment, Zhang Yunni also realized she had caused a major disaster, her face filled with deep anxiety.

Normally, if an untested feature module is discovered in time, it can be taken offline quickly.

But with ten minutes wasted, the number of users in Beijing participating had already exceeded fifteen thousand.

"Why are so many users opening the app at this hour!" Zhang Yunni grimaced; with Q2 ending soon, she now stood to lose not only her quarterly bonus but likely her promotion for the second half of the year too.

"What's the situation?" Hong Jun arrived first, demanding answers from Zhang Yunni.

"I've hidden the campaign. I've thoroughly tested the red packet distribution, claiming, and usage flows in the testing environment—no bugs found; compatibility is fine across all major phone models, browsers, and operating systems."

From 10 p. . to 11 p. ., Zhang Yunni hadn't just sat idle—she first hid the "Kuai Red Packet" campaign in the production environment, then rushed to conduct tests.

If both functionality and compatibility were normal, her responsibility would be significantly reduced.

"What's the total amount of red packets issued and the number of participating users?" Hong Jun pressed on.

"The misconfiguration lasted 11 minutes and 39 seconds, totaling 124, 00 yuan, affecting 15, 00 users, including 3, 00 new users," Zhang Yunni replied quickly.

"Such strong new-user acquisition?" Hong Jun paused, his frown easing as the heavy stone on his chest finally lifted.

No bugs meant the incident level could be downgraded.

In short, this could be huge or minor: if treated as major, Zhang Yunni violated protocol and caused 124, 00 yuan in asset loss—termination wouldn't be excessive; if treated as minor, she merely moved up the campaign's launch date by two days from June 12.

Zhou Xia and Xie Rui arrived soon after, too rushed to blame Zhang Yunni; they sat down immediately and began online mobilization, launching comprehensive functional, boundary, and compatibility tests on the "Kuai Red Packet" campaign.

Gao Qiang, responsible for the Beijing branch's operations, reported the incident to Cheng Wei immediately and hurried to the company.

Fortunately, the risk-control system detected it in time, preventing major losses.

As soon as Gao Qiang entered the office, he waved Zhang Yunni over and pulled her into the conference room.

This might have been unintentional—or deliberate.

Planting corporate spies in competitors' companies wasn't unheard of in internet warfare.

"Director Gao, I'm sorry—it's my fault," Zhang Yunni bowed her head, her face tense with fear.

Gao Qiang stared fixedly at Zhang Yunni; she looked exhausted, eyes bloodshot, radiating nervous dread.

"The testing and production environments use different backend links—why did you mix them up?" Gao Qiang asked coldly.

"The links are different, but the backend UIs are identical—I logged into both simultaneously and didn't notice when switching," Zhang Yunni weakly defended.

Gao Qiang frowned and called out the door: "Xie Rui, bring a laptop."

"Yes, Director Gao, coming right away!" Xie Rui responded, carrying a laptop into the conference room.

"Pull up the production and testing backend environments separately," Gao Qiang ordered.

Xie Rui nodded, fingers flying over the keyboard; within twenty seconds, both environments were logged in on the browser.

Gao Qiang took the laptop, eyes locked on the screen, rapidly switching between production and testing environments.

Aside from the "test" suffix on the link, the UI layout and function menus were identical—easy to confuse.

"Alright, I'll explain this to Director Cheng. Final handling will depend on headquarters."

Three minutes later, Gao Qiang stood up, sighed, then said helplessly.

He knew well that over the past weeks, due to constant subsidy battles with Didi, the product team hadn't had a single day off for two weeks.

Mistakes under such pressure are understandable, but errors are still errors—punishment is unavoidable.

After all, the company paid overtime at 1. x and 2x rates—every cent was accounted for.

"Thank you, Director Gao," Zhang Yunni said gratefully.

"Go rest," Gao Qiang waved, her fatigue was unmistakable.

Zhang Yunni opened her mouth to speak, then swallowed the words—she wanted to wait for the incident analysis report before leaving, but she knew it wouldn't be resolved anytime soon.

As for going home to rest?

She hadn't even considered it; after leaving the conference room, she headed straight to the testing team's area and joined the testing work herself.

1: 0 a. .

