Players from all walks of life have entered the online car-hailing industry, which is more fragrant, self-operated mode or aggregation mode?
Our reporter Xu Jie
Recently, Meituan Taxi officially joined Tencent Travel in Shanghai, arousing the attention of the industry; on September 21, T3 Travel, the leading online car-hailing camp, announced the joint launch of Robotaxi (autonomous taxi) public operation in Suzhou with Qingzhou Zhihang , applying autonomous driving technology to the car-hailing platform.
For a time, the car-hailing market, which had been silent for a long time, became lively.
Analysys data shows that in the past August, the number of orders in the online car-hailing industry hit a new high, and players from all walks of life have also deployed. Giants such as Huawei have also set foot in it.
A practitioner told the "Securities Daily" reporter, "Although there are many new entrants, no one in the industry is pursuing scale anymore, mainly because the capital market no longer values it, and the investment logic of investors has also changed. The focus is on profitability. For example, some companies no longer highlight the number of users in the prospectus, but the quarterly profitability. In addition, from a regulatory perspective, they are not encouraged to expand their scale; For C-end users, everyone's usage habits have also been solidified. At present, the most test of each platform is its traffic monetization ability, which is reflected in whether the platform has enough stickiness for drivers."
Meituan Taxi chooses to continue cooperation with Tencent Travel
The development of online car-hailing has entered a new stage, and the aggregation of car-hailing platforms has attracted much attention.
On September 16, Meituan Taxi announced that, following Hangzhou, Zhengzhou and Chongqing, it will officially access Tencent’s travel service platform in Shanghai.
This is another important move since Tencent launched the car-hailing model on the aggregation platform. The two parties will launch new explorations in the field of online car-hailing, combining their own user and capacity advantages.
Up to now, Tencent's travel services have included online car-hailing service providers such as Meituan Taxi, T3 Travel, Cao Cao Travel, and Shouqi Car-hailing.
In this regard, a relevant person from Meituan told a reporter from Securities Daily, “Meituan’s access to Tencent Travel provides a wealth of transport capacity support. It is reported that Meituan Dache is currently connected to Tencent Travel through its self-operated online car-hailing capacity.
In terms of price, the starting price of Meituan Taxi will be cheaper than other platforms.
"Meituan Dache chose to cooperate with us mainly because of two points. First, Tencent's travel service is an open platform, open and equal access to the transportation capacity of all parties. The transportation capacity is the partner of Tencent's travel service; secondly, Tencent's travel service has massive traffic and accurate scenarios in the WeChat ecosystem." A relevant Tencent person told the "Securities Daily" reporter, "Tencent's travel service will rely on the WeChat mini-program ecosystem. , continue to access the industry's compliance capacity, and help the industry connect users more efficiently."
According to a recent report released by Analysys, in August, the overall order volume of China's online car-hailing travel market reached 703 million, a month-on-month increase of 1.1% and a year-on-year increase of 9.3%.
As most users of Meituan Taxi still use the Meituan App as the main entrance, the MAU is low.
"In fact, Meituan still has some concerns about its own ride-hailing business, unlike AutoNavi." The above-mentioned practitioner pointed out, "Tencent Travel is currently only testing the water and has made structural adjustments, but its development strategy is not very clear. But it will be clear by the end of the year."
Industry concentration may be further improved
Chen Liteng, a digital life analyst at the E-Commerce Research Center of Netease, told the "Securities Daily" reporter, "The development of the online car-hailing industry has formed three development models: the first type is pure self-operated travel platforms, such as Didi Chuxing. , Cao Cao Travel, Ruqi Travel, T3 Travel, etc.; the second category, self-operated + aggregation travel platforms, such as Meituan Taxi; the third category, pure aggregation travel platforms, such as AutoNavi, Baidu Maps, etc.”
Aggregation mode For online car-hailing service providers, map software can be used as a traffic port in the field of travel, which helps to solve traffic problems and obtain more users; from the perspective of aggregation platform, it reduces operating expenses. It helps itself realize traffic monetization, increases user stickiness and feeds back its own business; for users, the one-stop taxi service also saves a lot of time and energy.
However, there are also many problems in the development process of the aggregation platform.
"Whether the online car-hailing information aggregation platform needs to obtain the operation license of the online car-hailing platform, how to determine the rights and obligations between the information aggregation platform and the connected car-hailing platform company, etc. are all topics that need to be discussed." Chen Liteng said, " Moreover, for the platform, the long-term value of self-operation is greater, and if you can obtain orders through the aggregation platform, if you can't turn into a user of your own brand, you will eventually work for the aggregation platform."
Jie Chong, a senior investment consultant at East Hi-Tech, told a reporter from Securities Daily, “Based on the huge traffic advantage, aggregation platforms are relatively easy to attract new users, but it is relatively difficult to retain traffic on such platforms and cannot guarantee users’ rides. Experience. With sufficient capacity and professional driver services, self-operated platforms are more likely to win the trust of customers in terms of compliance and service quality.”
Jie Chong said, "At present, other car-hailing platforms other than Didi are quite competitive, and the car-hailing industry will definitely develop in a more standardized and healthy direction in the future. Therefore, whether it is an aggregation platform or a self-operated platform, online The competition in the car-hailing market must be centered on compliance and service quality. It can be expected that various platforms will coexist and develop, but the industry concentration will further increase.”
In terms of business model, the self-operated model and the aggregation model have also appeared in the current situation of deep integration.
In this regard, Jie Chong believes that the future online car-hailing market is likely to develop in a hybrid model, that is, the aggregation + self-operated model. "From a regulatory perspective, the regulatory authorities are strengthening the management of aggregation platforms. Under strong supervision, there will be The aggregation platform and the self-operated platform are forced to invest more resources in compliance construction and quality services. The effective integration of the traffic advantages of the aggregation platform with the capacity, compliance and service capabilities of the self-operated platform is an important step in the online car-hailing market. A promising direction of evolution.”
At present, the demand and supply of capacity in the online car-hailing market are generally in a state of balance, but Jie Chong believes that because the capacity supply of the car-hailing market is still expanding rapidly, it is likely to show a pattern of oversupply in the future, and the subsequent demand growth rate may will slow down.
The above-mentioned practitioners also pointed out, "The online car-hailing industry's order entry is actually very open, and it will be more open in the future, and the platform should pay more attention to the driver's retention, because the settlement of the order depends on where the driver takes the order. Which platform will it stay on? Therefore, the improvement of the platform is very important for the driver’s service ability.” (Securities Daily)