Rookie network still "flying" in the sky

Absrtact: The past year rookie network enclosure a lot, but finally put down very few. It's not easy to get massive farmland in China. A year ago, Ma Yun circled the village 2200 acres of land. The 73-Year-old villager, Wu Maoxi, smoked and sat in the village. He was in front of a
The past year rookie network enclosure a lot, but finally put down a little. It's not easy to get massive farmland in China

A year ago, Ma Yun circled the village 2200 acres of land.

The 73-Year-old villager, Wu Maoxi, smoked and sat in the village. In front of him was a vast expanse of red land, an old tree standing alone in the distance, and occasionally a passing bird pierced the hush.

Last summer, Wuhan Jiangxia Kou Xu Guang Cun Village Committee brought together the villagers, took out a "on the issuance of < China intelligent Backbone Network (Wuhan) Project compensation Implementation Plan > Notice", above is the Communist Party of Jin Jie Street work office, the Office of the subdistrict offices under the cover of two "red stamp."

Jin Kou is a more than 2,300-year history of the ancient town, was once a major commercial port of business dealings. Xu Guang cun distance, but a few kilometers, villagers mostly surnamed Wu, to farming for a living. They are unfamiliar with the so-called intelligent backbone network, but many villagers have heard of the "rich" Ma.

The week before the document was issued, Ma Yun and their small partners (Yintai Group, Fosun Group, Fuchun Group, as well as Shun Fung, "one Tee" express Company) funded the "Rookie Network Technology Co., Ltd." (hereinafter referred to as "rookie Network") in Shenzhen announced the establishment.

The goal of the rookie network is to "make delivery within 24 hours in any part of China." "In the 8-10-year period, it is planned to build a nationwide network of intelligent Logistics backbone Networks (hereinafter referred to as" CNS ") to support the daily average of 30 billion online retail sales at a cost of $300 billion.

As a rookie network after the founding of the first plot, Xu Guang Cun Village before the hundreds of acres of land on the Beanstalk was quickly uprooted, and then repeatedly crushed flatten. Even Wu Mao, who had cultivated a small garden in the vicinity of his old house, was flattened overnight. Others came to their courtyard to measure and evaluate, and the front room was not spared. Since then, their homes have been frozen, not allowed to be built, restructured or renovated.

The villagers who lost their land anxiously await the arrival of the rookie and Ma Yun, hoping that they can help themselves to solve their future livelihood.

Over the past decade, China's e-commerce market composite growth rate of more than 80%. In the process of the formation of the business oligopoly, the competition between the electric giants has extended to the retail market: One step forward is mobile payment, and a step back is modern logistics.

Electric business logistics can be divided into warehousing, trunk lines and the last one kilometer distribution three major links. Foreign electric dealers often choose "Custom warehousing + professional Third-party Logistics distribution" mode. The company, the Singapore Logistics developer, has been providing services to companies with such models, and has been in China for many years.

But the domestic electric business giant has a alternative. Among them, Jing-dong, suning and other become the representative of the construction of logistics, and respectively in the warehousing, distribution of the two major links to win the field. As for the Alibaba (rolling information) group, Logistics has been considered to be its short board. Close to the rookie of the network revealed that Ma Yun early four years ago began to raise ideas, trying to find the best social Logistics Integration program.

2012 offers a rare opportunity. In February of that year, the state Post Office and the Ministry of Commerce issued a joint dispatch to promote the development of express and network retail guidance. The State Council and the Ministry of Commerce have also supported the development of logistics industry.

Wuhan, as the whole central node city, has finally opened the door to the land market. Here known as "Nine provinces thoroughfare", Cheng linking, communication north and south, while bringing together the Beijing-Guangzhou, Beijing-Kowloon, Wu Jiu, Handan Four railway lines, as well as Beijing, Macao, Shanghai Rong, such as 6 national roads. As the largest land and air transportation hub in China's interior, Wuhan is a battleground for all the "military strategists". However, since the Wuhan real estate market is closed, foreign enterprises are difficult to win this huge quality land plots.

Therefore, when Wuhan throws out "one port, six garden, eight center" logistics development Planning, quickly attracted Temasek's Fung-Shu group, the domestic Internet crocodile Baidu, Tencent, electric dealers such as Amazon, Suning, Jingdong and 1th stores and other enterprises flocked.

Alibaba Group is not the fastest one. "The purpose of the electric business is to do regional distribution, then we must choose to cover three or four cities of the highway network node area." Richard Ellis, head of the Industry and Logistics Services department in China, said Rochin.

Finally MA will target locked in Jiangxia Kou. Here has a 32 kilometers of excellent water coast line, is said to be the construction of the upper reaches of Wuhan West Dagang is the only site, but also the Beijing-Macau Expressway and the Shanghai-Chongqing Highway entrance.

But how to lobby local governments is a problem. On the issue of land transfer, the interests of local governments and the central government are often inconsistent. Electric dealers are prone to demand thousands of acres of land scale, but also convenient transportation, supporting facilities mature, the price is far lower than the residential commercial land. The so-called "good steel to make in the blade," "Good steel" is good quality plots, the local government's "blade" is the GDP, KPI and tax related to the achievement of the hard indicators.