"Director Gao, the red packet function is fine; the customer team is calming users. The problem now is that this batch of red packets is set to activate at midnight on June 12," Hong Jun said softly as he approached Gao Qiang.

"Issue each affected user a 10-yuan ride voucher with no minimum spend as compensation. It's late—everyone's worked hard, go home now."

Gao Qiang checked the time and urged urgently.

"Hong Jun, Xie Rui, Zhou Xia—I'm so sorry for dragging you all in for overtime. Tomorrow I'll treat you all to KFC," Zhang Yunni said, bowing repeatedly with guilt.

"Pfft, it's just overtime—we get paid for it. Back at Ali, I used to work till dawn," Zhou Xia waved dismissively, cheerfully reassuring her.

Though everyone had been called in after getting into bed, and though they were annoyed, they were all workers—no one uttered a single harsh word.

Hong Jun and Xie Rui exchanged a smile, then yawned and walked together toward the elevator.

The next morning, Cheng Weixing opened the incident investigation report.

Gao Qiang hadn't misled Zhang Yunni—he'd attached her clock-in/out records to the email: ten consecutive days of overtime, plus the near-identical UIs of the testing and production backends.

"First, redesign the testing environment backend UI;"

"Second, lower the risk-control alert threshold and establish a rollback plan;"

"Third, add a secondary confirmation button in the production environment to prevent recurrence…"

At the email's end were Gao Qiang's optimization proposals and the disciplinary action against Zhang Yunni.

Cancel her Q2 bonus and remove her from the promotion list for the second half of the year.

Cheng Weixing frowned slightly—the punishment was too harsh. After a moment's thought, he understood Gao Qiang's intent.

"This guy wants to plead for her but is being all roundabout."

Cheng Weixing shook his head, muttering under his breath.

Zhang Yunni was talented, hardworking, and a veteran transferred from Hangzhou to Beijing—punishing her for one mistake and erasing all prior contributions would only demoralize others.

Who could guarantee they'd never make a single mistake at work?

Cheng Weixing considered, then canceled the second penalty, reducing only Zhang Yunni's Q2 performance rating to half.

But the new-user acquisition effect of the "Kuai Red Packet" far exceeded his expectations.

If it worked so well, why wait another day?

Cheng Weixing immediately decided to launch it right away.

Meanwhile,

Beijing Kuai Ride branch.

Gao Qiang opened Cheng's reply email, skimmed it quickly, and exhaled in relief upon seeing the resolution for Zhang Yunni.

That afternoon, Kuai Ride's red packets officially launched.

The product manager segmented users into four types in the backend: new users, registered but never ordered, returning users who hadn't ordered in seven days, and returning users who hadn't ordered in thirty days.

The campaign could only be initiated by returning users, who split a 100-yuan cash red packet by breaking it open.

This event can only be initiated by veteran users, who split a 100-yuan cash red packet by opening red envelopes together.

Registered but never ordered: up to 5 yuan;

Returning users, no order in seven days: up to 5 yuan;

Returning users, no order in thirty days: up to 8 yuan.

After completing a ride, the money would be credited to Orange Pay's balance.

This would help seize Beijing's ride-hailing market share and expand Orange Pay's offline payment scenarios, boosting user retention.

The free-ride-plus-cash-reward model instantly shattered Didi's market dominance.

Drivers stayed put—but passengers flooded to Kuai Ride.

By day's end, Didi's daily orders had dropped to just over 40, 00.

Cheng Wei had no time to think—he ramped up the campaign and pushed product and R&D to replicate the "Kuai Red Packet" model.

Whether to copy it didn't matter—first, hold the market.

Kuai's red packets spread wildly via QQ, WeChat, Renren, and BBS forums; this social viral red packet model had innate interactivity and propagation power, far more effective than previous coupon campaigns for new users.

Kuai Ride's registered drivers surged by over 3, 00 in just a few days, reaching 17, 00 total—25% of Beijing's taxi market—and daily orders skyrocketed to 600, 00.

Under its "burn cash to capture territory" strategy, Beijing, though the latest to act, became the first city to break 500, 00 daily orders.

Two days later, Didi launched its "Split 108 Yuan Cash Prize" campaign—but to Cheng Wei's shock, within three hours, WeChat and QQ blocked Didi's campaign links.

