Reborn in 08, a heretical cultivator starting a business

Chapter 211 Hijacking Wanwang and Acquiring Gaode!
"Old Zhao, I'm leaving this to you." Jack Ma said, then changed the subject:
"In addition, everyone should think about how to curb Vipshop's growth."

Jack Ma understood that acquiring Huitong and integrating Best Logistics could only slightly address Taobao Mall's logistics shortcomings and reverse its decline.

But this could not stop Vipshop's growth!
Only by comprehensively improving the logistics efficiency of Taobao Mall while simultaneously curbing the rapid development of Vipshop can the best results be achieved.

Taobao Mall was able to rise to prominence and even surpass Vipshop.

Otherwise, Taobao Mall would be no match for Vipshop!

"Of course, Wang Junshan's strategic backing is very strong. We can forget about his shady methods; who knows who will end up dead?" Jack Ma spoke again.
"But what if we use legitimate business competition methods to take down Vipshop?"

"Then there's no problem. Nobody can say anything! Those twelve first- and second-tier cities are all helpless."

What are your countermeasures?

Everyone in the room fell silent in response to Jack Ma's words.

This is the truth.

But to actually do it is as difficult as climbing to the sky.

It's difficult to come up with a good solution in a short period of time.

Seeing this, Jack Ma sighed; it would be a lie to say he wasn't disappointed.

"Think, think of everything! We have to find a way to properly take down Vipshop!"

"Regardless of identity or position, whoever can come up with a solution to make Taobao Mall grow bigger and successfully counter Vipshop is a great contributor to Taobao Mall and Alibaba Group!"

"I recommend him for the position of Group Vice President! If he succeeds, I will groom him as Alibaba's successor!"

Upon hearing this, everyone became excited.

Whether they were in middle or upper management, they racked their brains and started looking for solutions.

Whether it's for Alibaba's development or for its future, we have to find a way!
the other side.

Shen Huaijin drove his Cayenne along the highway, arriving at Wang Junshan's hometown, covered in dust.

Wang Junshan's words, "Little cutie," immediately threw Shen Huaijin's heart into turmoil.

If her parents hadn't stopped her, she would have wanted to come in her third year of junior high.

Su Rou and Shen Hongyu managed to keep Shen Huaijin by using the excuse of going back to their hometown to visit their elderly relatives.

But after the fourth day of the lunar new year, it was too late to keep them.

On the morning of the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, I packed large and small bags of gifts and headed straight to Jeju Island.

What about reserve? What about subtlety?

Shen Huaijin didn't care anymore.

Right now, all she wants to see is Wang Junshan; she really wants to!

Worried about traffic jams, I set off very early this morning.

The entire journey was over 350 kilometers, and we arrived in Jeju Island at 11:00 AM.

After parking the car, Shen Huaijin sent Wang Junshan a text message: "I've arrived."

"wait for me."

When Wang Junshan came downstairs, Shen Huaijin was already standing in front of the car, graceful and elegant.

"Idiot, aren't you cold? Why don't you wait in the car?" Wang Junshan said.

On the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, the temperature in Jeju was still minus nine degrees Celsius at noon.

"It's cold, but I want to see you as soon as possible." Shen Huaijin smiled sweetly, her beauty beyond compare.

After thinking it over for the past few days, she has figured it out.

Forget about being subtle and reserved, let's go straight for the ball!
Wang Junshan didn't say much, but reached out and hugged Shen Huaijin.

Shen Huaijin's heart raced instantly; he was completely stunned, and his face turned red.

I never expected that Wang Junshan, that blockhead, would suddenly have a change of heart and be so proactive!
But then she smiled, a bright and pure smile.

Her fair hands held Wang Junshan even tighter.

Quietly savoring this moment of tenderness, their first embrace together.

"Hehe, now we're officially together, right?"

Shen Huaijin felt a sense of excitement, as if his wish had been fulfilled.

So much so that she wouldn't let go of Wang Junshan's hand.

Upstairs, Wang Lingchuan saw this scene and quickly said, "Yunhua, look, he's picked her up."

"What? They picked them up? Junshan and Huaijin!"

Song Yunhua was also flustered. She quickly went to the window with a big, doting smile on her face: "That's great, haha, our son has finally taken the initiative. If he hadn't, Huaijin would have gotten angry."

"Yes, this girl is good in every way, and she cares about Junshan. I think she's a good match."

"Yes, it would be wonderful if Huaijin could become our daughter-in-law. Hahaha."

