Decipher The Territory Of Alibaba'S "Community Group Buying": Investment And Endogenous Multi Line Development

In the community group buying battlefield of the giants' fierce battle, the low-key Alibaba has not been absent.

"Shihui group mainly cooperates with cuntao. On the contrary, there are some shortcomings in the retail pass model, so the cooperation is not very smooth. Because retail stores are mainly engaged in commodities, not daily fresh food and so on. They need more diversified empowerment. " On December 2, a person close to Alibaba disclosed the internal coordination between Alibaba and the Ten Star Group in an interview with the 21st century economic report reporter.

However, officials of the two companies are not willing to disclose more information about Alibaba's multiple rounds of investment in the latter. On November 30, the group announced the completion of a $196 million C3 round of financing. This investment is jointly led by Alibaba and zheneration capital, with Kunlun capital, CICC's funds, CDH investment, GGV Jiyuan capital, joy capital, Qiming venture capital, maxce capital and Gaohu capital.

Since 2018, this has been the third time that Alibaba invested in the group, and it is also the fourth round of financing obtained by the group in 2020. Prior to this, the company completed financing of US $88.3 million, US $81.4 million and US $80 million respectively in January, may and July this year. In addition to the fourth round of this year, the total financing amount of the Ten Star Group in this year is close to 450 million US dollars.

This figure can be described as a shot in the arm for the e-commerce industry in the low tide.

It is worth noting that the Ten Star Group is not Alibaba's only place in the community group buying track. In terms of self-supporting business, Ali adopts the strategy of long-term development, and its businesses such as hungry Mo, HEMA and rookie station are all in the group buying market of Rio Tinto community. What is the way to win? It is far from certain. Perhaps for Ali, the more important thing is to coordinate more effectively internally to bring out greater value.

Alibaba is not absent from the battle field of community group buying of giants. Visual China

Joint efforts to develop sinking Market

Before that, a picture circulated on the network, the picture of "Taobao to buy vegetables, the next day delivery" is very eye-catching. According to people close to Alibaba, this service is provided by the Ten Star Group, but only Changsha and Zhuzhou cities in Hunan Province are currently open to the public. "From the business level, at present, it is mainly the opening and diversion of the mode, which is very helpful for the order promotion of the Ten Star Group."

However, for more details of the cooperation, officials from both companies said in an interview with 21st century economic reporter that there was no more information to provide. At the same time, meituan, Didi, pinduoduo and other Internet giants have frequently arranged community group buying, or increased investment, or entered the track in person.

It can be seen that this year, affected by the new crown pneumonia epidemic, capital is speeding up admission, and the "wind" of community group buying is rising again.

According to Kaidu data, 1 / 4 of users used the community group buying platform for the first time in the epidemic. At the same time, AI media consulting data shows that the scale of community group buying market is expected to reach 72 billion yuan in 2020. It is expected that China's community group buying market will maintain a good growth trend in the future, and the scale of China's community group buying market is expected to reach 100 billion yuan by 2022.

From the perspective of the characteristics of community group purchase, through the pre-sale mode to achieve sales and purchase, reduce loss, the next day delivery + self pick-up mode can effectively reduce the logistics cost, and add platform subsidies, so that the terminal goods have a high cost performance ratio, and effectively meet the consumption needs of people with sinking market characteristics.

"The dividend of the whole Internet has gone from single consumption to group buying now." Zhu danpeng, an analyst of China's food industry, said in an interview with the 21st century economic reporter that the sudden epidemic this year has reduced people's consumption capacity. The mode of joint group just solves the core demand of the consumer side.

On the other hand, although the gross profit of fresh food is not high, its high frequency and high viscosity make it the best diversion commodity. The community group buying channel can effectively reach and wake up a large number of consumers, and it will naturally become the new flow entrance of potential online and offline.

From the perspective of Alibaba ecology, Alibaba's business has covered many fields such as B2B, C2C and new retail, and its user growth in the first and second tier cities has already peaked. The sinking market has also become the "last gold mine" of e-commerce increment.

