Chapter 305: Earning Only 0.01 Yuan Per Order, A Vast Market of 200 Billion Orders

The next morning, JD's official Weibo account announced that it had completed a $400 million Series D financing round, with a valuation exceeding $8 billion.

This move served three purposes: first, to counter Li Guoqing's claim that "JD's cash flow is about to break and won't last until October"; second, to slap the faces of Hong Kong and US brokerage firms that had offered JD a $6 billion quote; and third, to boost capital market confidence in JD.

Liu Qiangdong followed closely, declaring on his personal Weibo account that JD would invest subsidies on the scale of 1 billion, increase investment for the Double 11 event, and provide users with high-quality, low-priced digital and home appliance products.

Zhang Jindong, far away in Jin Ling, understood the hint from the sound and immediately responded actively, blasting JD for always making a big noise but delivering little, and for the so-called subsidies being a trick of raising prices first and then lowering them.

Although both Suning and JD were fined several hundred thousand yuan in cash by the Market Supervision Association over the "815 Price War," this amount was completely insignificant to both men.

After experiencing the benefits of traffic dividends, Zhang Jindong did not even need Liu Qiangdong to make a request; he could tacitly coordinate with the other's hype behavior.

In an instant, Suning and JD resumed their war of words.

Double 11 was supposed to be Mama Ali's solo show, but Zhang Yong, in order to suppress Liu Qiangdong, repeatedly set up challenges on the other's 618 anniversary celebration day, forcibly seizing JD's traffic and order resources.

Liu Qiangdong naturally refused to admit defeat, directly elevating the Double 11 major promotion level to the same degree of importance as 618.

Half an hour later, Yunsu CEO Liao Wei announced: Yunsu Express will launch time-sensitive express delivery (i. e., Yunsu Air Mail) by the end of December, and establish Yunsu service points in rural markets, extending the reach of online shopping and express delivery into the lower-tier markets.

Upon learning this, Ma Liyun cursed Chen Yansen's ancestors for eighteen generations: "Little Xi Si, copying my plan! So shameless!"

They say that near vermilion one gets stained red, and near ink one gets stained black; in Ma Liyun's view, Chen Yansen, who was very close to Ma Wenteng, had obviously caught bad habits too.

On the other side.

Liao Wei submitted the technical proposal for electronic waybills to Zheng Shengyu of the Postal Association, converting sender, recipient, and logistics order data into electronic formats, generating standardized waybill templates through the system, and finally printing them as paper labels.

Compared to traditional paper waybills, electronic waybills can automatically capture order data, achieve zero-error information entry, synchronize logistics status in real time, allow users to track the entire delivery path, and reduce disputes over lost or misdirected packages.

"This technology is excellent; it reduces costs and improves work efficiency."

Zheng Shengyu pulled Liao Wei to sit down and praised him with a smile.

It must be known that processing a traditional waybill takes 3 to 5 minutes, while an electronic waybill can be shortened to under 10 seconds, increasing the daily processing volume by dozens of times.

In addition, sorting centers use the barcode information on electronic waybills to automatically sort packages, promoting the intelligentization process of the express delivery industry.

"President Zheng, the waybill format still needs your help to review; by the way, does the Postal Service need electronic waybill technology?"

Liao Wei raised his head and asked Zheng Shengyu with a smile.

"Wanting to make money from me?"

Zheng Shengyu stared at Liao Wei with a half-smile and asked back.

It was the first time in history that a private express company wanted to earn patent licensing fees from the Postal Service.

"President Zheng, improving intelligent printing, image recognition, and data collection technology consumed a lot of Yunsu's R&D funds; I must be allowed to make some profit."

Liao Wei replied with a smile.

"Eighty percent of the time, that kid Chen Yansen sent you. Alright, what is the charging standard?"

Zheng Shengyu waved his hand and asked straight to the point.

"A technical service fee of 1 fen per order." Liao Wei stopped smiling and answered immediately.

Do not underestimate this 1 fen; the estimated express delivery volume in 2012 was over 8 billion pieces, which calculates to over 80 million.

And more than ten years later, this number will reach 200 billion pieces, at which time it will net 2 billion yuan annually.

Although the technology is small, if the market scale is expanded to 1.4 billion, it can still earn a considerable profit.

One fen?

Zheng Shengyu was slightly stunned, then realized that Yunsu wanted to push the electronic waybill technology to the entire national express delivery industry.

"Alright."

After pondering for a while, Zheng Shengyu nodded and readily agreed to Liao Wei's cooperation request.

It cannot be that private express companies all use electronic waybills while Postal employees still use traditional paper waybills.

To save one fen, would the 100,000 Postal couriers across the country not curse him to death?