As Song Yunhua spoke, she went straight into the house.

downstairs.

Wang Junshan patted Shen Huaijin's head and laughed, "If you keep hugging him like that, the whole neighborhood will see."

"Oh, why didn't you say so sooner!"

Shen Huaijin was startled and then released Wang Junshan, her face turning extremely red.

Wang Junshan smiled faintly: "It's alright, we'll find out sooner or later."

"Hmph, upstairs, hurry upstairs!" Shen Huaijin said, "Oh, right, there's a gift too!"

Opening the trunk, Shen Huaijin said with great familiarity, "This case of Moutai has been collected by my father for ten years. It's for my uncle to drink."

"These two sets of cosmetics are for Auntie."

"And these nutritional supplements, seafood, too."

"Of course, there are also these two suits, for my big blockhead who's finally come to his senses, hmph!"

"Hahaha." Wang Junshan was speechless. Together with Shen Huaijin, they carried large and small bags upstairs.

Wang Lingchuan warmly welcomed them.

Su Rou then took out an 80g gold bracelet and, without saying a word, put it on Shen Huaijin's wrist:
“Daughter, we don’t have any family heirlooms, so please don’t look down on it.”

Shen Huaijin was overjoyed; how could he not know what this meant?
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that it was the future mother-in-law's approval.

She quickly smiled and said, "Thank you, Auntie. I like it very much, I really like it."

Seeing the two of them, who were so kind and filial, Wang Junshan was filled with emotion.

There's no way any parent wouldn't like a girl like Shen Huaijin, who is outstanding in looks, has a beautiful figure, and a good personality.

Song Yunhua had already prepared a delicious meal to entertain Shen Huaijin.

That night, as expected, Shen Huaijin stayed at Wang Junshan's house again.

This time, however, Shen Huaijin felt very at ease staying there.

Before, she was just the boss's subordinate, but now it's different; she's Wang Junshan's girlfriend!

Even after lying in bed for a long time, Shen Huaijin was too excited to fall asleep.

She didn't expect Wang Junshan to hug her directly.

"I thought this blockhead would take a long time to understand, but I didn't expect him to make progress, haha."

"But you got together without confessing your feelings?"

"It's fine, we're together now anyway. If this guy ever tries to back out, I'll... humph!"

"Besides, I secretly gave him my first kiss, and I also gave him my first hug."

"Wang Junshan, you'll never escape my grasp in this lifetime!"

Shen Huaijin became more and more excited as he thought about it, and ended up having insomnia again...

The next day, after breakfast, Wang Junshan and his companion said goodbye to their parents and got into the car.

"Huaijin, come again when you have time!" Song Yunhua said.

"Yes, come whenever you have time, uncles and aunties, you're always welcome," Wang Lingchuan said with a smile.

“Okay, Uncle and Aunt, I’ll come whenever I have time.” Shen Huaijin waved to the two elders.

The driver then started the Cayenne and headed straight for Beijing.

It's the sixth day of the Lunar New Year; I have to go back to work.

Wang Junshan and Shen Huaijin sat in the back row, chatting calmly.

Before they knew it, Shen Huaijin had taken Wang Junshan's hand.

This kind of pure and innocent feeling is unique to this age, and it feels so good.

The next day was the seventh day of the first lunar month.

After the holiday, all employees returned to their posts and started working.

Wang Junshan also convened a high-level meeting to begin strategic planning for February and the following year.

"My annual leave is over, it's time to get back to work."

Wang Junshan looked around at everyone and said, "For the next two months, the core focus will be on two words: 'acquisition'!"

"Buy high-quality stocks at rock-bottom prices. Buy high-quality assets at rock-bottom prices, including high-quality logistics parks and even office buildings in first-tier cities. As long as the price is right, we can consider buying them."

Wang Junshan knew that February and March were basically the best window of opportunity to buy at the bottom.

Following the development pattern of the previous life, the domestic economy bottomed out in March under the dual stimulus of the four trillion yuan investment and loose credit, and began to rebound in the second quarter. The prices of all assets began to stabilize and rebound, and then rose sharply in May and June.

The only difference is the timing.

The stock market, for example, reacts the fastest, starting to rebound around March, making February the last window of opportunity.

The housing market will be slower, bottoming out in February, then stagnating until May before rebounding.

The reason is poor liquidity.

Stocks are highly liquid, easy to buy and sell, and rebound quickly.

