Lei two times entrepreneurship: to borrow a peer-to-peer carpool to move a trillion market

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Sina Science and Technology Pan

After three years of entrepreneurship, Li Hua has made a difficult decision: to give up the main car peripheral products of the vertical Electric website "Car Goods network", instead of operating the main peer-to-peer carpool service "haha carpool."

At the end of 2013. Li Hua is very resolute, car goods network more than 20 people's team, most people need to find another way out, only 5 people follow him to continue his business. But the car goods net was not in the desperate situation at that time, Li Hua Soldier's decision let many people be surprised.

Car Products Network was founded in July 2011, has been Lei 2 million Yuan Angel investment. Through sales of car seat cushion, seat cover, foot mat, perfume, car wax, foil, oil, machine filtration, etc., its annual sales to achieve more than 10 million yuan, profit margin of about 10%, achieve a break-even, or even a slight profit.

But from 2013 onwards, Li Hua soldiers gradually feel that the car product network is not a good business: Car peripherals and SKU products are too many, the supply chain mixed. And as a start-up company, car goods network neither Jingdong (31.34, 0.38, 1.23%) as a powerful channel, there is no such advantages as Millet brand, it is difficult to reverse the Internet control channels.

"Thankfully, we survived, but it was hard to say." "Li Hua said. By the end of the year, exhausted, he was determined to give up the car net. Li Hua had been advised to sell a good price, but he did not listen, because "meaningless."

The first venture is not a success, Li Hua Soldiers from the lesson is: "must be from the ' light ' place into, to the relationship between people, not to do a very ' heavy '. ”

As a car person, he looked at the nascent Internet carpool market. Carpool is not new, especially for city dwellers who need long-distance commutes; Li Hua hopes to use the Internet to change the stock market and improve the matching efficiency and quality of both supply and demand.

In January this year, the Beijing Municipal Transportation Committee announced the "on the Beijing passenger car hop travel opinion", announced that the folk carpool behavior is legal; two weeks later, Li-Hua soldiers officially released a haha Carpool 1.0 version.

The use of this mobile phone app, users can release the demand for carpool, according to the time period, destination and other factors to find a vehicle, and take part in driving costs. At present, the fare per user for each trip is about 10 to 15 yuan.

As of July this year, haha carpool application download volume of about hundreds of thousands of times, daily active users accounted for about 10%, the daily release of the number of carpool needs thousands. Li Hua hopes to raise this figure to 100,000 a day through large-scale promotional activities.

Stock market

In Li Hua's view, the positioning of carpool services is between public transport and taxis, and the price and user experience are also in between. It complements the traditional transportation service system and satisfies the special needs of the specific people.

"We are mainly facing the commuting commuter market around Beijing, such as the suburbs to the international trade, Fangshan to six bridge, Fuxing door, changping to Zhongguancun and so on." "Li Hua said. This type of users for the "North Drift" crowd, like in the rental and housing prices lower suburbs and counties live, while working in the Beijing urban area.

In the urban area, in addition to the user can choose public transport, subways and taxis and other infrastructure, but also can choose to use cars, AA car rental business, such as car rental services, carpool demand is not small. And live in the suburbs of some users will choose to drive to work, commuting costs are high, willing to find someone to save money, this is haha carpool target user group.

Li Hua called it the "stock market", the most typical of which is located 35 kilometers east of Beijing, Hebei town of the suburbs. There are only 42 square kilometers, but live more than 500,000 people, the population density is twice times in Beijing urban area, more than 300,000 people every day "work across the province." The most fatal is that the local subway, residents in addition to the bus, can only travel by car.

"We found that the suburbs into the Beijing population mainly concentrated in 14 lines, in the local 3 points, bringing together 60% of the online carpool service." "Li Hua calculate a account, if a suburb owner commuting 70 kilometers a day, then the oil money is about 45 yuan, crossing fee of 35 yuan, plus parking fees, cost more than 100 yuan."

He sees these people as the first users to expand. Over the past six months, haha carpool team through the online QQ group, as well as offline activities such as car friends, education users and markets. Up to now, more than 10,000 drivers have been stationed on the platform.

Li Hua's idea is that the driver can set the charges themselves, the car carpool passengers will not be able to make the driver to make money, only to be able to subsidize some oil money. "Not to make money, but to save some money, why not." "he said.

But this kind of play is obviously very easy with "the black cars" to relate. Li Hua admits that there was a "black car" driver to disclose to him, haha carpool app "nearby" function to their "pull" provides a lot of convenience.

Haha carpool try to judge the user is not "black car" by the way of manual audit abnormal behavior. Up to now, the platform has blocked hundreds of drivers who are suspected of "black taxis".

Policy challenges

Internet carpool is becoming a taxi software and commercial car rental platform after another increasingly heated car internet market. But, like the two predecessors, it faces a difficult problem of regulatory ambiguity.

At present, in addition to haha carpool, the domestic involvement in the field of Internet carpool Company also includes AA carpool, easy to carpool and car and many other enterprises. Their business model is basically the same, the scale is generally small, and drop a taxi, quick taxi and easy to use cars and other companies.

The industry as a whole is perhaps the main reason why regulators have not made public names. At present, China's major cities, only the Beijing Municipal Transportation Committee issued the "on the Beijing minibus hop travel advice" for the Internet Carpool Service made some provisions. But with the reference to the document, haha carpool and other companies are not fully achieved, such as few people can do in the car when the signing of a formal contract.

Li Hua said, haha carpool has consulted a number of lawyers, to study whether compliance, the conclusion is "no problem." "No one has yet supervised us because we are too small." "He even hopes that regulators will soon be able to incorporate Internet carpool into the regulatory framework, as it did for taxi software and commercial car rental platforms."

Haha carpool this January completed a round of financing of 10 million yuan, of which innovation factory invested 8 million yuan, Lei invested 2 million yuan. In June, the company received a total of 10 million dollars in B-round financing from Sequoia Capital and innovation workshop.

Li Hua, the "Not bad money", is planning to recruit, for example, to expand the product and technical team of the existing 20 people by more than one times. He is not anxious to make money, "not to consider commercialization for two years"; he intends to devote his energy to grinding products and user experiences.

Li Hua soldier than Lei 8 years old, graduated from Wuhan University Computer Department, is the latter's younger brother. The two have a good relationship, and Lei to his advice is: "The car is a huge market, the car service market is a trillion-tier market." "This may be the important source of confidence for Li Hua to do haha carpool."

As for why Lei in succession to cast his two entrepreneurial projects, Li Hua smiled: "Lei investment style is the general direction of reliable, small direction needs to be verified; This may be a personal trust to me. ”