By Jiang Xiaoting and Ma Yue

Source: List of Letters (ID：wujicaijing)

On December 5,2015, after the opening speech of the annual meeting of Chinese business leaders, such as Liu Chuanzhi and Li Yanhong, Liu Qiangdong made a final speech and made an opening speech. He looked down at Zhang near East, laughing: Brother Near East, once

As a media person, I really miss liu qiangdong.

Liu qiangdong

Now, Liu qiangdong has disappeared from public view. Even at the important moment of Jingdong's secondary listing in Hong Kong on June 18, Liu qiangdong did not appear. Xu Lei, CEO of Jingdong retail group, was the leader of the bell ringing at position C. At that time, I was at the scene of Jingdong headquarters where the listing ceremony was held. Jingdong people told me that Liu qiangdong was in the headquarters. I couldn't help but look up, as if Liu qiangdong would poke his head out of a window at a height.

A few days apart, so did Huang

It seems that Huang Zheng and Liu qiangdong have never been on the same stage. If they meet on a narrow road, will Liu qiangdong, like Zhang Jindong of course, stretch out his hand: brother Huang Zheng, let's make a bet!

Pinduoduo now has a higher market value than JingDong, but say

So far,There are no losers in this warBecause both sides have grown rapidly through competition. Not long ago, the market value of Jingdong and pinduoduo both exceeded the $100 billion mark. Ali, the e-commerce boss who has maintained a competitive relationship with both sides, has seen its market value soar, breaking through HK $5 trillion.

It's a drop of fish. China's Internet companies have Chinese Internet companies The long-term competition between JingDong and pinduoduo may be called

Meanwhile, the two companies are in the shadow of Ali

If the two sides attack each other, they may form a joint encirclement and suppression campaign against Ali. If they are not careful, they may also encounter Ali's fatal attack.

And the battle of D is also

With Liu qiangdong and Huang Zheng retreating to the second line, Xu Lei and Chen Lei were handed over to the central stage.Their performance is not only related to the success or failure of the two companies, but also directly affects their own destiny.The successor's position is actually an iron throne. So far, no Chinese Internet company has solved the succession problem perfectly. Even Ali, the best in this field, has also lost two generals, Wei Zhe and Lu Zhaoxi.

Originally, Jiang Fan, who did not want to be the second person after the addition of president Zhang Yong, had a sudden death due to the scandal. Although looking around the e-commerce system of Ali, no one can compete with Jiang Fan for the position of successor. However, he must lead Taobao tmall, which has made great achievements, to go further and conquer both inside and outside of Ali with achievements, so as to restore the position of successors.

Just like when Zhang Yong was in power, he controlled Jingdong through tmall,Jiang Fan's comeback is bound to exert great pressure on Xu Lei and Chen Lei.For the onlookers, this is

Take the D of the D war, and that means,No matter how wonderful Xu Lei, Chen Lei and Jiang Fan perform, they fight an agent war,Liu qiangdong rarely appears in front of the public, which does not mean that he has put down his scepter; Huang Zheng's daily management power, in the final analysis, is to take the future into his arms. Ali, let alone Jiang Fan's execution, is ultimately the will of Zhang Yong and Ma Yun.

The battle for D, which has already begun, will constitute the main theme of e-commerce competition in the next few years, and the alphabet will continue to pay attention to it. However, Liu qiangdong was invisible behind the scenes, and Huang Zheng faded out even more. The war was like the chapter of Zhang Fei's night battle with Ma Chao missing in the romance of the Three Kingdoms.

A

Both Chen Lei and Xu Lei are meritorious officials who accompanied the founders to fight against each other, and both have a history of fighting shoulder to shoulder with the boss for 13 years.

Like Huang Zheng, Chen Lei belongs to other people's children. In high school, he twice participated in the Information Science Olympiad on behalf of the national team, won the gold medal and bronze medal, and then was recommended to Tsinghua computer department. After graduation in 2001, he went to the University of Wisconsin Madison in the United States for further study, and became a classmate with Huang Zheng, all the way to further study and get a doctorate degree in computer science.

The relationship between the two quickly extended from classmates to partners. In 2007, Huang Zheng left Google and returned home to start his own business. Chen Lei was the architecture engineer of ouku.com, the first e-commerce platform of the company. After that, every time Huang Zheng started his own business, he was Huang Zheng's right and left hand, from Leqi, dream game, good goods to pinduoduo. The pinduoduo social fission technology operated by him is the main force to stand out from the cracks between Jingdong and Ali.

