Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

The online flame wars between Zhou Hongyi and Lei Yijun had become almost routine. After getting a small taste of the drama, netizens quickly moved on.

Frankly, they had seen it so often they were sick of it.

”Stop just running your mouths. If you’ve got the guts, livestream a fight.”

”To be fair, the quality and system of the 360 Mobile Phone are pretty good. I bought a 360 N1 for my dad last year, and it runs better than the Xiaomi 1S.”

”What does that have to do with 360? 360 uses the Orange Mobile Phone supply chain, is manufactured by the Orange Phone Factory, and even its OS is Aurora OS. It’s perfectly normal that Xiaomi can’t beat 360.”

”Aren’t the Xiaomi Mobile Phone’s supply chain and contract manufacturer the same ones that 360 Mobile Phone uses?”

”Let’s be real, the MIUI system is just garbage. On the same Xiaomi 1S, the Taobao app launches two seconds faster under Aurora OS.”

Lei Yijun stared at the online comments, his expression grim.

Before Orange Technology appeared, he never thought making mobile phones was all that difficult. But when a layman like 360 completely crushed Xiaomi, it was a rude awakening.

’The MIUI system really isn’t good enough!’

It might have been slightly better than Meizu’s Flyme OS or Ah Li’s YunOS, but the gap between it and Aurora OS was glaringly obvious. It wasn’t just slightly inferior in fluidity and response speed; it also fell short in resource management and power consumption control.

A direct comparison tells all.

Most users had only a half-baked understanding of the technical specifications of electronic components like the processor, memory, camera, screen, and battery.

But they could very clearly feel whether a phone lagged and how good its stability and compatibility were.

In 2012, a total of 3.7 million units of the Xiaomi 1S were sold. Of those, 3.1 million were equipped with Aurora OS, while the MIUI version of the Xiaomi 1S sold only 600,000 units.

The sales difference was more than four-fold!

”Ah Li, what stage is the hardware testing for the Xiaomi 2A and Xiaomi 2S at?”

Lei Yijun looked up from his computer screen and asked Li Wanqiang.

”The drop, pressure, port durability, and water and dust resistance tests are all complete. The testing department is still busy checking screen touch accuracy and durability, as well as calibrating the gyroscope, accelerometer, and light sensor.”

Li Wanqiang, who had just spent half an hour in a flame war with Zhou Hongyi, replied from his seat across from him.

”Any new developments from Orange Technology recently?” Lei Yijun asked next.

Li Wanqiang immediately understood his boss’s intent and speculated, ”Even 360 has launched a new product. With Orange Technology’s R&D capabilities, they’ve probably had a new product ready for a while. It’s likely that the app ecosystem for Aurora Future OS hasn’t met the standards for launch yet.”

”Promoting a brand-new mobile operating system is easier said than done,” Lei Yijun said with a sigh, shaking his head.

He paused for a moment, then added, ”Halt development on the next version of the MIUI system for now. Only do maintenance work.”

The implication was that he was giving up on iterative upgrades for the MIUI system.

Li Wanqiang nodded silently in agreement.

’President Lei had given the MIUI system a chance, but it wasn’t hard to see from the Xiaomi 1S’s shipping volume that switching the entire line to Aurora OS was the wiser choice.’

’In any case, they’d observe the market feedback first. They only needed to release a few thousand units to start with, which could also be considered a gesture of respect toward Chen Yansen.’

「At the same time.」

The deposit refund controversy surrounding Little Yellow Bike was still ongoing. In a single day, their funds had decreased by nearly one hundred million Hua Yuan.

In other words, about 500,000 users had chosen to have their deposits refunded, and some had even uninstalled the app directly.

Although Little Yellow Bike’s customer service team did their best to placate users, the deposit refunds were indeed delayed by over ten hours.

Anyone with eyes could see that Little Yellow Bike definitely had a cash flow problem.

Otherwise, they could have processed instant refunds just like DiDi Bike.

What’s more, OFO bikes were deposit-free, and DiDi Bike had also launched a ’Refund Anytime’ feature. Users were not lacking for alternatives.

As a result, Little Yellow Bike’s new user growth stagnated from its third day on the East China Market.

Chang Wei had only two paths before him: one was to imitate DiDi Bike, the other was to copy OFO.

In his view, the former offered no advantage, while the latter was impossible to copy, because Little Yellow Bike lacked both an electronic payment tool and the backing of a wealth management product like Yu’e Bao.

Unless...

After some thought, Chang Wei narrowed his eyes. While he had the tech department work overtime to develop a ’Refund Anytime’ feature, he also pulled some strings and used his connections to call Ma Liyun on his private mobile phone.

”Bike-sharing? You’re saying you want to use Wealth Treasure’s joint login model to get Ah Li to back you?”

Ma Liyun countered with a laugh after understanding the purpose of Chang Wei’s call.

”Little Yellow Bike has a huge user base in the East China and North China Regions, which can bring a large number of new users to Wealth Treasure. Furthermore, bike-sharing has the characteristic of high-frequency use, which can increase how often and for how long users open Wealth Treasure...”

Chang Wei said, his voice full of confidence.

”Besides Little Yellow Bike, there’s also OFO and DiDi Bike. Why should Ah Li choose you?” Ma Liyun interrupted, demanding an answer.

He understood everything the other man was saying. Bike-sharing involved a payment step, which could indeed increase user payment frequency, cultivate payment habits, and in turn boost Wealth Treasure’s daily active user count and retention rate.

At the same time, it would also allow them to collect information like users’ travel times, locations, and frequency. This data would help Wealth Treasure better understand user needs and provide more personalized recommendations and marketing services.

