The diva and I cross each other

As the popularity of "Day and Night" grew, Penguin Video received calls from many companies. Without exception, these companies wanted to insert their advertisements at the beginning of "Day and Night".

But Penguin Video rejected it. It’s not that Penguin Video doesn’t want to make money, but the advertisements have already been decided.

On November 11, when "Day and Night" was broadcast to episode 6, a sponsorship advertisement appeared in front.

This advertisement is not for a well-known big brand, but rather for an e-commerce platform that you have rarely heard of, called Pinduoduo.

Judging from the advertisements, this platform’s main selling point is cheapness and affordability. It just so happens that the things on Taobao and JD.com have become increasingly expensive in recent times. Fortunately, JD.com has always been a platform that sells services.

Taobao is different. Many netizens cannot accept the price increase of things on Taobao. Some Taobao merchants, especially those selling small commodities, also complain about the Tmall mall.

At this time, the emergence of Pinduoduo directly gave netizens an additional option to purchase mid- and low-end products.

What’s even more subtle is that Pinduoduo’s large-scale promotion took place a few days before Double 11, and it was obvious that it was going to compete with several traditional e-commerce platforms on Double 11.

Alibaba naturally knows this and has held several meetings within the company. After "Day and Night" began broadcasting Pinduoduo's advertisements, Mr. Ma convened another meeting of Alibaba's senior management.

“A big reason for the loss of merchants is that after we started promoting Tmall, the profits of these merchants selling small and medium-sized products were greatly reduced, and there was no money to be made.

But now we have invested so much money in Tmall, there is no turning back. If we give up Tmall now, all our previous efforts will be wasted.”

After hearing what Mr. Ma said, Alibaba’s senior executives didn’t know how to respond for a moment.

After a while, Mr. Qian, the person in charge of Taobao, said, "Mr. Ma, how about we give some subsidies to the merchants?"

"How does the subsidy work?" asked Mr. Ma.

“Subsidies are provided based on shipment volume and sales volume. Once a certain amount is reached, some subsidies will be provided. Stores that can meet this standard need to be retained and attracted. If they cannot, you can give up.” Mr. Qian replied.

“Is it both a subsidy and a screening? Will doing this at this time arouse dissatisfaction among more merchants?” asked Alibaba’s CEO Cai.

"It may be possible, but this is the most appropriate solution we can come up with in a short period of time."

“But isn’t this too risky?” said Alibaba’s CFO Mr. Xie.

"It's better to take risks than to do nothing," said Qiao Duanyang, assistant to Mr. Ma.

Afterwards, everyone kept arguing about this matter.

"Alright, alright! Stop arguing!" Mr. Ma interrupted everyone impatiently.

Alibaba’s top executives fell silent instantly.

"I think this method is feasible. You should discuss the subsidy standards and scope with your subordinates and try to stabilize those businesses first."

"Okay Mr. Ma."

When faced with such a situation where its fundamentals were shaken, even Alibaba, which has always been inefficient at work, stood up immediately.

In just one day, they developed an action plan and began subsidizing merchants.

This somewhat risky plan still retained many merchants. As long as the merchants could meet the subsidy standards, they decided to stay in Alibaba because of these subsidies. Some merchants who did not meet the subsidy standards left Alibaba directly. Some merchants did not leave Alibaba rashly, but chose to open two accounts on Taobao and Pinduoduo.

At this time, both Alibaba and Pinduoduo will definitely try their best to retain these merchants. Even if they know that the merchants have been suspended from both accounts, they will turn a blind eye and pretend not to know.

Under the temptation of subsidies, Alibaba has finally managed to stabilize its basic market, and at least it doesn't have to worry about the variety of goods on Double 11.

But before Ali could breathe a sigh of relief, another attack came.

Turning our attention back to Zhuoguang Technology, Lin Shuwen returned to Shanghai after her national tour ended.

There are three offices and a large conference room on the top floor of Zhuoguang’s new headquarters. You can imagine how luxurious these three offices are.

In Lin Shuwen's words, it is the president's office of Huayue Entertainment, which is not even worthy of carrying shoes for her office at Zhuoguang headquarters.

Therefore, after the national tour, Lin Shuwen basically worked in her own office at the Zhuoguang headquarters.

Only at noon would Lin Shuwen go to Luo Ming to have lunch with him.

During this period, Zhuoguang Technology is making every effort to master L2 driving technology based on pure vision solutions.

