Intern reporter Yang Tianyue
A few months ago, Mr. Zhou, a heavy user of car rental, rented a Dongfeng Nissan Loulan SUV through the Gofun travel platform at a monthly rent of 7,000 yuan.
Although I planned to rent for 3 months, when I returned the car in advance, the platform deducted a lot of fees and did not even get back the prepaid deposit.
Recently, many citizens have discovered that there are fewer and fewer Gofun shared cars around them, and some users, like Mr. Zhou, cannot get the refund of the prepaid rent and deposit.
The rumors that Gofun's trip B round financing was blocked and the status quo of large-scale employee resignations have also attracted industry attention.
The reporter learned from people familiar with the matter that the number of employees in Gofun's travel Beijing area has shrunk by more than 30%.
The Togo car sharing car, which was once a smash hit two years ago, has gone bankrupt, and now Gofun's travel seems to have begun to decline.
In the past two years, the car sharing industry has become less popular in the capital market than before. Is car sharing really only a short-lived?
Hard to return, hard to rent
When booking the entire lease, the user needs to prepay part of the rent, and the remaining order fee will be paid when the car is picked up; if the user ends the order early, the platform will deduct part or all of the prepayment amount, and the remaining part will be refunded the same way-this is the platform The whole lease rules.
However, what made Mr. Zhou annoyed was that after returning the car more than a month in advance, the remaining rent and deposit were not available for a long time.
At present, the Loulan models leased on the Gofun travel platform have been taken off the shelves, leaving only 12 models including Chery Ant and Hyundai Yuedong, which are significantly less than before.
Not only that, but there are also fewer car-sharing models and car-taking and car-returning outlets on the platform than before.
“In the past, there were 3 outlets within 1 km of my home. Basically, every time I needed to use and return the car, it went smoothly. Recently, two of these outlets disappeared.” Mr. Wang, a citizen who lives near Shifoying, was also Gofun. Loyal travel users have rented a car on the platform 35 times and drove 479 kilometers in the past two years. Recently, they have become more and more helpless.
"When I want to use the car during the day, I often don't have a car. When I need to return the car at night, I often encounter the situation that the parking space is full and I can't continue to use it."
Similar voices also appeared in consumer feedback in Wuhan, Tianjin, Hangzhou, Changsha, and Guiyang. At the same time, many netizens said that the recharge balance in the APP could not be refunded.
At the end of 2018, the once smashing Togo shared car suddenly closed down, and many users have not been able to complete the refund of the 1,500 yuan deposit paid by many users.
Based on the lessons learned from the past, many users who have recharged on the Gofun travel platform have a drum in their hearts: "Is the Gofun car sharing also cold?"
Current employee turnover
In addition to the fact that user deposits and expenses are difficult to refund, vehicles and outlets are shrinking greatly, Gofun Travel is currently facing the dilemma of large-scale layoffs, and changes in the company's personnel structure have long begun.
At the end of February this year, a workplace social platform once circulated a report e-mail involving Gofun Travel CEO Tan Yi. The e-mail mentioned that the reported person, including Tan Yi, changed the organizational structure at will, employed people in confusion, and used the power to do it for themselves. Seek benefits, etc.
On February 27, Gofun made a public statement on the resignation of Tan Yi, stating that the recent changes in the company's relevant personnel were due to the need for business and organizational strategic adjustments.
Mr. Tan Yi resigned due to personal reasons, and the new CEO formally took office in early February. "At present, the company is operating as usual."
Despite this, the wave of departures for Gofun's trip has not stopped.
According to an insider, the company’s employee turnover rate has soared since December last year. “The number of employees in Beijing has shrunk by 30%. The company also recruited two batches of management trainees last year, and now only three are left. Four people.” The above-mentioned insider also said that in December last year, employees’ wages were also paid more than 20 days late.
At the same time as the layoffs, the scale of Gofun's travel business is also facing shrinking.
"Since 2019, Gofun has withdrawn from Chongqing, Tianjin, Zhengzhou and other cities. Last year, it withdrew from Changsha. Now there are not many cities in actual operation." Another person familiar with the matter said that this year is expected to continue to shrink business scale.
In this regard, the reporter tried to get in touch with Gofun's travel, and a staff member said that "the head of the marketing department is on vacation these days."
As of press time, the reporter has not received a response from the other party.
Only a flash in the pan?
At the end of 2018, Togo, the leading car-sharing company at the time, was caught in a storm of being demanded by users for deposits, a large number of vehicles disappeared, and the platform quickly faded out of public view.
Subsequently, Gofun Travel gradually occupied the car-sharing market in Beijing with its advantages such as no deposit, wide distribution of outlets, and convenient access to vehicles.
According to Tianyan Check information, on October 16 last year, Gofun completed a series B financing of hundreds of millions of yuan. The investors were local government industry funds, the National Development and Investment Corporation and Chery New Energy, and there was news that they were seeking a listing.
Under the influence of the capital winter in 2019 and the new crown epidemic in early 2020, the car-sharing market has not had capital replenishment for a year. This round of financing was also considered a "cardio booster" for the development of the industry at the time.
However, judging from the company's current situation, the progress of this financing does not seem optimistic.
Under the model of heavy assets and heavy operation, since 2017, a group of small and medium car sharing startups established in the sharing outlet, such as Youyou Car, EZZY, Muggle Travel, and car2go, have ceased operations or closed down, and the industry has concentrated The degree is further improved.
In the past two years, as large companies such as Togo and Gofun have fallen into trouble one after another, the fierce competition in the second half has also begun to have top players unsustainable.
Due to the lack of a healthy and sustainable profit model, the car-sharing industry has indeed become less popular in the capital market in the past two years.
In the opinion of many industry insiders, the shared bicycle market has gradually cooled, and the shared car model that follows the “take off” of shared bicycles may not escape the cold winter.