But compared to OFO and DiDi Bike, Little Yellow Bike was far behind in terms of user numbers and market share.

Chang Wei’s family background was enough to get Lao Ma to answer the phone, but not enough to sway his decision.

”OFO is backed by Senlian Capital; they would never voluntarily send their offline traffic to Wealth Treasure. And DiDi Bike won’t entrust its deposits to Wealth Treasure. Once they expand their operations to cover the whole country, the total deposits will be no less than 3 billion Hua Yuan. Cheng Wei wouldn’t be willing to part with that kind of money.”

Chang Wei faltered for a moment. Even though he knew his reasoning didn’t hold water, he had to force himself to spout nonsense in order to secure the partnership with Wealth Treasure.

’3 billion Hua Yuan?’

’As far as he knew, there were all sorts of bike-sharing brands in the country—more than twenty of them. It was just that OFO, DiDi Bike, and Little Yellow Bike were the largest.’

’If all their deposits could be brought into Yulibao, the total would be at least in the tens of billions. The potential returns were not to be underestimated.’

After the banks had set their sights on the bike-sharing deposits, Ma Liyun’s interest was piqued as well.

”Ah Li wants 20% equity,” Ma Liyun said after a moment of thought.

’Although the partnership could bring many benefits to Wealth Treasure, Wealth Treasure had far more users, making Little Yellow Bike a major beneficiary as well.’

’Unless Ah Li got a big enough piece of the pie, Lao Ma wouldn’t budge.’

’20%?’

’Why don’t you just rob me!’

Chang Wei cursed inwardly, his face darkening.

’After three rounds of financing, my shareholding has already fallen below 70%. If I give another 20% to Ah Li, it’ll drop below 50%.’

”Is this difficult for you, President Chang?” Ma Liyun pressed, a disdainful smile on his face.

”It’s not difficult, Mr. Ma. I have no objections,” Chang Wei said helplessly.

’Accepting Ah Li’s investment had its pros and cons, but overall, the pros outweighed the cons.’

Hearing this, Ma Liyun chuckled, gave a few perfunctory replies, and then hung up, tossing the follow-up work to Lu Zhaoxi.

...

...

Two days later, Lu Zhaoxi went to Ma Liyun and said bluntly, ”Mr. Ma, this Chang Wei character isn’t honest. I recommend we cancel the partnership with Little Yellow Bike.”

”Couldn’t you agree on a valuation?” Ma Liyun motioned for Lu Zhaoxi to sit down and explain.

”Chang Wei has no intention of opening up their data interface. He wants to deposit the user deposits into Yulibao in the name of the Klock Company,” Lu Zhaoxi slowly explained.

That would make the ”deposit” money very murky.

If Chang Wei were to misappropriate the funds, it would be very difficult for Wealth Treasure to notice.

This wasn’t about getting Ah Li’s endorsement at all; he was clearly looking for a scapegoat!

”Chang Wei isn’t willing to budge?” Ma Liyun asked with a frown.

’If Lu Zhaoxi could see through Chang Wei’s petty trick, then of course he could too.’

”He was never up to any good,” Lu Zhaoxi said with a cold snort.

”I remember that Cheng Wei, the founder of DiDi Bike, used to be the general manager of Wealth Treasure’s B2C division. Go talk to him,” Ma Liyun said, abandoning Little Yellow Bike without a second thought.

”Understood,” Lu Zhaoxi replied with a nod.

「On the other side.」

When Cheng Wei received the call from his old employer, he immediately accepted the olive branch extended by Wealth Treasure.

The ’Refund Anytime’ and ’Top-up for Deposit’ features could alleviate some user concerns, but ultimately, they weren’t as attractive as being ’Deposit-Free.’

’A huge deposit pool was nice, but you had to survive first.’

The one who truly couldn’t part with billions in deposits was Chang Wei, not Cheng Wei.

On March 8, DiDi Bike formally announced that it would adopt a ’deposit-free’ strategy. Users only needed to purchase 199 yuan of Yulibao and bind their Wealth Treasure account in their personal center to enjoy this benefit.

All at once, Little Yellow Bike users in the North China Region began uninstalling the app and flocking to DiDi Bike.

”DiDi finally has the strength to go head-to-head with OFO.”

After cozying up to the powerhouse that was Ah Li, Cheng Wei couldn’t help but sigh with emotion.

Immediately after, DiDi Bike began a large-scale deployment of shared bikes in the East China Region, entering into head-on competition with OFO.

But both Cheng Wei and Hu Weiyi were relatively restrained, tacitly keeping their subsidy policies for new and existing customers in line with OFO’s.

No one dared to rashly start a price war!

After all, the case of DiDi and Fast Taxi was a cautionary tale. Without over a billion in the bank, who would dare to make such a reckless move?

「At the same time.」

After a one-week trial operation in Hu City, OFO Shared E-bikes deployed another 5,000 electric vehicles and expanded its service area to places like Jinling, Luzhou, and Hang City, for a total of 50,000 vehicles.

As for its shared bike business, after Hu Weiyi and Wang Zihao successively deployed another 300,000-plus bikes in the East China, Central China, and Southern China regions, the total number now exceeded 500,000.

Combining the regular bike and e-bike businesses, daily revenue reached as high as 2 million Hua Yuan, with a gross profit margin of 13.7%. The estimated annual revenue could reach 1 billion Hua Yuan.

But with high initial investment and labor costs, at the current volume of business, the annual net profit wouldn’t even reach 50 million.

With DiDi Bike and Little Yellow Bike chasing from behind, if a price war were to start, let alone a net profit of 50 million, they would be considered well-run if they didn’t lose a few hundred million by the end of the year.