Are you hungry? Network ordering: "Hungry" out of the entrepreneurial idea of the typical O2O

We are always looking across the ocean and why there are people like Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs. In essence, they are inspired by some kind of personal heroism, believing that one should create independently and change the world.

2008, also in the school of Mechanical and Power engineering, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Zhang Xuhao also believes that the work to win the recognition of others, but as long as they do things by the market recognition, the individual is valuable. One night, he and his roommate play games while chatting, suddenly feel hungry, call the restaurant to call takeout, or not get through, or do not send.

Starting a business in this way from the humble delivery service began. Zhang Xuhao and classmate Kangjia, Wang Yu, Cao Wenxu together, will be in the vicinity of Jiaotong University, the restaurant information is collected, printed into a booklet distributed in the campus, and then in the dormitory to receive a reservation phone. After receiving the order, they go to the restaurant to fetch fast food and then give it to the customers. This model relies entirely on physical strength to keep the business running, without much room for expansion. The only good is cash flow: The meals are collected by them, and the restaurant is closed once a week.

Only the internet can replicate massively and marginal costs are diminishing. April 2009, "Hungry" (ele.me) website on-line, the original distribution service was cut off, focus on online takeout order. and "Rice net" or "order a small secretary" is different, "hungry Mody" there is no call center this link, the user needs can be directly to the restaurant. By 2012, the "hungry" site of the turnover has reached 600 million yuan, the site revenue close to 10 million yuan. It should be pointed out that the average customer price of takeout is only about 20 yuan. Starting with the Minhang Higher education Zone in southwest Shanghai, the website expands to the higher education District and office building in Beijing, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, and launches app and Android clients, and the number of companies expanded from 80 in 2011 to 200 people.

At first, Zhang Xuhao and Kangjia the idea that to start a business, you have to take a break. Wang Yu, Cao Wenxu finally did not suspend school, quit the entrepreneurial team. September 2009, the website development phase cooperates together the University of Jiaotong University Software College student Ye to join the team formally after graduating from the undergraduate course, plus later successively joins Wang Yu, Deng Ye, Qiang, the core team stabilized in five to six people.

"Hungry?" the company named Shanghai Lazas Information Technology Co., Ltd., in Sanskrit, "Lazas" is "passion" meaning. Zhang Xuhao smiled and said, two things have been done in the past few years: moving and financing. Since 2008, the company's office has experienced a student dormitory, restaurant corner, homes, villas, office buildings. Financing, through participation in a variety of college student Entrepreneurship competition, the team won a total of 450,000 yuan entrepreneurial bonuses, 2011 and 2012 has introduced the Jinsha River and Jingwei venture capital investment two rounds.

Be sure to apply some kind of fashionable business words, "Hungry" is a typical "O2O" (online to Offline) mode: Offline products and services through the Internet to attract users, the Internet becomes the front line of the transaction. So far, in addition to group buying, there is no very successful "O2O" business practices, and group buying also because of the lack of stickiness, vicious competition and has been criticized.

The potential of online catering business is that, whether for students or office workers, using the Internet to order fast food is a normal basic function. Takeout delivery radius is usually within two to three kilometers, feeding time control in 40 minutes, so that "hungry" site in a particular geographical area of user traffic can be highly concentrated, user accuracy may even higher than Baidu. Once the city cut into a small area of two or three square kilometers, long-term intensive cultivation, different areas of businesses can find "hungry" site traffic value. This is a food beyond the concept, but also a lot of lbs Internet companies dream of things.

Business models are important, and operations are more important. To be honest, online takeout is the kind of business that a big company does not see (often such businesses can succeed). Because of this, there are a lot of small companies doing this business. Zhang Xuhao thinks, they can survive, live also can, just because the line execution is strong, online internet feeling is good. Online under the two hands hard, this is a simple traditional industry entrepreneurs or internet geeks created by the site does not have.

For "Hungry" entrepreneurs, the site was not long, they found that the Minhang already have an online food ordering website. This is also the founder of Jiaotong University alumni company, has been operating for a long time, the light registered capital of more than 1 million yuan. The rival drives the business, Zhang Xuhao rides the electric car to run the business. More importantly, opponents often stick money and restaurant cooperation, as long as the user orders, send a free cola or Sprite, forcing the "hungry" have to follow up. Because not to do so, consumers do not buy, restaurants do not recognize, can not compete with rivals.

At the time, two of sites relied on commissions to make a living (8% of the turnover), and Zhang Xuhao and start-up partners had to change under the weight of rivals. First of all, spend nearly half a year to develop a network catering management system. Through this system, restaurants can manage and print orders, greatly improving productivity. In the past, in the rush hour, the restaurant may only receive 100 orders for copying the order, and now it can take 200 orders. The store can also set the business conditions (such as in business or rest), the management has sold out of the dishes (can be set to "sold out"), add new dishes.

Secondly, the way in which the Commission was collected was replaced by a fixed service charge. Relatively speaking, this method of charging is easier to accept the business, but also to improve the site cash flow, eliminating the monthly door-to-door reminders of the trouble. Finally, the website actively expands other charging methods, such as bidding rankings. This set of combination boxing down, not only completely suppressed the competition, but also changed the way the Web site's profitability, completed by the middleman Ping Taiwanese change.

The user experience at the end of the consumer is also increasing. "Hungry" Site background map changes over time every day, this is because the site assumes that the user is a super otaku, do not see the sun. For the user points Mala can not effectively classify the problem, the website launched a "basket" function, users can add a number of baskets, the different dishes into a different basket, and then a single. "CEOs should focus on the user experience and focus on the product itself, rather than talking about strategy in general," Zhang Xuhao agrees with Mr. Jobs. ”

The user ordered takeout, the most unhappy condition is the delay in the delivery of the take-away. In fact, in the rush hour, restaurants are often too busy to reach the limit, and the more tasty the restaurant, the more likely to lag. Therefore, it is important to manage consumer expectations. And then what happens if you time out? From these two points, "hungry" launched the "overtime pay" function. According to each restaurant's previous meal length (starting time for the next single time, the deadline is to confirm receipt of the delivery time, because there are bonus points, about 30% of the users will confirm), and then through the mathematical model, calculate the average length of meals per restaurant.

Restaurant can choose to add "overtime pay", once the meal more than a certain period of time, immediately reduce the corresponding amount. Zhang Xuhao is not particularly clear about this function in improving the user repeat the purchase rate on how much help, but he thought that this is a user satisfaction problem, the service is more perfect, the site's user experience will be even better.

Zhang Xuhao used to be a basketball level two athlete (played with Yao Ming) and is now a bit overweight. He wears a pair of Jiang, perhaps Harry Potter-style round-framed glasses, the same age as Zuckerberg (born 1985), and even the same English name (Mark). I'm glad he's very heavy. He said: "We are such people, even if there is no money, and never bow." This project will take at least 3-5 years to consider other, because the scale must be big enough.