"President Zheng, actually, I have another purpose for coming to Yanjing this time..." Seeing Zheng Shengyu agree, Liao Wei continued speaking.

At the same time.

The Yunsu Express station in Yiwu Commercial Trade City had already started using electronic waybills, instantly increasing work efficiency by dozens of times.

As for Liao Wei's pretext for asking Zheng Shengyu, it was just formal talk; private express companies do not need the Postal Association's approval to use whatever waybills they want.

Packages piled up like mountains in the station; the pickup volume in the Yiwu area was high, and the delivery volume was equally not low.

Lu Hua rode an electric scooter, carrying a cart full of express packages, speeding along Futian Road.

Half a year ago, he was a temporary worker at Yuantong Express; half a year later, he became a regular employee of Yunsu Express.

With a base salary of 3,000 yuan, plus commissions for pickups and deliveries, overtime pay, housing subsidies, five social insurances and one housing fund, and quarterly bonuses, he easily took home over 10,000 yuan a month.

In Yiwu, there were more than 4,000 Yunsu couriers like him, which shows how high the business volume in the Yiwu area is.

Without orders, how could so many couriers be supported?

Nowadays, Yunsu holds over half of the market share in the Yiwu express delivery market; the combined pickup volumes of dozens of express companies such as SF, Best, Tian Tian, and Guotong can only match it.

Five minutes later, Lu Hua arrived at Zone 3 of the Commercial Trade City, deposited some packages into the express lockers, while the remaining packages required door-to-door delivery as requested by the recipients.

Busy non-stop until noon at 12 o'clock, Lu Hua finally stopped his actions, rode his bike nearby, and found a Shaxian Snacks restaurant.

Although he earned a lot, Lu Hua was not willing to spend recklessly; his family had two four-legged gold-swallowing beasts, so he had to be frugal.

There were countless Yunsu couriers who thought much like him!

As soon as Lu Hua entered, he shouted at the boss: "One duck leg rice bowl, pour more sauce on it."

"Yo! Brother Hua is here!"

"How was the pickup volume this morning?"

"Brother Hua, there's an empty seat over here!"

Inside sat more than ten Yunsu couriers; as soon as they saw Lu Hua, they greeted him very enthusiastically.

As an old hand in the Yiwu Commercial Trade City, Lu Hua had worked as a courier there for seven or eight years, from Yuantong to Yunsu, and knew acquaintances wherever he went.

"Xiao Wei!"

"Dong Ge!"

"Da Zui!"

"…"

Lu Hua responded to each in turn, then walked over and sat beside Da Zui; the group ate and chatted as they went.

"Electronic delivery labels are so damn useful!"

"Feels like the order volume has been low lately!" "August and September are the off-season for e-commerce—just hold on a bit longer; Double Eleven is coming, and it'll exhaust you to the point of death!"

"It's tiring, but we're making money!"

The group chatted back and forth, each adding their own words.

Lu Hua scanned from left to right and felt it was utterly surreal—among these people were former employees from SF Express, Tian Tian, and Guotong, as well as veteran staff from the Three Passes and One Reach.

Originally, everyone belonged to different companies, but now they all worked for the same boss.

"Hua Ge, have you heard? The company's giving us stock options," Xiao Wei whispered deliberately, speaking in a mysterious tone.

"Stock options?" Lu Hua had only completed junior high; he didn't understand the concept, only that it was similar to stocks and could be exchanged for money someday.

"Fake, right? Xiao Wei, I haven't seen anyone discussing this on the company intranet," Dong Ge shook his head, disbelieving.

"Believe it or not!" Xiao Wei sneered and shot back immediately.

"Holy shit! It's real, look!" Da Zui suddenly roared, then raised his phone and showed the screen to the group.

"Huh? It's actually real! Wei Ge, are these stock options the same as what the Kuai Pao guys got?" Dong Ge glanced at it, smirked, and eagerly leaned forward toward Xiao Wei.

His address had changed from "Xiao Wei" to "Wei Ge!"

Xiao Wei smiled smugly, ignoring the earlier skepticism, and explained slowly: "Our company's valuation is 1.5 billion U. S. dollars, total shares are 3 billion, so each stock option is worth five U. S. dollars. With an exercise price of 0.01 yuan, if you get ten thousand shares, that's roughly 300,000 Chinese yuan."

"How much?"

"Three hundred thousand?"

"Xiao Wei, I'm not saying this to upset you, but don't get your hopes up—I have a cousin who's a delivery rider for Kuai Pao; he worked three months and got only a thousand shares."

The group burst into laughter.

"What?! Only a thousand shares?! I thought I'd get a few thousand!" Xiao Wei opened his mouth in disappointment.