Chen Lei

Chen Lei is a typical technical talent, also the co-founder of the company. Many speeches before pinduoduo's listing were made by dada. Chen Lei's several speeches in front of the stage are all strengthening the essence of technology, either for pinduoduo analysis of product technology, or to do technology foresight of the times. He also did not show the same desire to express as Huang Zheng, and official account was needed to find out the outlet of thought.

Chen Lei's superior position is consistent with pinduoduo's internal characteristics. Huang Zheng himself is a technology-based company. He has repeatedly emphasized that pinduoduo is a technology-oriented company. According to pinduoduo's annual financial report released in March, pinduoduo's R & D expenditure in 2019 was 3.87 billion yuan, an increase of 247% compared with that of 1.116 billion yuan in 2018. Platform R & D expenses accounted for 12.8% of revenue, higher than the average level of the Internet industry. More than 50% of the nearly 6000 employees are technical engineers.

Jingdong's successor is totally different from Chen Lei in temperament. At the beginning of 2017, Liu qiangdong called out at the opening meeting of Jingdong group: in the next 12 years, we have only three things, technology! Technology! Technology!

Two years later, the CEO of Jingdong group passed on to Xu Lei. A senior marketing talent.

Xu Lei is a serious courtyard children, belong to the existence of old guns in Beijing

This series of combination boxing down, Xu Lei's superior position is natural. It is said that Xu Lei is also one of the few executives in Jingdong who can argue with Liu qiangdong.

Xu Lei

However, unlike Chen Lei's promotion, which belongs to the normal adjustment of the enterprise organization, Xu Lei's successor was appointed in the face of danger.

In the whole of 2018, Jingdong's share price dropped by 60%, and the performance loss was 2.3 billion. In addition, the Mingzhou storm of founder Liu qiangdong was added. At the end of that year, Jingdong adjusted its organizational structure, pushed Xu Lei to the front of the stage, served as the rotating CEO, and directly reported to Xu Lei as the person in charge of all business groups and business departments.

At the beginning of 2019, Xu Lei replaced Liu Qiangdong with his front foot, and for the first time stood on the podium of the JingDong annual meeting as a CEO, with Chen Shengqiang and Wang Zhenhui at Davos with their rear feet

Judging from the current situation, Xu Lei and Chen Lei are under great pressure.

Pinduoduo surpassed Jingdong in various data. In October 2019, Huang Zheng completed his goal two years ahead of schedule. Gmv surpassed Jingdong and became the second largest e-commerce platform in China in volume. The annual number of active buyers of the platform is 585.2 million, more than 362 million of Jingdong. In Q1 2020, pinduoduo's revenue increased by 43.9% year-on-year, exceeding 21% of that of JD. Now, its market value is billions of dollars higher than that of JD.

As a successor, Chen needs to keep his family business and lead pinduoduo to another peak

Xu Lei wants to prove himself and lead Jingdong back to the top. On June 17, the day before Jingdong went to Hong Kong for listing, Xu Lei was asked to deal with the threat of pinduoduo. Xu Lei said: I don't care much about a company that has only been established for four years. In fact, it followed suit, incubating Jingxi card social e-commerce, and pinduoduo launched a counterattack against the sinking market. See more than $200 million Gome retail convertible bonds, followed by strategic investment Gome.

At the same time, if they want to keep the river, they have to cheer up and face the common enemy

B

Today's Jiang Fan, has reached the critical moment of his career, one step wrong, may lose the Jiangshan.

Compared with Chen Lei and Xu Lei, they have already determined their own status. The Ali family has a great cause, but the position of the successor is embarrassing.

Jiang Fan's position was once very stable. Like Chen Lei, he was born in technology. He participated in the national information science competition twice in high school and was recommended to the computer department of Fudan University with a gold award.

Different from Chen Lei in the field of computer, from undergraduate study all the way to doctor, Jiang Fan does not take an examination, do not go abroad, examination only 60 points. Once let Huang Zheng youth

It is also different from Chen and Xu who grew up with the company for 13 years. When Jiang Fan joined Ali, Ali was already on the highway, but his promotion path was rocket like.

From 2013, Amigos were acquired by Ali, Jiang Fan was packaged

Jiang Fan

He doesn't have to go through Ali's traditional induction training process, doesn't have to be a celebrity, does n' t have to socialize with Zhang Luo big company, relies on the business ability to be in Ali

But by April this year, the position of Jiang Fan's successor had changed. The love affair sparked a heated debate on Ali's values. Jiang Fan was dismissed on the 52nd day of his promotion to M7, and Ali's partner status was cancelled.

Ali's punishment on Jiang Fan was not severe, but it left Jiang Fan with an opportunity to turn around and retain Jiang Fan's position as the president of Taobao, tmall and Ali's mother.

