Yangtze River Commercial Daily News ● Changjiang Commercial Daily reporter Zhang Lu
Recently, the market has continued to make waves.
On September 6, Cao Cao Travel announced the completion of Series B financing with an amount of 3.8 billion yuan. This round of financing is not only the first domestic equity investment that an online car-hailing company has received this year, but also the largest domestic single financing that an online car-hailing company has received since 2020.
The investors in this round are Suzhou Xiangcheng Financial Holding Group, Suzhou High-speed Rail New City State Control Group, Suzhou Urban Investment Company, ABCI Suzhou Company, and Soochow Innovation Capital. At the same time, Cao Cao Travel announced that its national headquarters will be located in Suzhou City. Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holding Group , said that Cao Cao must insist on being a travel platform for new energy vehicles.
data show that Cao Cao Travel was established in 2015 and is invested and controlled by Geely Technology Group Co., Ltd. , and currently has presence in 62 cities. The data shows that Cao Cao Travel completed 1 billion yuan in Series A financing in January 2018. The investors are Sanchuan Investment, Zheshang Venture Capital , Paradise Silicon Valley, Longqi Investment and other institutions.
Some industry insiders told reporters, “Now all major online ride-hailing platforms are seizing this market. The large-scale financing of Cao Cao’s trip is a good opportunity for itself, or from the capital level. Speaking, it’s more important to the platform."
has more than 60 million registered users
After about three and a half years from the A round of financing,Cao Cao Travel recently announced the completion of its Series B financing. This round of financing reached 3.8 billion yuan, making it the first domestic equity investment for an online car-hailing company this year.
It is reported that there are 5 investors in this round, namely Suzhou Xiangcheng Financial Holding Group, Suzhou High-speed Rail New City State Control Group, Suzhou Urban Investment Company, ABCI Suzhou Company, and Soochow Innovation Capital.
From the perspective of Cao Cao's financing history, this financing is a landmark. Cao Cao Travel was established in 2015, formerly known as Cao Cao Special Vehicle, which is a strategic investment business of Geely Holding Group's deployment of "new energy vehicle sharing ecology". So far, Cao Cao has entered 62 cities, including Ningbo, Hangzhou, Xiamen, Chengdu and other cities.
On August 4 this year, Hangzhou Ubank Technology Co., Ltd., the operating entity of Cao Cao Travel, undergoes an industrial and commercial change and a new shareholder, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., Ltd., has also increased its registered capital from approximately 366 million yuan to approximately 433 million yuan. After completing the capital increase, Geely Technology Group will become the largest shareholder, holding 77.33% of the shares.
Cao Cao said that the Series B financing will help companies increase their efforts in key tasks such as technology research and development, business expansion, and service quality improvement, so as to further enhance their competitiveness and expand market share.
Yangtze River Commercial Daily The reporter noticed that since the beginning of this year, Cao Cao Travel not only has gradually expanded its business coverage area, but the company's active users are also growing.
According to Aurora Big Data's "Q1 Mobile Internet Industry Data Research Report for 2021", Cao Cao's travel MAU reached 5.677 million this year, a substantial increase of nearly 140% over the same period last year. In addition, Gong Xin, CEO of Cao Cao Travel, also recently stated that through continuous and refined operations, Cao Cao Travel currently has more than 60 million registered users.
and from the recent performance,From May to July of this year, Cao Cao’s travel orders increased exponentially. In July this year, Cao Cao's travel order demand hit a record high, which was 150% of the same period last year. Three months before the benchmarking, the number of orders received in July more than doubled. According to the data of Yiou, Cao Cao has exceeded 10 million monthly active users in July.
Ride-hailing competition enters the second half
In addition to the new financing for Cao Cao’s trip, a reporter from the Yangtze River Commercial Daily noticed that the online car-hailing platform T3 with a background of traditional car companies is also “span10span” recently. frequently".
In August of this year, T3 Travel announced that it will go online in more than ten cities including Shenzhen, Haikou, Taiyuan, Taizhou, and Xuzhou. At present, the online car-hailing service for T3 travel covers more than 30 cities across the country. In addition, platforms such as Meituan Taxi and AutoNavi Taxi are free of commissions, subsidies, and expanded coverage for the same purpose to grab more market share.
Generally speaking, the current big pattern of the online car-hailing market is B2C, C2C, and aggregation. Among them, Cao Cao Travel and T3 Travel are B2C online car-hailing platforms, Didi and Meituan are C2C travel platforms, and Baidu Maps and Gaode Maps are aggregation platforms.
In fact, compared with 2017, the financing frequency of the online car-hailing industry has declined in recent times. The 3.8 billion financing of Cao Cao’s trip this time means that the online car-hailing industry is based on the rigid demand for travel. There is still a lot of room for development and change, the market structure has not been finalized, and the second half of the competition has just begun.
According to the 48th "Statistical Report on China's Internet Development Status" recently released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC),As of the end of 2020, the number of online car-hailing users in my country was 365 million, accounting for 36.1% of Internet users.
From the perspective of the penetration rate of , the penetration rate of online ride-hailing cities is 50.3% in first-tier cities, 20.3% in the new first-tier cities, and low penetration rates in second-tier cities and below. Less than 10%. From the perspective of Cao Cao's travel layout, the second-tier and lower cities account for a relatively high proportion. How to fully tap the travel demand of these emerging markets is the challenge of Cao Cao's travel and its potential.
Industry insiders believe that competition in the online car-hailing market has shifted from incremental competition to inventory competition. Faster order pick-up speed and high-quality capacity have become the key to order retention and user conversion. High-quality capacity and a complete management system will become the long-term competitive advantage of the future car-hailing industry.
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