Auxiliary tools such as LiDAR will certainly be installed on cars in the future, but no matter how good the external auxiliary tools are, the quality of the vehicles themselves must be strong.

The better the L2 driving technology of the pure vision solution is, the more effective it will be when combined with external assistance such as lidar.

Luo Ming and Lin Shuwen naturally also devoted themselves to this work.

At noon, Lin Shuwen came to Luo Ming's office as usual. As soon as she sat down, she saw Li Yan running in in a hurry.

Usually Li Yan would go to the cafeteria to get food and bring it to them, but today not only did she not bring any food, she also had a gloating expression on her face, and it was obvious that she was going to get something to eat.

Lin Shuwen immediately perked up and looked at Li Yan excitedly.

And Li Yan did not disappoint her, and she opened the conversation with a thunderous speech: "Boss, good news! Something happened to ofo!"

Now it wasn't just Lin Shuwen, Luo Ming's eyes lit up as well. He asked with great interest, "What happened over there?"

"About half a year ago, a major shareholder of Alibaba revealed to the media that he was very optimistic about the shared bicycle business. Alibaba then conducted the fourth round of financing for ofo and acquired a lot of shares in ofo. With these shares, ofo kicked WeChat Pay out of ofo's payment methods.

Four months after the financing was completed, that is, about two months ago, this major shareholder of Alibaba suddenly expressed that he was very optimistic about the future of ofo and had the idea of ​​entering this industry.

You should know that this major shareholder of Alibaba is a very famous investor in China. When this news reached the ears of ofo's boss Mr. Dai, he immediately sent someone to contact this major shareholder.

But this investor was also a major shareholder of Alibaba, so naturally Mr. Ma found out about this. He immediately sent someone to warn Mr. Dai, saying that this investor was not really interested in the shared bike business, but was just saying it casually to deal with the media.

Mr. Dai naturally did not believe what Mr. Ma said. He felt that Mr. Ma did not want ofo to introduce other capital to prevent a threat to Alibaba's position in the company.

So Mr. Dai continued to contact the major shareholder of Alibaba, and the major shareholder let his subordinates reveal intentionally or unintentionally that he had more than 10 billion yuan of idle funds and was looking for project investment. The shared bicycle project was good, but the scale was not big enough. If it could be expanded further, he would invest.

After hearing the news, Mr. Dai immediately chose to embezzle a large amount of user funds to expand ofo's market. After meeting the requirements of the major shareholder, Mr. Dai brought people to find him again.

But this time, the major shareholder said that he was very optimistic about the shared bike project, but never thought of investing in ofo, because he felt that ofo's development had reached a bottleneck and there was no profit to be made. After hearing what the major shareholder of Alibaba said, Mr. Dai was dumbfounded. At this time, Mr. Dai also realized that he had been tricked. The tens of billions of dollars and the interest in shared bikes were all fake.

But all this has already happened. Ofo's misappropriation of user deposits was exposed, and a large number of users went to return their deposits. Now ofo's funding chain has been completely broken."

After listening to Li Yan's words, Luo Ming smiled. He was originally worried that after Alibaba invested in ofo, Mr. Dai would choose to embezzle the deposit to increase ofo's market share.

If Mr. Dai had listened to advice, ofo would probably not have gone bankrupt, and other shared bicycle companies would have never had a chance to succeed.

Fortunately, Mr. Dai was "confident" enough, and this wave of operations directly turned the situation into the same as in his previous life.

"Mr. Ma must be furious, right?" Luo Ming asked with a smile.

"Mr. Ma was indeed very angry. I heard that Mr. Ma specifically called the major shareholder to ask him why he did this."

"Questioning? Mr. Ma still has the nerve to question? Wasn't he the one who messed with these shareholders first?" Luo Ming said with a smile.

"Boss, don't tell me, I really feel that this situation was set up because of Mr. Ma.

After all, the investment in ofo was completed solely by Alipay. Even if there is a financial crisis, the losses will have little to do with Alipay and Alibaba. Moreover, it is probably impossible for Mr. Ma to use Alibaba's funds to save ofo.

Because the other shareholders of the company will definitely come forward to stop Mr. Ma from using Alibaba's funds. And relying solely on Alipay's funds to fill such a big hole would probably be a huge effort.