This year 618, although Jiang Fan did not go on stage like last year to report good results: sales of 170 billion, GMV increase of 38.5%, hand Amoy DAU increase of 29%. But a month in advance to open a pre-sale, the launch of the meeting said :618 is Tmall's absolute home, after the sun bright war report: the order amount of 69.82 billion yuan

According to the latest Q1 financial reports of the three companies in 2020, pinduoduo has 628 million active buyers, an increase of 42.9 million in a single quarter; Alibaba has 726 million active buyers, with an increase of 15 million in a single quarter; Jingdong's active buyers are 387.4 million, with an increase of 25.4 million in this quarter. The gap between pinduoduo and Ali is narrowing. The single quarter buyer growth rate of pinduoduo and Jingdong surpasses that of Ali, which means that this year's double 11, Ali's home combat area, can't afford to lose.

In Wang Xing's evaluation last April, Jiang Fan should have fought with Huang Zheng. Now Huang waved his sleeve and at age 40 imitated Ma's retreat

As Huang said in his open letter, the iteration of the pinduoduo management team is accelerating team growth. Company succession system is also conducive to organizational structure adjustment and evolution.

In other words, Huang Zheng's retreat is actually to let Chen Lei have a chance to make an upward impact. It is not difficult to see that pinduoduo's ambition to be the first in the industry can be seen.

Jingdong is also unwilling to fall behind.

Up to now, Xu Lei has been on the top for a year and has already handed over his brilliant report card. According to the financial report in 2019, the annual net income of Jingdong is 576.9 billion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 24.9%. Since the incubation of Jingxi in September last year, more than 70% of the new users of Jingdong in the fourth quarter came from third to sixth tier cities. The Q1 financial report released on May 15 showed that JD's net revenue was 146.2 billion yuan, up 20.7% year-on-year, and its share price rose to $50.69 from $25.48 a year ago.

JingDong is now listed in the United States and Hong Kong, share prices and pinduoduo parallel. Xu Lei is not behind.

C

At the same time, it was also a dispute of agents.

Although steering an e-commerce empire with a market value of 100 billion yuan, Chen Lei, Xu Lei and Jiang fan are not the masters of their respective business empires.

Behind Chen Lei stands Huang Zheng, behind Xu Lei is Liu Qiangdong, behind Jiang Fan is Zhang Yong, and even Ma Yun. As the second-in-command of the Empire, they should not only make achievements in the business to serve the public, but also listen to the requirements of the founder, keep the family business, leading the company to a higher level.

But within the company, he has 15.1% of the shares ,78.4% of the voting rights, and has the highest say. According to AI Financial News, Liu still attends the group's morning meeting at 8 a.m. every day to listen to the department report.

And his several voice, as usual overbearing, set off Xu Lei like a younger brother. Last March internal speech put words: who do not accept Xu Lei, is not against me. In April, the circle of friends issued a letter requesting the implementation of the final elimination system, claiming:

It can be said that Liu Qiangdong now manages Jingdong similar to

Like Liu qiangdong, Huang Zheng announced the personnel adjustment on July 1. He served as the chairman of the board of directors. Although his shareholding ratio dropped to 29.4%, he still had more than 80% of the voting rights in his hand, and he had absolute decision-making power within pinduoduo.

In a later interview, mr. huang mentioned that he was a typical pragmatist, thinking about strategic goals and carrying them out by his comrades, and that when he saw results, others needed to show their results, in short:

Huang Zheng

Apply Huang Zheng and Chen Lei's post transfer, Chen Lei in front of only one road

In an interview with Ma Yue, founder of the alphabet list, Zhang Yong in 2017 mentioned

But to be sure, Jiang Fan still has the best trump card. He is still the double president of Taobao and tmall, and is in the helmsman position of Alibaba e-commerce.

Just after he was punished for less than two weeks, Ma spoke of him on the air,

It can be seen that at present, only Jiang fan can suppress Taobao and tmall.

In other words, in the future, the competition among the three major domestic e-commerce giants will probably take place between Jiang Fan, Chen Lei and Xu Lei. The battle for D as their successors is only just beginning.

[References]

1. Huang Zheng's 100 kinds of paranoia, latepost, April 3, 2019;

2. "Liu qiangdong's first show in Davos: more than 50 business leaders were invited to dinner", surging, January 24, 2018;

3." head iron "pinduoduo to shake Ali! A loss of 4.1 billion but more than 600 million active buyers, NetEase State ℃, May 23,2020.

4. "A year for Alibaba CEO Zhang Yong: victory is the best way to build a league", Chinese entrepreneur, November 26, 2017.