"Be glad you got a thousand! Most get one or two thousand; some get four or five thousand, but those are all veteran staff. Supposedly, they get extra option grants each year based on quarterly performance."

Dong Ge added further.

"It's different! Yun Su's stock options are worth five U. S. dollars each; Kuai Pao's are 1.2 U. S. dollars. Our numbers won't be high."

Lu Hua spoke up.

"Whatever, whether a thousand or two thousand—it's free money," Da Zui shrugged, grinning lazily.

"Don't underestimate these options—if the company grows strong and its valuation soars to tens of billions, even two thousand shares could be worth hundreds of thousands. You could buy a house back in your hometown." Dong Ge squinted, looking like an expert.

In fact, neither he nor Lu Hua was wrong—Liao Wei's first draft of the stock option plan allotted each person between 300 and 1,000 shares.

Chen Yansen, during approval, changed the numbers to 500 to 1,500 shares—still modest in quantity and value, but it was a gesture nonetheless.

If held long-term, and the valuation doubled or tripled again, it might one day be enough to buy a house in the county.

…

…

Beijing, Baidu headquarters.

Li Yanhong logged into the data backend and opened the first-day summary for Baidu Takeout.

Registered users: 37,000; ordering users: 31,000; first-order conversion rate: 83.8%.

Of course, the high conversion rate was due to the promotion: "New users get 15 yuan off immediately."

Late delivery rate: 27.3%; on-time delivery rate under 80%.

There were 830 riders online for delivery—100 full-time, the rest all part-timers.

Put more bluntly, these part-timers were all Meituan delivery riders.

Wang Xin heavily relied on crowd-sourced logistics—he didn't treat riders as his own, and the riders didn't treat him as theirs.

Because Baidu Takeout had just launched and offered higher pay, yesterday, several hundred riders in Meituan uniforms delivered for Baidu.

For outsourced riders, whoever paid more got the delivery.

As a result, Meituan Takeout's on-time delivery rate in Beijing dropped another four percentage points.

"Tap-tap-tap!" A knock came at the door.

"Come in!" Li Yanhong looked up, snapped back to attention, and replied coolly.

Wang Jing and Xiang Hailong entered one after the other.

Seeing them, Li Yanhong instinctively rubbed his temples and cursed Cheng Wei again.

This useless piece of shit!

Only good at marketing and promotions, his software was a mess—full of system bugs like a sieve. Just in July and August, over 80 million yuan was stolen by gray-market operations.

Didi's Series D funding was only 600 million yuan!

"Boss, we just got word from the inspection unit—we smashed 19 gray-market studios yesterday, seized 40 million yuan in illicit funds, fixed all system bugs, and with the risk control team and anti-fraud unit now in place, there won't be any more large-scale subsidy losses."

Xiang Hailong reported the night's arrests.

"So half the gray-market studios had already fled?" Li Yanhong frowned, his expression darkening.

"Uh, yes," Xiang Hailong hurriedly replied.

Whether it was the "Xiao Nai Niu" fake-order software or the missed gray-market studios, they had little to do with him.

He'd just taken over the Didi project—not only had he not failed, he'd delivered results.

If not for him and Wang Jing, who had completely restructured Didi's underlying architecture, they'd never have discovered "Xiao Nai Niu."

"Did you catch the software developers?" Li Yanhong asked again.

"The other party's IP is overseas, and the Inspection Bureau is still tracking it down," Xiang Hailong answered truthfully.

Li Yanhong nodded, his face full of helplessness. He understood now—they had only caught a few small fry, while all the big fish had gotten away.

"Understood. Is the city-launch work for the Huadong and Central China markets ready?" Li Yanhong asked, forcing down the urge to curse and keeping his patience.

"The Huadong region is OK. I've been in touch with the marketing department. The first batch of cities will be Hucheng, Jin Ling, Hucheng, Sucheng, Liangxi, and Luzhou. For the manpower needed to develop the Central China market, we'll need another half month for recruitment and training," Xiang Hailong hurriedly replied.

"These are all markets where Kuaidi Dache has been operating for half a year. On the marketing side, do you have a better plan?" Li Yanhong nodded slightly and asked casually.

"First, cancel the passenger-side instant discount and switch to cashback after placing an order, to boost revenue. Second, increase the order subsidies on the driver side, because these six cities are mature ride-hailing markets. As long as we offer higher incentives, we can poach Kuaidi Dache's drivers, and we can even skip the promotion steps altogether…" Xiang Hailong spoke at length.

The more Li Yanhong listened, the more something felt off. He felt the man before him gradually overlapping with the shadow of Cheng Wei.

(End of chapter)