Without orders, how could they possibly support so many couriers?
As it stood, Cloud Speed held over half the market share in Yiwu’s express delivery market. It took the combined pickup volume of dozens of other companies—like Shunfeng, Best, Tiantian, and Guotong—to even compete.
Five minutes later, Lu Hua arrived at District Three of the Trade City. He dropped some of the packages into smart lockers, while the rest had to be delivered directly to the recipients’ doors as requested.
He worked nonstop until noon, finally taking a break. He hopped on his scooter and found a nearby Shaxian County Snacks eatery.
Even though he earned a good living, Lu Hua couldn’t bear to spend extravagantly. He had two little "money-guzzling monsters" at home, so he had to be frugal.
There were plenty of other Cloud Speed couriers who thought the same way.
As soon as Lu Hua walked in, he shouted to the owner, "One duck leg with rice! And extra sauce."
"Yo! Brother Hua’s here!"
"How were the morning pickups?"
"Brother Hua, there’s a seat over here!"
The dozen or so Cloud Speed couriers already sitting inside greeted Lu Hua warmly the moment they saw him.
As a veteran of the Yiwu Trade City, Lu Hua had been a courier here for seven or eight years. From Yuantong to Cloud Speed, he knew people everywhere he went.
"Xiaowei!"
"Brother Dong!"
"Big Mouth!"
"..."
Lu Hua returned their greetings one by one and sat down next to Big Mouth. The group started chatting as they ate.
"These electronic waybills are so damn useful!"
"Feels like the order volume has been a little low lately."
"August and September are the off-season for e-commerce. Just hang in there. Singles’ Day is coming up, and you’ll be worked to death then!"
"Exhausting, sure, but you make a ton of money!"
The group chatted back and forth.
Lu Hua glanced around from left to right, finding the scene surreal. Among them were former employees who had jumped ship from Shunfeng, Tiantian, and Guotong, as well as veterans from the "Three Passes and One Reach" companies.
They had all originally belonged to different companies, but now they all worked for the same boss.
"Brother Hua, have you heard? The company is going to issue us stock options," Xiaowei said mysteriously, deliberately lowering his voice.
’Stock options?’ Lu Hua only had a middle school education and didn’t understand the concept. All he knew was that it was something like stocks and could be exchanged for money in the future.
"That can’t be true, right? Xiaowei, I haven’t seen anyone on the company’s intranet discussing it." Brother Dong shook his head, unconvinced.
"Believe it or not!" Xiaowei retorted with a dismissive pout.
"Holy crap! It’s true, look!" Big Mouth suddenly yelled, holding up his phone to show the screen to the others.
"Huh? It’s actually real! Brother Wei, are these stock options the same thing the guys at Kuai Pao got?" Brother Dong glanced at the phone, then leaned in towards Xiaowei with a fawning, sheepish grin.
His form of address had changed from ’Xiaowei’ to ’Brother Wei’!
Xiaowei smiled smugly, not taking Brother Dong’s earlier doubt to heart. He slowly explained, "Our company is valued at 15 billion US Dollars, with a total of 3 billion shares. That makes each stock option worth 5 US Dollars. With an exercise price of 0.01 Hua Yuan, if you could get 10,000 shares, it would be worth over 300,000 Hua Yuan."
"How much?"
"Over 300,000?"
"Xiaowei, it’s not that I’m trying to bring you down, but don’t get your hopes up. My cousin is a delivery guy for Kuai Pao, and he only got 500 shares after working there for three months."
The group burst into laughter.
"Huh!? Only 500 shares! I thought it would be a few thousand," Xiaowei said, his mouth agape with disappointment.
"You should be happy with 500! Most Kuai Pao riders only get one or two thousand shares. Some get four or five thousand, but those are all veteran employees."
Brother Dong added.
"It’s different! A Cloud Speed stock option is worth 5 US Dollars, while a Kuai Pao one is 1.2 US Dollars. Our share count definitely won’t be as high."
Lu Hua spoke up.
"Ah, who cares if it’s one thousand or two thousand shares. It’s free either way," Big Mouth said with a grin, not bothering to think too hard about it.
"Don’t underestimate these options. If the company gets bigger and stronger, and the valuation rises to tens of billions of US Dollars, even 2,000 shares could be worth several hundred thousand. Enough to buy an apartment back home, no problem," Brother Dong said, squinting like an expert.
