Mu Rongjun, one of the founders of Meituan, recalled how Wang Xing once moved him. Before joining Fanfou, he didn't know whether Wang Xing would succeed or not, but he felt that Wang Xing possessed a valuable quality:
He does things not for money, but because he genuinely wants to achieve something. He plans for the long term and is willing to take big risks at crucial moments. This is also the reason why this team has been able to persist. If the boss only wanted to make some quick money and leave, this team wouldn’t be able to focus on the long-term.
And now, Wang Xing, who always plans for the long term, has once again encountered his opportunity.
In the second quarter of this year, a certain company ignored the regulators' advice and went public without having its business shutdown properly accepted, which shocked the regulatory authorities.
How large is the ride-hailing market?
According to the prospectus submitted by Didi, their annual revenue for the past three years was 135.3 billion yuan, 154.8 billion yuan, and 141.7 billion yuan respectively, higher than Meituan’s.
Besides the massive revenue, Didi’s hidden value as an entry point for travel traffic will become enormous in the era of autonomous driving.
As early as 2017, Cathie Wood, the fund manager of ARK, estimated that after cars became electrified and intelligent, the cost of using vehicles would drop significantly, and the penetration rate of the mobility market would increase dramatically. Even if the price per mile were to drop drastically to 1 USD, based on the current scale of mobility, the entire market would still be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
Further linear extrapolation: with an autonomous driving network, food delivery and express delivery could...