Easy to use the vehicle Zhou Ai the enterprise's persistence and hesitation

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Easy to founder and CEO Zhou Ai:

His lofty feelings and with a slight fear of the hesitation, in the day and night of the alternating between repeated. Maybe it made him, or he might be in control at some point.

"Every car in the future should have access to easy platforms and orders to become an easy part." Easy to be a (car) sharing network, this is our dream to achieve every day. Standing on the 19 floor office, the Zhou Ai is confident. "Within two years, the easy valuations will be far more than Uber," he said, looking at the cars coming downstairs. "Uber is valued at about 17 billion dollars," according to the rumor.

And take Back the eyes, Zhou Ai quickly pull himself back to the real world. "Now, it's still a utopia. ”

Easy to headquarters built in Zhongguancun, China technology trading building 19 floor, downstairs is China's largest internet company-Tencent. However, to enter the Tencent and easy to take a different elevator. Tencent is one of the few companies to be admired by Zhou Airlines, and Zhou Ai that "the most powerful thing about Tencent is that he dares to kill himself." QQ has been so great, it let another micro-trust team to leather their own lives. This is a truly innovative enterprise. ”

Zhou Ai often shouted for the life of a car. Easy to come, is his revolutionary experimental field.

Zhou Ai, the self-proclaimed "Wenqing". He often said: "Man, should be born equal." ”

This seems to be one of the original intentions of the birth. Unpleasant travel experience, seemingly unattainable limousine treatment, the birth of Zhou Ai founder easy to. "One time I went to Shanghai on business and I was waiting for a taxi for nearly 1.5 hours at Hongqiao airport." Zhou Ai complained: "Another experience is worse." Long line, the cost of half a day, finally lined up. The result was told that the wrong team was on the line. "He found that many business people, like themselves, are suffering from the difficulties of traveling in different places. "Where to go, there are car transfer" life how to achieve it ...

"A good life should not only belong to a few, it should not belong to a privileged class, it can belong to everyone." "In 2010, Zhou Ai The idea of getting into the car rental market, and he wanted to make" everyone enjoy a limousine in every city without having to buy a vehicle. "Zhou Ai did not choose to kill into the popular traditional car rental market. After the high growth from 2005 to 2009, the car rental market is unusually hot, the Shenzhou car rental, a hi car rental is very busy, the recruits are also eager to join. However, Zhou Ai in the research after the denial of the traditional car rental model, "The traditional car rental industry model is too stupid, the future will certainly be completely killed." "To China car rental as an example, even if the size of the rapid rush to 100,000 vehicles, a car's annual operating income can only reach 25,000 yuan, that is, the Shenzhou annual operating income but 2.5 billion yuan." To the overseas rental industry 10% of sales profit margin calculation, the Shenzhou rental car year profit but more than 200 million yuan. This one is far less than Zhou Ai and his brother founded the days of digital group.

Zhou Ai eyes on the internet, he wants to restructure the car rental industry by internet, "The car rental industry is now small and scattered, with about 6,000 car rental companies scheduled in 2009, of which only 20 have more than 300 cars, and most leasing companies are 5 50 vehicles." Zhou Ai said, "want to integrate these car rental company's vehicles, use the Internet way to make full use of their leisure time." ”

2010, the online car rental platform "easy to use car" was born. The fund becomes an easy angel investment. Real Fund founder Xiaoping said: "Easy to use the car a beautiful dream, at that time feel whether can be made, have to vote, willing to dream with them." "Xiaoping and shareholders did not interfere Zhou Ai dreaming. "In the early days of the establishment, the shareholders ' meeting presented a way to make quick money at the time," he said. But was denied by Zhou Ai, he persisted to do the present pattern. "Nowadays, the easy to use car has become one of the sexiest items in Xiaoping's eyes.

Better than Uber.

Zhou Airlines wants more than sex.

2014, the car rental industry again hot, but the protagonist has become Uber, easy to wait for intelligent transportation and mobile service providers. A few days ago, Uber received 1.2 billion of dollars in financing, the valuation reached 17 billion U.S. dollars after the news, as if to add fuel. A number of institutions are starting to speculate on the value of at least 1 billion dollars to 3 billion dollars. Zhou Airlines is more confident, he said: "In two years, our valuation will exceed Uber." ”

Zhou Ai not like others will be easy to call China's Uber, although Uber is the originator of the global Taxi application, "our model than Uber more growth of tension." "The tension lies in the ease of being engaged not only in driving (with drivers) leasing business, but also as a social platform; Uber, known for its standardized services, is still confined to cold business relationships. Easy to the Magic weapon "in the basic service standards based on the provision of personalized services." That is, from the initial easy to the dispatch to upgrade to a taxi can collect different drivers, and select the driver. "Depending on your needs, you can enjoy the services provided by different drivers." It's like, you don't need to buy, but you can have different cars, for different occasions, in different cities. When a driver is collected by different users hundreds of times, he no longer needs to worry about his livelihood. "It's not a cold car relationship between the driver and the user," Zhou Ai said. When a driver is collected by you, the way you greet each other may change, like a friend. "Drink ink Uber, do not have such social attributes customers, customers can not collect drivers and select drivers, can only passively accept Uber dispatch, and Uber no reservation service function, only in time to order.