"Fucking hell! Ma Wenteng, can your bias be any more blatant!"

"Cuo Muniang! Damn Ma Wenteng, can your ass get any more crooked!"

As a result, Didi's campaign links could only spread through Baidu Tieba, Renren, and Weibo—far less effective than Kuai's viral red packet campaign.

But someone was even angrier than Cheng Wei.

Wang Jianwei, founder of YaoYao Taxi, sat slumped in his office, defeated not just by loss—but by total disregard.

Before Didi's rise, YaoYao Taxi had been Beijing's original ride-hailing pioneer—but their business models differed.

Didi and Kuai partnered with taxi companies; YaoYao partnered with car rental firms.

From May to June, Didi and Kuai's price war wiped out YaoYao's entire market share.

Wang Jianwei was speechless with frustration—Didi and Kuai hadn't targeted YaoYao, yet YaoYao was collapsing.

Monthly car rental fees weighed on him like a mountain.

Only now did he think to contact investors, hoping for another funding round to pivot to taxi services—but it was too late.

Sequoia Capital and ZhenFund, YaoYao's angel investors, both refused additional investment.

After seeing the superiority of Didi and Kuai's models, who would invest in YaoYao?

After seeing the superiority of Didi and Kuai's ride-hailing models, who would still want to hail a cab by shaking their phone?

Even if Wang Jianwei immediately pivoted after getting the money, order matching, positioning systems, and merchant resources all required accumulation.

Investing in Yaoyao Zhaoche would be pure waste of capital.

Wang Jianwei held on for two more days; on June 14, he announced Yaoyao Zhaoche would cease services, and the company entered its final countdown to closure.

Yet even then, Cheng Wei and Gao Qiang had not noticed Yaoyao Zhaoche—a small company with only a thousand daily orders, no different from roadside weeds.

Several such weed-like companies shut down in quick succession, yet not a single ripple stirred in the industry.

The market share ratio between Kuai Di Dache and DiDi Dache gradually stabilized at 7: ; no matter how hard Cheng Wei struggled, he could not gain further ground.

The C-round funding of 200 million yuan was consumed in just over twenty days, with 60 million yuan spent.

The investment liaisons from Baidu, Jiner Capital, Hillhouse Capital, and Gaoling Capital, upon seeing the financial weekly report, felt their vision go black.

DiDi Dache was also damn expensive!

Unbeknownst to them, 20 percent of the funds had been siphoned off by gray-market studios.

DiDi Dache's newly established risk control department quickly identified the presence of promotion fraudsters and reported the situation to Cheng Wei.

"You mean we've had 20 million yuan stolen?"

As a business background professional, Cheng Wei did not understand technology and had previously failed to recognize the importance of anti-fraud mechanisms.

"Yes, Chief Cheng. The tech department has strengthened IP and device restrictions and banned a batch of drivers using virtual machines or spoofing software to fabricate orders."

Wang Zhigang, the newly appointed head of DiDi Security, replied.

"Call the police!" Cheng Wei, nearly out of his mind with rage, ordered directly.

Meanwhile,

In a residential building in Yanjiao, Hui Ge turned pale white upon realizing his accounts had been progressively banned.

He hastily gathered his brothers, grabbed their cat pools, computers, and other equipment, and fled Beijing in a rush.

Over the past two months, the five of them had siphoned over three million yuan; if caught, they would surely face sewing machine feet and heaven umbrellas.

By the time the Police Inspector arrived, the room was already empty.

Hui Ge and his crew escaped quickly, but some slower individuals were still busy swapping SIM cards, preparing to register new accounts.

Naturally, they were caught red-handed!

The next afternoon, news of DiDi Dache's massive wool-harvesting scandal topped the homepage of Toutiao, NetEase, Sohu, and Weibo.

"Stolen 20 million at once! DiDi Dache issues warning: Return funds by the 25th or face criminal liability!"

Leveraging the highly sensational figure of 20 million, DiDi Dache surged to the top of the trending list.

"I'd rather have no traffic than this!"

Cheng Wei was heartbroken, never imagining DiDi Dache's first trending topic would come this way.

(End of Chapter)