However, the housing market has low liquidity, and it takes a long time to sell and cash out. The risks are also high, so those willing to take over the market have to be very cautious, which has resulted in a three-month delay in the rebound!
Wang Junshan spoke again: "The investment department is accelerating all acquisitions. In addition, we will prioritize the acquisition of two more companies."

"Gaode and Wanwang!"

Jiang Fan's eyes lit up during the video conference:
“Gaode Maps is essential. We need navigation for group buying and logistics. Acquiring Gaode Maps would greatly benefit the development of the entire Future Technology Group.”

Wang Junshan nodded.

Whether it's Vipshop in the early stages, community group buying, or local life group buying later, or future food delivery, all of them need an underlying map as support!
And Gaode Maps is indispensable!
Wang Junshan had planned all of this long ago.

The reason we didn't rush to make a move was because funds were limited and priorities had to be met.

Haier RRS is more important to Vipshop, and it's something they need to use immediately.

Therefore, Wang Junshan used the group's limited funds to acquire shares of Ririshun and to frantically buy up shares of various companies before the four trillion yuan stimulus package was implemented.

This is precisely why they used logistics to launch a devastating attack on Taobao Mall and JD.com, achieving a resounding victory!
Gaode Maps, however, is not yet listed on the stock exchange.

Originally planned to go public this year, Gaode was caught off guard by the outbreak of the financial crisis.

It will be very difficult to raise funds if they want to continue to go public.

This has made Gaode's already strained financial situation even more dire.

In fact, Gaode's financial situation was already in a mess, and the financial crisis made things even worse.

If the IPO is successful, the company can use the proceeds to overcome its difficulties.

However, with the economic crisis raging, not much capital is willing to invest, and Gaode's listing has become a distant prospect, making Gaode's situation even more difficult.

Especially in February, the sixth month after the outbreak of the financial crisis, Gaode's capital chain was on the verge of breaking down, and if things continued like this, bankruptcy was possible.

If Future Technology were to make an acquisition at this time, the success rate would be very high, and the cost would be very low.

Cui Qian had long been interested in AutoNavi: "With the financial crisis affecting AutoNavi's financing, now is indeed a good time to acquire AutoNavi."

"It's possible that we can acquire AutoNavi for 10-13 billion RMB."

Wang Junshan nodded: "This price is acceptable. Go and negotiate. Ideally, we should acquire AutoNavi completely within a month."

To avoid any more nightmares.

In February, with the global financial crisis raging and the domestic economic situation bleak, acquiring AutoNavi might only cost 10-13 billion yuan.

By March, when the domestic economy has bottomed out and the stock market has started to recover, acquiring AutoNavi will be much more difficult.

Let alone 10-13 billion, it might be 15-20 billion!
In its previous life, AutoNavi was affected by the financial crisis, which hampered its financing and forced it to postpone its IPO until the second half of 2010.

Its market value reached 45 billion RMB on the first day of listing.

Even without the financial crisis, Gaode's current normal valuation would be at least 20-27 billion yuan.

However, due to the financial crisis, Wang Junshan could have acquired AutoNavi at half the cost.

February is the best time to do so.

"In addition, we will acquire another company, Wanwang!"

Wang Junshan spoke again.

Gao Yang, who had been silent until now, beamed with joy: "Wanwang has five data centers in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. Together, they have tens of thousands of self-owned servers and thousands of third-party hosted servers, totaling as many as 1.5."

"Currently, our various businesses at Future Technology are growing rapidly, and the demand for servers is increasing. Since we are leasing them, the costs are also rising."

"Once we acquire Wanwang, we can fully integrate and utilize Wanwang's servers, as well as expand them in the future."

Wang Junshan strongly agrees with this point.

While 10,000 servers may not seem like much ten years from now, they were a lot in 2009.

In comparison, Tencent currently has only 3 servers.

Baidu has 2 units.

Alibaba only had 1.5 units. It was only after acquiring Wanwang and integrating its resources that it was able to grow and become stronger.

If Future Technology directly acquires Wanwang, it will be equivalent to directly owning five major data centers with more than 10,000 servers.

And they are all in major cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen!
Aside from continuing to use some resources for hosting services for 20 companies and other businesses such as Wanwang Enterprise Email, the idle resources can be used for future technologies.

Of course, you can also use Wanwang's technology to expand your data center and create a new one!
As technology continues to grow and develop rapidly, initially servers can be leased, but eventually, it will be necessary to build one's own data center.

