"Xiaojiang, hurry up and tell us!" another young man, who had been feigning sleep on his electric vehicle, nimbly hopped off, offering him a cigarette as he pressed for details.
Jiang Hao didn’t stand on ceremony. He took the cigarette, tucked it behind his ear, and slowly began to speak. "Base salary is 1,600 yuan, with full social security and housing fund contributions. There’s a quarterly bonus every three months, calculated based on delivery volume and service rating. It’s a minimum of 1,600 bucks and a max of 4,800. On top of that, there’s accident insurance, third-party liability insurance, and commercial health insurance."
"Are there no volume bonuses or event rewards?" the young man asked.
"Of course there are. All that stuff you mentioned is standard at Kuai Pao. After three months, you even get stock options, which are like shares. They’re worth about twenty to thirty thousand, vested over four years."
Jiang Hao said with a disdainful curl of his lip.
"Kuai Pao’s benefits are definitely awesome, but when it comes to the price per delivery, Meituan is the king," another Meituan driver interjected out of the blue.
"Bullshit! Take orders within three kilometers, for example. Kuai Pao pays 4.5 yuan, Meituan pays 6. It looks like a one-fifty difference, but you have to factor in the base salary, quarterly bonus, and volume bonuses. If you want to make money, you have to go to Kuai Pao! If you’re bad at math, you should talk less!"
Jiang Hao immediately shot back.
"Pfft! You think your math is good? You only scored 160 on all six subjects in the college entrance exam. I could do better than you with my eyes closed," the Meituan driver teased mockingly.
"That’s just because I didn’t feel like studying!" Jiang Hao retorted stubbornly, his neck stiff and his face flushed red.
"Oh, is that so?"
"Hahaha, Xiaojiang, why don’t you go back and repeat a year? Show us all you can get into Qingbei."
The other drivers laughed and teased him.
Once Meituan’s new regulations came out, even more drivers wanted to jump ship to Kuai Pao. But no matter how many people quit, they were outnumbered by the new hires.
It was just as Wang Xin said: if you won’t do the job, there are plenty of people who will!
「Elsewhere.」
At a Kuai Pao station right next to Kirin Xintiandi, the place was packed to the gills. Inside and out, it was crowded with delivery drivers still in their Meituan uniforms.
Some, having received brand-new Kuai Pao uniforms, helmets, and electric vehicle keys, were walking out with broad smiles. The rest remained in a long queue.
The station chief, Zhu Chao, gazed at the massive crowd and couldn’t help but remark, "It’s a good thing the company paces its recruitment to match order growth to protect the income and interests of our full-time drivers. Otherwise, if we just hired without limits, I wouldn’t get any work done. I’d be too busy with interviews all day."
Just then, a Kuai Pao delivery driver made his way through the crowd, sidled up to Zhu Chao, and whispered a few words in his ear.
"What the fuck! Are you serious?" Zhu Chao’s expression changed instantly, his eyes turning red as he cursed.
"A Meituan driver told me himself. He even showed me the residential complex’s building layout map," the Kuai Pao driver replied.
With that, he pulled out his phone, opened his photo album, and displayed a picture of the building layout map for Poly Central Park.
This was data their station had spent over twenty days painstakingly compiling, bit by bit, in cooperation with staff from Gaode Map, before uploading it to their internal navigation software.
This was the main reason why Kuai Pao was able to reduce its delivery times to under 29 minutes.
The riders’ positioning was accurate, their route planning was precise, and they could even navigate directly to the customer’s building.
For the average rookie delivery driver, just finding the right building number after entering a residential complex was a challenge.
But with the help of the navigation software, Kuai Pao’s drivers, regardless of their experience, could become seasoned pros right from the start.
But now, this precious data had somehow ended up in the hands of a Meituan driver.
’Who the fuck did this?’
’Trying to cut off our livelihood?’
Zhu Chao’s eyes narrowed as he immediately realized the gravity of the situation. He told the driver, "Don’t spread this around for now. You try to find out on the quiet who the bastard was that did this."
"Got it, Station Chief. Once we find him, see if I don’t skin him alive," the Kuai Pao driver said menacingly.
Zhu Chao grunted in acknowledgment, pulled out his phone, and walked toward his office.
Soon, the head of the North China Region received the news and passed the initial investigation findings on to headquarters.
Although Pei Yi was furious, he managed to keep his cool. He simply instructed the Yanjing station chiefs to investigate secretly and find the culprit first.