In particular, in 2011 Wuhan launched the doubling of industrial development program. For this reason, the industrial industry that can bring about the linkage effect, or the enterprise that can create new economic growth point, and preferably provide a package solution for the farmers who have been expropriated and demolished, can become the favored target of Wuhan government.

In the 2012-2014 years, the annual Wuhan City land plan in the industrial Land index is more than 30,000 mu, but most of the emerging economic zones. In this level of Wuhan city, there are Optics Valley Software Park and the upgraded Wuhan Economic development Zone, Jiangxia has a Shanghai General Motors manufacturing as the core of the Golden Harbor New Town, as well as the Xinzhou District Yang Luo Port Central China International Industrial Park ... With the availability of land indicators increasingly scarce, even the foreign giants of the GLP is increasingly difficult to get a large amount of industrial land.

Ma Yun, if he told the local government that it wanted to be a GLP or Amazon, would get the same response. Richard Ellis, head of the Industry and Logistics Services department in China, said Rochin. The American Prologis Group is the world's largest industrial logistics boss.

"Platform-type logistics" concept of the formal stage at this time, this is a gene with Ali, but also with such as GLP, domestic rivals Suning, Jingdong different models. Ma Yun described the "300 billion of inputs driven Guixing logistics infrastructure reform" is undoubtedly very tempting for local governments.

In the end, Jack Ma successfully won the support of the Wuhan municipal government, Jiangxia District, the same experience in other cities.

May 28, 2013, at Intercontinental Shenzhen Oct Hotel, MA announced rookie network and China's Smart backbone network officially launched. He began to show his ambition-by the end of 2013, domestic internet sales were only 1.89 trillion. 7 years later, if the market is real like Alibaba vice President Liang Chunxiao expected to achieve 10 trillion sales scale, the daily average of less than 30 billion online retail sales-This means that the ultimate goal of the rookie network is to monopolize the entire network retail market logistics distribution.

A year later.

Ride to Xu Guang Cun bus bumps forward, after 30 several stops on the Wu Jin Causeway Road. Along the way can be seen covers an area of thousands of acres of Shanghai General Motors Wuhan Production base, the right is the Yangtze River. After getting off the bus again, after arriving along the loess-filled paper gold Road again 2 kilometers, finally saw the indicator in a cluster of trees: Jiangxia kou Xu Guang cun.

"Chinese entrepreneur" obtains a "requisition land agreement" from the Xu Guang Cun Village Committee. A year ago the village was requisitioned 2000 acres of land, there are 1637.99 acres of farmland, 123.56 acres of construction land and other sites. According to Hubei Province issued a unified annual production value of land requisition (1790 yuan/year), Xu Guang cun villagers per acre total to obtain 37950 yuan compensation (21). The agreement shows that the Xu Guang cun compensation for land expropriation amounted to 77.8873 million yuan.

After deducting social security expenses, the balance has been hit into the villagers ' accounts. But they did not see the earth-shaking changes, the land should be planted crops only a few Mizusawa, a few bush weeds. A long paved road will be in front of the land split up, the right is built 500KV substation, farther away is the Jiangxia District Municipal Construction Corporation for the rookie network of Wuhan CNS one phase of road drainage works.

The project is clearly not progressing so well. Until February this year, "Wuhan Chuan Yunjiangxia Networking Technology Co., Ltd." was incorporated, the legal representative of the company COO, is also the vice president of the group Dong Wenhong. April 26, it is a total price of 94.95 million yuan, the average price of 237400 yuan/mu of the cost of formal access to Xu Guang cun 400 acres of land.

Compared with the average price of thousands of acres of industrial land sold by the Jiangxia District government to Shanghai General Motors Company, the cost of the rookie network is obviously much higher. If the company continues to take the same standard to Xu Guang cun all the land, it will need to take out another 400 million yuan.

On the one hand, the policy orientation of local government has changed. The Jiangxia District government management team has been changing frequently, with 3 governors in the past four years. 2012 after the support of the Logistics Industry Development Policy window period, the new chief Wang Qinghua proposed to focus on industry, the introduction of major projects, large parks to tie in with the whole of Wuhan city's industrial doubling plan. In mid-May, "Chinese entrepreneur" calls the relevant personage, the other party made clear that the district government currently supports the industry has turned to the automotive industry, optoelectronics and biomedicine, government resources especially in Shanghai General Motors Wuhan Industrial Park project.

On the other hand, the rookie of the network has been groping forward.

Rookie of the network's shareholders include the commercial real estate Yintai group, as well as the fund to operate the program of the Fosun Group subsidiary Star Capital. To that end, the market had speculated that Mr Ma might use their power to run industrial land. But people close to the rookie told the Chinese entrepreneur that the decision and operation of land and corporate models were largely the responsibility of Alibaba Group, "after all, they are the first major shareholders of 48% per cent," and the remaining shareholders are simply investors.