Unfortunately, renting servers is too expensive.

However, with hundreds of millions of monthly active users, the annual server and broadband costs for "WeChat Farm" alone amount to several hundred million yuan.

However, if you have your own data center, the cost can be reduced by 70%.

Building a data center from scratch is extremely time-consuming and labor-intensive.

The entire technology and system need to be integrated, and this alone will take a year or even two years.

However, it is easy to upgrade, build new data centers, and expand old data centers based on Wanwang's technology and system!

It's important to know that Wanwang is the leader in this field, with the most advanced technology and the most powerful system.

The rapid development of Alibaba Cloud services was due to its acquisition of Wanwang, which integrated Wanwang's technology and infrastructure, along with Alibaba's resources and funds, to create Alibaba Cloud Apsara!
Wang Junshan is building a future-oriented data center based on Wanwang, which will make his future cloud computing strategy much more efficient!
"Moreover, Wanwang also has a large number of core server technologies, such as large-scale automated operation and maintenance technology, high-performance and load balancing technology, information security technology, integrated integration technology, etc., which are leading in China and even globally."

Wang Junshan nodded; this was the reason he was interested in Wanwang.

In 2009, the concept of cloud computing had just emerged.

However, Wanwang has already launched an elastic hosting product similar to "cloud servers" and deployed content delivery network (CDN) nodes to improve access speed.

This was hailed as the prototype of cloud servers.

At present, it is absolutely far ahead.

The subsequent development of Alibaba Cloud has all been carried out with the help of Wanwang.

In addition, there are enterprise domain name services, enterprise email services, over 20 enterprise customer resources, and core copyrights and patents in domain name management and DNS fields, all of which are quite valuable.

There are also CP/ISP licenses, CNNIC top-level domain name registrar qualifications, ISO 27001 information security certification, and so on. These are not things that money can buy.

The application process takes a very long time.

But if they acquire Wanwang, then they'll have it immediately.

That's why, even though Alibaba was hit so hard during the financial crisis in its previous life, it still spent over 5 million yuan to acquire Wanwang in the second half of the year.

There's no way around it, Wanwang is just too important.

Wanwang can be considered the foundation of cloud services, essentially laying the foundation for Alibaba Cloud.

Meanwhile, Gaode Maps empowers various services offered by Alibaba.

These two acquisitions are the only two successful ones among Alibaba's many failed acquisitions over the years, and they are absolutely successful and worthy of being recorded in history.

In particular, the acquisition of Wanwang was very low-cost, costing only 5 million+!

But now, everything has changed.

Wang Junshan wanted to intercept the deal.

Moreover, it's a combination of foundation building and empowerment, completely intercepting the competition.

"Manager Cui, the acquisition of Wanwang is entrusted to you. Securing it as soon as possible is crucial."

"Yes!" Cui Qian replied quickly.

He was determined to do it well.

He couldn't help but ask, "Chairman, what's your target price for acquiring Wanwang?"

"4 million RMB, full acquisition."

"Yes, Chairman, I will definitely complete the mission!" Cui Qian said.

The others were somewhat shocked: "Chairman, can we really get it for 400 million?"

"Yes, with such advanced technology as Wanwang, they probably wouldn't sell it for less than 700 million."

Wang Junshan waved his hand: "If it weren't for the financial crisis, Wanwang would indeed need 7 million. But because of the financial crisis, Wanwang's revenue declined across the board."

"Wanwang's profits mainly come from domain name registration services, virtual hosting and website hosting services, paid corporate email, domain name trading, and so on."

"Despite its advanced technology, its monetization is limited. Wanwang's annual revenue is around 4 million yuan, but its profit is only 8000 million yuan."

"In addition, the financial crisis has led to a continuous decline in Wanwang's profits. Businesses are running out of money, bankruptcies are increasing, and the demand for Wanwang's services will also decrease."

"We can acquire it for 4 million without any problem."

"That's it." Everyone suddenly realized.

Without the financial crisis, Wanwang's profit of 8000 million would have given it a valuation of 6.4 million with a PE ratio of 8.

Due to the financial crisis, Wanwang's expected profit for this year has dropped to 5000 million yuan, and with a PE ratio of 8, its valuation is only 4 million yuan.

All I can say is that the financial crisis was a good opportunity.

A great time to buy at the lowest price!

"Remember, when making an acquisition, be sure to retain all the core employees, promote them and give them raises, and give stock options to the most key talents—that's not a problem!"

(End of this chapter)