At present, the business of the Ten Star Group has covered seven regions of central China, South China, East China, North China, northwest, southwest and Northeast China, 20 provinces (cities, autonomous regions) and more than 200 cities. It provides free distribution services for 200000 communities. Orders are placed on the same day and delivered the next day, with more than 200000 league leaders.

Chen Ying, co-founder and CEO of the group, once said that it would further expand its market layout in the sinking market. "The group will start market growth in an all-round way, consolidate and sink the basic capacity of distribution, build a commodity market in an all-round way, and invite more supplier partners to join the group."

After the in-depth cooperation with cuntao, Shihui group may reach the sinking market users more accurately and efficiently.

Internal soldiers are divided into multiple channels

In addition to investing in shares, Ali has also explored community group buying by dividing the army into several groups, such as hungry, retail, rookie and HEMA, which is quite meaningful for horse racing mechanism. Among them, horse box is undoubtedly the most promising branch. In mid September, Alibaba CEO Zhang Yong announced that HEMA business group established HEMA preferred business unit, which was led by HEMA president Hou Yi and reported to Dai Shan, President of Alibaba B2B business group.

During the epidemic period, HEMA organized users to make orders through the wechat "box powder group" equipped with offline stores, and then uniformly distributed by HEMA fresh life staff to preliminarily explore community group purchase. On the first day of the month, the most popular column of Taobao was horse box, which was officially opened on the first day of the market.

Perhaps because of the fierce competition, the giants participating in the community group buying have also changed their high-profile style. But what is HEMA fair? What is its positioning? It is also highly concerned by the industry.

It is reported that within Alibaba, it is defined as a community group purchase service platform, which provides one-stop solutions for urban and rural residents' three meals a day and daily needs. Relying on HEMA's agricultural products digital supply chain network all over the country, HEMA market categories include fruits and vegetables, meat, eggs and poultry, drinks and snacks, cereals and oils seasoning, instant frozen products and daily necessities.

At present, Wuhan is the first experimental field of HEMA market. In the short term, HEMA is also preparing to expand rapidly to other cities. "I came late because I wanted to understand what I wanted. Community group buying is an e-commerce model that seems to have a low threshold and needs a lot of investment and construction in the back end. Taking Wuhan as the center, HEMA takes Wuhan as the center, builds a solid supply chain system, provides good services to consumers to seize the market, and then develops rapidly. This is a logical idea. " Another community group buying industry analysis said.

It is also understood that the Commission of HEMA market varies with commodities, with some commodities as high as 20% - 25%, which is generally higher than the industry average.

Hou Yi, founder of HEMA Xiansheng, said, "if we want to do community group buying, we must redefine and top-level design to build a new community group buying mode based on the maximization of customer value and the advantages of commodity supply chain."

Also worth mentioning is the community group buying business based on the rookie post station.

In June this year, rookie announced to build a community life service center. It also cooperates with department stores, meat and poultry stores in the country, such as department stores, meat and poultry chain stores, as well as meat and poultry chain stores.

"What the platform wants to do is not a single business of buying vegetables. In fact, it is still to do a large amount of traffic to pave the way for the layout of other categories in the future." Zhu danpeng said. When entering the market, the scale of users and other mature users will be disturbed again. "All fresh e-commerce must be a game played by giants. The Internet model must be burning money. It's just that when the scale effect, brand effect and fan effect come out, it will turn a loss into a profit. "

From the perspective of Alibaba's layout, each platform has its own advantages and focuses, and has its own unique mission and responsibility. However, the core helps Alibaba to continuously increase its users and performance. After the waves of the storm, the rest is the king. Community group buying is a long-term business, the core is efficient and low-cost logistics, lower price goods, so-called from the head of the team, loyal to the supply chain.

In this regard, how can Alibaba's advantages in supply chain, logistics, capital and brand influence help the ten star group win in the hundred regiment war? It requires long-term preparation and patience.