So now Alibaba has only two choices: one is to abandon ofo directly and wait for ofo to declare bankruptcy, then buy back some of ofo’s assets, and then start over again to establish its own shared bicycle brand.

The second is to stand together with ofo and fill this hole for ofo at all costs. "

"What do you think President Ma will do?" Luo Ming asked.

"If I were Mr. Ma, I would definitely withdraw from ofo now. The most important thing is to protect myself. I will take other actions after ofo goes bankrupt." Li Yan said after thinking about it.

"I think so too. Besides, Alibaba's biggest enemy at this stage is Pinduoduo. Double 11 is coming soon. Mr. Ma will definitely focus on dealing with Pinduoduo. It is impossible for him to devote energy and money to saving ofo at this time." Lin Shuwen said.

Luo Ming obviously thought so too. He smiled and said, "Then let's add fuel to the fire for Mr. Ma! If we don't seize the opportunity to start a business of ofo now, when will we?"

So that afternoon, all the major apps under Zhuoguang were filled with news about ofo shared bicycles misappropriating user deposits.

The reason why Zhuoguang is so efficient is entirely because Li Yan directly conveyed Luo Ming's orders to other departments of the company. Since the boss has given the order, others must follow it quickly.

The current traffic of Tik Tok is very terrifying. With the "special attention" from Zhuo Guang, the news of ofo shared bicycles misappropriating deposits has completely become a hot topic on the entire Internet.

In just a few hours, this was the hot search term on all major platforms. At first, many users didn't know about this matter. After Zhuoguang reported it, more and more users rushed to request refunds.

At this time, it is just like the ofo refund in the previous life. Those who got the news first got their deposit refunded, and those who got the news later could not get it refunded. It highlights the saying "the early bird catches the worm".

At 8 o'clock in the evening, ofo's official website announced the temporary suspension of the deposit refund service, which means that deposits refunded before 8 o'clock will be refunded, but deposits refunded after 8 o'clock will not be refunded.

As a result, ofo was directly blasted by angry netizens.

People are very realistic. If their own interests are affected, they will definitely not give up.

At this time at ofo's headquarters, Mr. Dai looked at the online public opinion and threw his mobile phone to the ground.

"These damn media, what the hell are they talking about!"

"Mr. Dai, please calm down. Now is not the time to be angry. We need to consider the user's deposit issue first." Mr. Dai's partner advised.

"How much money do we have left in our account?" President Dai asked, suppressing his inner anger.

“Less than 3 million.”

"How many people's deposits have not been refunded?" asked Mr. Dai.

"No, I don't know. Anyway, it will not be less than 20 million. We just did a big promotion and the number of users has skyrocketed."

Mr. Dai's eyes went dark when he heard this. It was no less than 99 million. If we calculate it based on 20 million and 3 per person, there would be a hole of almost 40 billion. Add to that the bicycle orders from the factory, the employee salaries, and other miscellaneous expenses, and the hole would be at least or billion.

Mr. Dai took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down, then asked, "What did Alibaba say?"

"Their people have left and have not communicated with us afterwards."

"Does this mean that Alibaba has abandoned us?" Mr. Dai asked with a dark face.

Mr. Dai’s partner nodded.

"Damn it, it turns out that none of these capitals are good! They are unreliable at the critical moment and run away faster than dogs." President Dai cursed directly.

"Then Mr. Dai, let's go."

"Go to the bank."

“The bank rejected our loan.”

“What about other big companies?”

“They all refused.”

Upon hearing this, Mr. Dai slumped in his chair. He knew that he and ofo were completely finished.

As the saying goes, when the wall falls, everyone pushes it. The day after ofo’s bankruptcy, other shared bicycle companies on the market joined forces and began to desperately seize the market. Many new shared bicycle companies took the opportunity to enter the market.

Meituan and Didi both launched their own shared bicycles at this time. Baidu also wanted to launch a shared bicycle business, but Mr. Li hesitated and decided not to get involved.

Pinduoduo is enough for them to digest for a while, and there is no need to get involved in new industries.

Besides, Double 11 is coming soon, and Double 11 is Pinduoduo's main battlefield. It is irrational for Baidu to be distracted by sharing bicycles at this time.

Baidu did not make a move, but Zhuo Guang did. However, Zhuo Guang did not act alone. Luo Ming told Rong Mu some of his ideas. Rong Mu asked his secretary Song Yue to compile these ideas into a plan, and then flew to the imperial capital with the plan. (End of this chapter)