Reporter | Edited by Cheng Lu | Wen Shuqi

At the end of 2021, layoffs became a cloud hanging over the heads of employees of major Internet factories. Recently, the interface news reporter exclusively learned that Ali's local life is about to open a round of sharp layoffs, and the layoffs involve almost all business lines of Ele.me, including regional branch personnel, excluding third-party riders.

A person close to Ele.me revealed to the interface news reporter that the layoffs were due to the gradual widening of the gap between Ele.me and the US group in the field of local life. From September 2021, Ele.me has a local market share of less than 50% in Shanghai, and as a company that started in Shanghai and is headquartered in Shanghai, this change shows that Ele.me has lost its dominance in key areas of its base camp and will be organizationally streamlined next year.

One Ele.me employee affirmed the above-mentioned layoffs, saying that business adjustments had already occurred at the end of the month. Another local regional manager of Ali's local life observed that the reduction of word-of-mouth business has also begun in some areas, and the small and medium-sized cities that have not done well have withdrawn, and some cities have streamlined personnel, "Some of the personnel of word-of-mouth have been laid off, some have been retained, and some of them have been transferred to Hungry, but the main implementation is estimated to be years later." ”

In response to the problem of layoffs and business reduction, as of press time, Ele.me has no response to interface news.

The regional manager said that Ele.me has not mentioned market share for a long time, and the main assessment indicators for 2021 are also profitability and circle test operations, which refers to the selection of some merchants to do refined operation services within the regional scope to help merchants grow orders.

For the battle between Ele.me and Meituan in local life, the above-mentioned regional manager saw that before the national anti-monopoly hammer fell, Ele.me was affected by "two choices one" on the one hand, "but now the two choices are gone, and the user consumption habits of Meituan have also been formed." On the other hand, meituan's subsidy red envelopes have always been many, too able to burn money, which also has a great impact on hungry. ”

Another change that supports the adjustment of the word-of-mouth business is the gradual decline in the status of the word-of-mouth business within Alibaba this year. In October 2021, the entrance position of "Word of Mouth" in the Alipay APP was adjusted, and the entrance of the Tab tab at the bottom was moved to the Mini Program area of the "Nine Palace Grid" on the home page, allowing users to sort or delete by themselves. In December, Alipay's "life number" was upgraded, and the "word of mouth" column at the bottom of the upgraded APP will be changed to a "life" column, and users can directly enter the business life number page, which is seen as Alipay's full opening up of platform traffic.

Over the years, Ali has never given up its emphasis on the local life market, from funds to platform resources, Ali has always been a large-scale investment support.

In 2018, Alibaba completed the wholly-owned acquisition of Ele.me for a high price of US$9.5 billion, then acquired Baidu Takeaway (later adjusted to Ele.me Star Selection Business), and then merged with word-of-mouth to establish "Ali Local Life Service Company". Ali is ambitious, Alibaba chairman of the board of directors, CEO Daniel Zhang publicly said that the local life service market is very important, Ali will do its best to win this battle, and even wang Lei, the CEO of Ele.me at that time and the president of Ali Local Life Service Company, once said that it would be on an equal footing with Meituan in the takeaway market. But the reality is that Ele.me gradually fell into the ascendancy in the ensuing confrontation.

In 2019, Wang Lei publicly said that he would no longer use share as the only criterion for measuring local life service companies, "The early market share is for competition, and after the integration of word of mouth into the large system, we need to do integration and need to do digital upgrade services." He said the takeaway industry will say goodbye to the crazy subsidy war.

But Ali has not given up the local life business, considering the weak ability of Ele.me to fight a single battle, Ali began to rearrange the troops, after internal combing and integration, in January 2020 Ali decided to take Ant Financial out as the lead, leading the coordination of Alipay, Ele.me Word of Mouth, Fliggy and other local life businesses, through multi-party business to form an ecological synergy to fight against the US group.

However, Fliggy, Ele.me word of mouth, Alipay and other businesses are scattered in Ali's major business lines, and the direct correlation of resources and scenarios is not high, and in the end, Ali's desire to pull up local life through Alipay has failed.

Just half a year later, local life was adjusted again, and this time AutoNavi's business was pushed to the front. As the third largest traffic pool in the group after Taobao and Alipay, AutoNavi's past achievements in the group are obvious to all. In July 2021, Alibaba will form a life service segment based on three major businesses based on geographical location services, namely AutoNavi, Local Life and Fliggy, which will be managed by Yu Yongfu on behalf of the Group and report to the Daniel Zhang. After the Ali female employee incident this year, Yu Yongfu once again served as the "fire captain" as the CEO of local life, directly responsible for the specific business of the frontline.

But unfortunately, although it has been adjusted several times, the battle situation between Hungry Mo and the US group has still not improved.

Interface News has reported that in the first half of 2020, the industry generally believes that the takeaway market share at that time was 6:3:1, of which meituan accounted for 60%, Ele.me accounted for 30%, but in July of that year, Ali employees revealed to Interface News that Ele.me's market share has even broken 3, "the lowest time is only about 20%." ”

The public financial report shows that the gap between Ali's local life and the US group is further widening. In the latest quarterly financial report, alibaba's local life service revenue for the three months ended September 30, 2021 was 9.513 billion yuan, an increase of only 7.6% from 8.839 billion yuan in the same period of the previous year, and the proportion of total revenue fell to 5%. In contrast, the latest quarter revenue of Meituan's catering takeaway business reached 23.1 billion yuan, with a revenue growth rate of 59%.

However, there is no doubt that to this day Ali has not given up the war of local life. On December 8, 2021, on the occasion of 100 days as the "fire captain", Yu Yongfu issued an internal letter saying that although the number of local life track runners is not large, the competition is not fierce, but it is cruel, no one has a way to win, it is a boxing match with long-term cycle points, so the basic ability is the construction, and Ali's local life will adhere to the strategic direction of "four horizontal and four vertical" in the next three years.