"Son of a bitch, Wang Xin! So you want to play dirty, huh?"
Pei Yi snorted coldly and summoned Shan Jiawei, preparing to infiltrate Meituan’s Group Buy division.
As for reporting it to the police or filing a lawsuit, Pei Yi considered it briefly before deciding against it.
The complex’s building layout maps were non-public data independently collected by Kuai Pao and Gaode staff through manual and technical means (GPS mapping, driver compilation), and confidentiality measures had been taken. In principle, this data constituted a trade secret, and Meituan had crossed a line.
But for one, securing solid evidence would be difficult, and for another, the legal process would be lengthy.
Pei Yi couldn’t wait that long!
If Wang Xin dared to mess with him, he would make Wang Xin suffer even more!
All at once, Kuai Pao’s expansion in the Group Buy business became even more aggressive. The market battle with Meituan was no longer confined to the North China Region.
The East China, Central China, and South China markets, which Shan Jiawei had just taken over, also launched an assault on Meituan.
For example, if Meituan’s ground promotion team negotiated a 99-yuan Group Buy package with a merchant, a Kuai Pao BD would show up within two hours of finding out. They would use an offer of ’three months commission-free’ to entice the merchant to post the exact same Group Buy deal on Kuai Pao.
But Kuai Pao would then use subsidies to drop the price by another 10 yuan from the 99-yuan base, bringing it down to 89 yuan.
For the identical Group Buy item, Kuai Pao’s price was 10 yuan cheaper.
Over time, this created an impression among users: Kuai Pao’s Group Buy prices were cheaper, and Meituan was ripping them off like suckers!
Pei Yi and Shan Jiawei executed this shadowing tactic to perfection, sticking to Meituan like gum on a shoe that just couldn’t be shaken off.
Backed by their deep pockets and abundant capital, Kuai Pao’s Group Buy business grew at an incredible rate. After integrating the merchant and user resources from Nuomi Network, Nuomi Network officially became a core channel for Kuai Pao.
The high-frequency food delivery business brought massive exposure and additional orders to the Group Buy channel.
Meituan’s strategy was to use a low-frequency service to drive a high-frequency one, whereas Kuai Pao’s was the opposite: using a high-frequency service to drive a low-frequency one. This huge strategic difference put Wang Xin on the defensive.
In fact, it wasn’t just Meituan; Dianping and Lashou Network were also struggling to cope.
The worst off was WoWo Group. Its weekly transaction volume had already dropped to 40 million. Although it hadn’t fallen out of the top five, its market share was steadily shrinking.
The Matthew effect was becoming increasingly apparent. Kuai Pao, Meituan, Dianping, and Lashou occupied nearly eighty percent of the Group Buy industry, while the remaining 100-plus surviving Group Buy websites fought over the other twenty percent.
Forget turning a profit; just surviving was a challenge.
Layoffs, market contraction, fundraising difficulties, broken capital chains, shutting down—ever since Kuai Pao started the price war, it seemed like a Group Buy website was going under almost every day.
「That evening.」
After listening to Pei Yi’s work report, Chen Yansen was slightly taken aback to learn that Old Pei had dispatched corporate spies. He hadn’t expected that Pei Yi, with his postgraduate education, would resort to such dirty tricks.
He didn’t object, however. He merely reminded him to be careful and not get caught.
’In business competition, everyone plays a few dirty tricks.’
’Since Wang Xin started this fight, he couldn’t be blamed for retaliating.’
’Meituan’s CRM database and user information might as well be put to good use.’
After giving his brief instructions, Chen Yansen hung up the phone. The sky outside had already darkened, so he pushed open the door and went downstairs.
At that moment, Zhou Hongyi and Lei Yijun were still engaged in a war of words on Weibo.
Both Xiaomi and 360 Mobile Phone shot to the top of the trending topics, and their sales saw a significant change.
The Xiaomi MI2 and Xiaomi 1S sold 63,000 units in one day, an increase of 26.4%.
The 360 N1 sold a whopping 71,000 units in a single day, an increase of 31.7%.
Lei Yijun soon caught on. His anger instantly vanished, and instead, he began to trade blows with Zhou Hongyi with a tacit understanding. The two of them acted in concert, and the buzz they generated even overshadowed the Orange Mobile Phone.
After seeing their flame war on Weibo, Liu Qiangdong couldn’t help but think: ’This tactic looks awfully familiar!’
’Damn it! These two are copying me!’