Zhou Ai does not recognise the local label, which he wants to get into overseas markets, and even the uber-San Francisco and New York markets. "Uber can come to China and we can also go overseas." Easy to become the global Chinese car platform. "Zhou Ai said," Now easy to have entered Hong Kong, China for half a year, the next station will be Taipei, London, England. Overseas, we provide Chinese-speaking drivers and provide seamless docking services overseas. ”

In the 2015, it will accelerate the pace of overseas expansion into 20 overseas cities such as Los Angeles, Boston, London, Frankfurt, Singapore, Taipei and Tokyo. At present, easy to use vehicles have entered 57 cities, with 50,000 contracted vehicles, more than 2 million active users. Zhou Ai said: "At the end of 2014, easy to enter 100 cities, 2015 will expand the service city to 150 cities, the user base expanded 10 times times." ”

In fact, Zhou's conception of the easy to, not only a car rental platform, but a shared economy under the big Society. "The first step is to achieve a big platform for car sharing," says Zhou Ai. Since there are 200 million car owners in China, there are 1 billion people to take a bus. In the future, we can expand to more areas under the main line of shared economy, and we can launch more products and services, covering more people on a layer by layer. As for what products to launch, we can explore. ”

In the easy to the interior, has been exploring. There is a special forces called "Innovation Business", composed of Zhou Ai and heads of departments. Easy to CEO assistant Gui is the director of Innovation business. "Almost every week, the Innovation Business department will have a brainstorming session," Gui said. We will describe the future, discuss some hot issues, and think about the different points of view. So, a lot of interesting things that seem unrelated to the current main business (car rental) happen. For example, easy to ycarlab with Volvo cooperation (easy to the car sharing laboratory). When the user rents easy to the Volvo model, easy to become the user's Test platform, the trial ride experience is no longer limited to the 4S shop. "Gui optimistic about the value increase brought about by innovation. "The easy core is sharing." Like those idle vehicles, vehicles idle time, there are many resources that have not been maximized. Easy to will explore the business opportunities, to bring value to both sides of the supply and demand. And the traditional model is built on the basis of owning, only the sale can obtain the profit. ”

2014, becomes easy to innovation year. The easy territory has expanded from the land to the sea, the sky, from the car service to the new life of the car. This April, easy to use the machine on-line, will share the economy to expand to the business vehicle domain, and equipped with the cost of the United States Bay Flow V-type business aircraft 240 million yuan, this July, the easy to the EasyGo kingdom, will appear "easy to use ship" this new product. Easy to launch the car business, the sharing of location information can be on the way to bring people or help people with breakfast, convenience supplies.

Low

Dreams are not always sweet. "B-round before financing, is my most painful time." "In the kitchen of Buddy Wang, the founder and CEO of the flight housekeeper, Zhou Ai suddenly wavered," do You (Wang) think I can make it? Is there such a market for car sharing?

At that time, easy to always in the trough. 2011, the establishment of about one anniversary of the easy to get the morning Hing venture investment in a round of financing. At that time the easy to more fancy business car business opportunities, positioning for business-to-business easy to spread around, playing ads to burn money to attract car rental companies, car users attention. But soon after, Zhou Ai found: "The first round of financing, the bullets have been empty, but no effect, no sales revenue (there is news that 2011, easy to operating income of about 8 million yuan)." "Although it is easy to get little money, we have to keep a huge sales team of about 100 people," he said. Easy to use Car co-founder and vice president of the market, Zhu Yueyi told reporters, this is because: "Easy to be a car but provide car rental services company, its source from the car rental companies, car customers from the major enterprises." Easy to the model is still not for the majority of car rental companies understand that the major car companies are not familiar with easy to. Therefore, we can only use the traditional way of promotion-Alibaba that a set of artificial visit method. "This traditional method of promotion is inefficient and extremely labour-intensive, so it is easy to expand rapidly to the sales team, reaching nearly 100 people at the highest level."

On that worry day, Zhou Ai, like the sales team, went door-to-door looking for a car rental company to negotiate, either with a team of start-up teams, on a map of the company's walls, staring at the GPS map to locate the big screen, waiting for the flashing signals of each order.

It was only after the discovery of personal car rental requirements and mobile interconnection opportunities that the predicament was broken.

Zhu Yueyi said: "2012, we found that although not much energy to do personal car rental business, individual users of the order growth is far more than expected." "In the second quarter of 2012, it was easy to move quickly, from TB to the TC market, from the telephone network to the mobile app app." In addition, considering that individual users are more sensitive to car rental prices, easy to significantly lower prices, after the adjustment, easy to use the car price is only 1.5 times times the price of taxis, in the past easy to car rental prices equivalent to 2 to 3 times times the price of taxis. Take a taxi from Beijing to the airport as an example, the past usually requires more than 200 yuan, after the price only need about 150 yuan. "Because at that time the national prices are rising, easy to use cars do not rise and fall, the number of July orders rubbed against the top run." "After July 2012, it was easy to double the quarterly sales growth. The company's business structure changed rapidly, from corporate users to individual users, the proportion of which later fell. Prior to that, 60% of the business was from enterprise users and 40% from individual users.

2012, easy to business income than 2011 turned 2.75 times times, but also become the favorite of VCs. April 2013, easy to announce the access to broadband capital of 100 million yuan in the B-round financing; December 2013, easy to complete the C round financing, Ctrip and DCM. "It is easy enough to have a few blocks away from rivals," says a professional agency that has been focusing on the easy way. ”

Zhou Ai's self-doubt did not disappear. Even though he is still known for his confidence in the podium, he admits: "I am a man of lofty pride, but I am likely to be in a low mood by night." In 2013, in the "40 of hesitation" article, Zhou Ai wrote: "Although I think I am not a cowardly person, but there is a kind of aloof fear of failure." "Because" success is really a bit of a trace, luck may be the biggest variable. ”