Rookie networks have repeatedly stressed that they are an internet company, not a logistics developer. Previously, codenamed "Skynet" Ali Logistics Division is in the relevant software development and data services. In the merchant link, Ali Group for the platform for the merchants to provide consumption, warehousing and inventory information, so that it can complete the fastest speed from the order to the delivery process. In the logistics link, then try to put all the express companies are connected to the Ali platform, logistics backend system so that businesses and express companies choose each other to achieve the optimal allocation of resources. Rookie network was once called "land Network", responsible for the selected node in the city of the project development, optical access and system construction work.

Last September, Ali Logistics Division merged into the rookie network. The combination of "Skynet" and "Earth Net" aims to integrate the optimal scheme of socialized logistics.

The next time, rookie network management organized countless brainstorming, in the collision and coordination gradually formed the implementation of the theoretical model.

They first abandoned the traditional logistics park development model. GLP has decades of operating experience, and access to capital markets, insurance and foreign industry funds support. But under the domestic financial environment, it is difficult for the emerging electric operators to get huge and low-cost long-term funds.

In addition, although the logistics storage rents rise year by year, its return on capital is not more than 7%. It is said that the internal rate of return that GLP provides to investors is only between 15% and 20%. Alibaba Group Prospectus shows that its revenue for the latest fiscal year is 40.4 billion, net profit of 17.5 billion ――43.32% net interest rate, not far higher than the real estate companies, or even more than the general financial institutions profit level. What's more, the rookie network wants to attract businesses to join the platform, targeted customers are mostly small and medium-sized enterprises, relying on low rents to nurture the market is expected. Therefore, "Rookie network will not pursue rental income, at least for a short period of time is not its goal." Those close to the rookie network told the Chinese entrepreneur.

It will not follow the Beijing-east to build its own logistics. This avoids huge sums of money and deposits to devour the company's profits and cash.

Finally, rookie network formed the concept of the new town of electric industry. This is still essentially the industrial agglomeration effect, the core is the rookie network is responsible for the establishment of logistics warehousing base, to small and medium businesses and courier companies as the core customers, trying to raw materials production to complete the sale of the entire industrial chain to the rookie network platform, and then gradually derived from commercial, residential and other ancillary facilities

At the beginning of May, Mr. Shen, chairman of Yintai Group, resigned from the rookie network CEO, Ali Group COO Zhang Yong successor.

In the land location and positioning links, rookie network adhere to the Ali platform to provide consumer and merchant data as a reference. In the development of warehousing, design and operation, rookie network is mainly targeted at the Ali platform of the merchants and courier companies. On the one hand, help them to manage inventory by providing data to the merchant and Courier company. On the other hand, the warehouse is tailored to their needs.

As mentioned above, the core profitability of the rookie network will not come from rents, but rather large data services. In particular, traditional logistics operators tend to focus on providing services to large enterprise clients, and pursuing the stability of tenant structure and the steady rise of rental income. As a result, the larger the size of the customer rented, the longer the better. But the rookie network is committed to the data and information services to help their customers continuously reduce inventory and network distribution, the pursuit of goods fast forward.

In addition to warehousing, the rookie network will also establish commercial projects, and encourage tenants to open a brand-like flagship store in the Park O2O experience shop. They hope that the platform of the merchants, especially Taobao mall within the small and medium-sized sellers can come to this rental library, open shop and even life. Then attract IT companies to provide software services for businesses to come here, until the formation of a complete electric business ecosystem.

But with other industrial parks in advance of the park block planning, rookie network in the hands of the plot is limited to the logistics and warehousing purposes, commercial, residential and other supporting plate will be based on the development of the base to seek further development.

Everything is just an idea. Even in 2010, the Tianjin project, currently only 100,000 square meters early embryonic form. Because it is still in the investment stage, can not be considered as a mature model to be promoted. "What kind of model to form is really the most difficult problem that a rookie has to face in the past year or so." Those close to the rookie network told The Economist.

At present, the rookie network has about 300 employees. More than 200 of them engaged in software development and data Services, the company's most important energy and investment in this regard. They have also dug in many property elites from developers such as Wanda, but they are generally responsible for the implementation of the project.

Mr Ma, who is not conservative, shows a cautious side in his land and devotion. According to the person close to the rookie network, although it has established a strategic partnership with China Life and Citic Bank, the company's capital investment is still limited to the shareholder's capital of 5 billion yuan.

Rochin told The Economist that this may be because in the government's tightly controlled land environment, enterprises to carry out a longer operating cycle, slow investment in the development of projects must avoid the concentration of land and the capital risk of start-up.

Today, Xu Guang Cun's villagers are already familiar with the name "rookie". Although they have received a compensation payment, they are more worried about their livelihood.

Half of the villagers here are over 50 years old. The 73-year-old Wu Mao mentioned above has only 5 acres of land, and the compensation is very limited. And the homestead has not been requisitioned, new house construction is not in sight. "We'd rather have the money and spend it all the rest of our lives." "A female villager approaching the age of 50 told the Chinese entrepreneur," now that we are not old enough to take social security, we are too old to be employed. ”

If the rookie network of the industrial New town of the experiment can really succeed, they will not have to worry about the future life. But it will be at least another three years.

Rookie network still "fly" in the sky, underground this road in groping slowly forward.