Grabbing tens of billions of car travel markets: The next gold mine in mobile internet

While there are strong travel needs and congested roads, with inefficient, empty vehicles, and entrepreneurs hoping to get a slice of the huge travel market on the Internet, can they succeed?

Sina Science and Technology Nan

"The market always likes fresh words, last year is Solomo, this year is O2O." Now the market is disappointed with the electric dealers, the scale does not seem to solve the problem of electricity. The next hot spot I think should be M2O (mobile to Offline, from the mobile internet to the offline). "Talking about your company's business model, easy to use car founder Zhou Ai appears quite excited."

In his view, there are three major business models in the M2o field. The first category is group buying, a very difficult industry to do. "The payment and consumption of group buying is not synchronized, so it is difficult for users to buy services that are not currently consumed through prepaid means, so there must be a very high discount." ”

The second category is the coupon mode, such as Tintin concessions, pudding, etc., but this model can not lock users, can only guide consumption, so the role is very weak, now basically evolved into advertising mode, businesses in accordance with the display of advertising pay, and can not pay by effect.

The third category is channel booking, such as Ctrip and Hotel Butler, a location-based hotel booking app. However, this model only involved in the marketing level, did not participate in the service itself, in the industrial chain in a relatively passive and weak position.

"Many hotels do not want to give the availability of the channels such as Ctrip, they will even after users to shop with users said" next time from the official website book cheaper. Zhou Ai explained, because Ctrip to take away part of the partition, reduce the hotel's profit margin.

"Whether it is Ctrip or hotel housekeeper, they are just a marketing channel that can easily be replaced. Therefore, easy to use the car does not want to become only a channel, but want to become part of the service, so as to have irreplaceable value. "Zhou Ai said.

"Mixed Mode" for easy to use car

Easy to use the car is trying to use the Internet in China car rental, a hi car rental and other traditional rental companies to share a piece of soup.

According to a Roland Berger consultancy survey, China's car rental market was about 20 billion yuan in 2011, to 39 billion by 2015 and a composite growth rate of 18% in 2011 to 2015.

On the official website, it is easy to describe yourself by using the "first E-commerce website in China that specializes in renting out car rental services."

Their business model is this: on the client side, the user can use the mobile phone app, or the landing site, at any time to issue a demand for cars, the nearest vehicle will pick him up. In the vehicle side, easy to use the car does not own the car, but signed on hundreds of professional car rental companies.

Users can use mobile app, or landing site, at any time to issue a demand for cars, the nearest vehicle will come to pick him up.

Easy to use car set up a set of matchmaking and competition mechanism, when the user orders the vehicle, the order will be distributed to hundreds of companies, by their own choice whether to receive orders, if there are more than one company, easy to use the car will be based on distance, price, quality of service and other weights decided to send this order to whom.

When the order is assigned to which car, the driver of the car uses the easy to allot of mobile phone terminals, billing, users from the easy access to the app fee, do not have to generate cash transactions with the driver.

Sina technology in easy to use car official website to see, currently they provide intermediate (Passat), Business (Buick GL8), Advanced (Audi A6), luxury (Mercedes/BMW) Four models, the cheapest intermediate car price is 20 yuan/half an hour or 4 yuan/kilometer.

"Through our participation, the original car rental service model and process have been changed in depth." Zhou Ai said, "Easy to use handlebar across the company's vehicle dispatch into reality, our technical framework to achieve the service process monitoring and billing mode, so become a part of the service." ”

Zhou Ai further explained: "For users, they are faced with the easy access to a car company, we are responsible for the user risk." And at the back end, easy to grasp the distribution of orders, so that the competition between car rental companies, through the market-oriented mechanism to improve service quality. ”

"We're not very" light "(just an online platform) is not very" heavy "(no vehicles), it's a mixture of weight and weight, and we don't want to be just the client of the benefits, but rather the leader of the chain, the controller of the market, to maximize the value of business. Zhou Ai concluded.

"Socialization" taxi

In addition to renting a car, there is a bigger market, that is to take a taxi.

"Foreign is to buy a car cost is low, the cost of a taxi is high, so car rental is competitive; At home the opposite, because the human cost is low, so the taxi cost is lower, than car rental more competitive, so I chose socialization taxi this direction." ”

At the beginning of 2012, Cheng Wei, who had seven years of experience in Alibaba, went into the mobile-Internet field, with several brothers developing a tick-tock taxi.

The business model of tick-tock is that users can record their location and destination by recording from app, and the system automatically matches nearby taxis. If a taxi is willing to take orders, the app will immediately display the driver's information, location and time required to arrive.

Tick a taxi can automatically locate the user's location, automatically matching the surrounding vehicles.

"We've just signed up with more than 10 taxi companies and there are already thousands of taxis in the tick-tock taxi," he said. Cheng Wei said that after signing up for each driver has been a special training, and to their mobile phone installed a beep of the background app. Each time you call a car, the user needs to pay 3 yuan, beep and taxi drivers each have 1.5 yuan.

Cheng Wei admits, tick-tock taxi does not solve the peak of the taxi problem, "This is not a company can solve things." "We are mainly trying to solve the problem of taxis during off-peak hours or in remote areas," he said. In these places, passengers are difficult to hit the car, taxis are difficult to find guests, and some taxis every day so empty more than 100 kilometers, this is the demand. ”

When it comes to refusing hire, Cheng Wei said, those drivers who refuse to hire may have been working for more than 10 hours and will be home soon if you want to take a taxi to the opposite direction, of course they will refuse to hire. "The problem we have to solve is to set up the same passengers who are heading home." ”

Swing recruit car is also early into the field of socialized taxi start-up companies, CEO Wang built to Sina technology calculate a sum, Beijing has 67,000 taxis, each car about 30 orders per day. If the number of social channels can account for half of the order, each charge 3 yuan, then only a Beijing city, is more than 1 billion yuan per year of the big market.

However, he also admits that the socialization of taxi mode is not good at the beginning. "We now have 1000-volume taxis, unfortunately, the success rate is not high, about only 50%~60%." Because the user and the vehicle are too few, the probability that the demand matches is very low. This model wants to go through the stick, when the number of cars and people come up to have a better experience. ”

"Light gray Zone"

"I get a Ride" is another kind of travel app, it tries to set up a lift platform, improve the utilization rate of the car and excavate the surplus value of the car.

But, let "I Hitch" CEO Wang is depressed, he and easy to use the car all met the same problem: policy risk.

"Because of the interest of the taxi company, the driver service has been in the grey area of policy." "Easy to use car CEO Zhou Ai revealed that the country did not explicitly say that the driver can do, and did not explicitly say can not do, but the demand is very strong, now tens of thousands of domestic car rental companies almost all to do on behalf of the driving service."

Zhou Ai smiled and said, if there is no driver service, the annual two sessions may encounter problems, because they use all the driving service.

To be compliant, the easiest way to use a car is to "rent a car, hire a tenant." In other words, easy to use the car with the car rental company signed a lease agreement, and the Labor Service company signed a contract, equivalent to a tripartite agreement signed. For users, easy to use car is a proxy, while the agency leasing companies and labor companies.

"The biggest risk is that the traffic department is under the illegal operation (ie, black rental) punishment, but was judged to be illegal operation need to have four conditions, in the street, strangers, bargaining, for profit purposes." "I got a ride, CEO Wang Yiwu says it's hard to have the same conditions, whether it's a ride or a car with a driver.

"It is expected that the transport sector will soon be on behalf of the relevant policy, is indeed a gray area, but is" light gray "is not" dark gray. " and "Light gray" is often the golden zone of the future. "Wang Yiwu said.