In fact, he and Lu Hua weren’t wrong. In Liao Wei’s first draft of the stock option incentive plan, each person was only allotted between 300 and 500 shares.
When Chen Yensen approved it, he changed the numbers to 500 to 800 shares. It wasn’t a large number and didn’t have a high value, but it was a gesture of goodwill.
If held for the long term, once the valuation multiplied several times over, it might even be enough to trade for a house in their home county.
...
...
「Yanjing, Qian Du Network Headquarters.」
Li Yanhong logged into the data backend and opened the first-day data summary for Qian Du Delivery.
37,000 registered users, 31,000 ordering users, and a first-order conversion rate of 83.8%.
Of course, the conversion rate was so high because of the "15 Yuan Off for New Users" promotion.
The late delivery rate was 27.3%, meaning the on-time delivery rate was less than 80 percent.
There were 830 riders online for deliveries. Aside from 100 dedicated riders, the rest were all part-timers.
To put it more bluntly, these part-time riders were all Meituan’s delivery staff.
Wang Xin had gone all-in on the crowdsourcing model for his delivery capacity. He didn’t treat his riders as his own people, and they didn’t see him as their boss either.
Since Qian Du Delivery had just launched and its per-order pay was higher, seven or eight hundred riders in Meituan uniforms had been delivering for Qian Du yesterday.
For outsourced riders, they delivered for whichever company paid more.
This, in turn, caused Meituan Takeout’s on-time delivery rate in the Yanjing Region to drop by another four percentage points.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK! A knock came from the door.
"Come in!" Li Yanhong looked up, snapping out of his thoughts, and replied flatly.
Wang Jin and Xiang Hailong entered, one after the other.
Seeing them, Li Yanhong subconsciously rubbed his temples. He couldn’t help but mentally curse out Cheng Wei all over again.
’That good-for-nothing!’
’All he knew was marketing and promotion. The software was a complete mess, riddled with system loopholes like a sieve. In July and August alone, more than 80 million was siphoned off by Gray Studios.’
’DiDi Dache’s Series D funding was only 600 million!’
"Boss, we just received a report from the Inspection Institute. A total of 19 Gray Studios were busted yesterday, involving 40 million in funds. The system bug has been fixed. With the risk control department and the anti-cheating team in place, there will absolutely be no more large-scale losses of subsidy funds in the future."
Xiang Hailong proactively reported on the results of last night’s arrests.
"So, you’re saying half of the Gray Studios got away beforehand?" Li Yanhong’s brow furrowed, his expression darkening as he shot back the question.
"Er... yes," Xiang Hailong quickly replied.
’Whether it was the ’Little Heifer’ ghost-order software or the Gray Studios that slipped through the cracks, it didn’t have much to do with him.’
’He had just taken over the DiDi Dache project. Not only was he not at fault, he had actually made a contribution.’
’If he and Wang Jin hadn’t gone through and reorganized DiDi Dache’s underlying architecture, they never would have discovered the existence of ’Little Heifer’.’
"Was the software developer caught?" Li Yanhong asked.
"The other party’s IP is overseas. The Inspection Institute is still investigating," Xiang Hailong answered truthfully.
Li Yanhong nodded, his face a mask of resignation. He understood the situation perfectly: they had only caught a few small-timers, while all the big fish had gotten away.
"I see. Are the preparations for the city launches in the East China and Central China markets ready?" Li Yanhong asked patiently, suppressing the urge to swear.
"The East China Region is all set. I’ve communicated with the Market Department. The first batch of cities will be Hu City, Jinling, Su Cheng, Liangxi, and Luzhou. As for expanding into the Central China Market, we’ll need another half-month for recruitment and training," Xiang Hailong hurriedly replied.
"Those are all markets where Fast Taxi has been operating for half a year. On the marketing side, do you have any better strategies?" Li Yanhong nodded slightly and asked casually.
"First, we cancel the instant discount for passengers and switch to a cashback-on-order system to increase revenue. Second, we increase the order subsidies for drivers. Since these six cities are mature markets for ride-hailing, as long as we offer higher bonuses, we can poach Fast Taxi’s drivers, and we can even skip the initial promotion phase..." Xiang Hailong spoke with great confidence.
The more Li Yanhong listened, the more uneasy he felt. He felt as if the man standing before him was gradually morphing into the shadow of Cheng Wei.