中國互聯網的燒錢之戰
Burning cash has become alarmingly fashionable among Chinese internet companies, many of whom have taken to paying customers massive subsidies to use their services in hopes that their competitors go out of business before they run out of money.
中國的互聯網公司極其流行“燒錢”，已到了令人擔憂的程度。很多公司都習慣了向用戶支付高額補貼，以吸引用戶使用它們的服務，指望在它們花光錢之前，競爭對手們會先破產。
One start-up, , which aims to be an online platform for car dealerships, has based its entire marketing strategy around losing money. “We burn cash from our investors to win the hearts of car shoppers,” a recent ad says.
初創公司一貓汽車網()希望打造一個汽車經銷商的在線平臺，其整個營銷戰略都是圍繞着賠錢建立的。“燒投資人的錢，博買車人的心”——該公司近期打出這樣的廣告詞。
Travis Kalanick, chief executive of Uber, boasted earlier this year that the ride-sharing app’s China affiliate was losing more than $1bn a year, in part because of the subsidies it was paying to grab market share. A local car hailing app, Didi Kuaidi, is waging a fierce price war against Uber in several cities.
優步(Uber)首席執行官特拉維斯•卡蘭尼克(Travis Kalanick)今年早些時候吹噓，這款共乘應用的中國分支一年虧損逾10億美元，部分原因是支付補貼以搶佔市場份額。本土叫車應用滴滴快的(Didi Kuaidi)正在多個城市與優步大打價格戰。
Uber’s competitors have made it clear they will not be outspent. Jean Liu, Didi’s president, said in September that “we wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for burning cash”. The company’s chairman, Cheng Wei, said the company spent $4bn last year in what he called “market fostering”.
優步的競爭對手們表態說，它們在花錢上不會落於人後。滴滴快的總裁柳青(Jean Liu)去年9月表示：“不燒錢我們走不到今天這一步。”該公司董事長程維表示，去年滴滴快的花費40億美元進行“市場培育”。
Executives from another rival carhailing app, Yidao Yongche, said last month that they are “entrapped in a cash burning vortex”. Zhou Hang, the chief executive, said recently: “We have prepared at least Rmb3bn-Rmb5bn of ammunition for the year.”
另一家叫車應用易到用車(Yidao Yongche)的高管們上月表示，他們“捲入了燒錢的漩渦”。該公司首席執行官周航近期表示：“我們爲今年準備了至少30億到50億元人民幣的‘彈藥’。”
“Burning cash” may not sound like a viable business model, but these young companies argue that paying customers to use their services is necessary to build their brands and achieve the scale needed to compete. This is especially true in China, where a shift from an investment-driven to a consumption-led economy, which the government insists is under way, makes the goal of buying Chinese consumers — in hopes that one day they will buy your wares — look appealing.
“燒錢”聽起來可能不像是一種可行的商業模式，但這些創立不久的公司主張，爲了建立品牌，獲得與人競爭所需要的規模，付錢讓用戶使用它們的服務是必不可少的。在中國尤其如此，中國正在從投資驅動型經濟轉向消費拉動型經濟——政府堅稱轉型正在進行中——這使“收買”中國消費者的目的——即希望有一天他們會購買你的產品——顯得很有吸引力。
At least some see it this way. Others claim the Chinese internet fad for burning cash heralds the top of an internet bubble. Just as Silicon Valley companies convinced investors that profits no longer mattered during the 1990s dotcom bubble, China’s internet companies have made a fetish out of losing money.
至少有一些人是這麼看的。還有一些人則認爲，中國互聯網行業熱衷燒錢的風氣預示着互聯網泡沫快脹到頭了。在上世紀90年代的網絡泡沫時期，硅谷公司說服投資者，利潤不再重要，如今中國的互聯網公司也一樣迷上了虧錢。
“A lot of these companies will be forgotten when the money runs out,” said Ma Jihua, founder of Datareal consulting, who estimates that as much as Rmb50bn a year is being poured into subsidies aimed at connecting Chinese consumers via their smartphones to taxis, massages and car washes.
“錢用光後，很多公司都會被遺忘，”達睿諮詢(Datareal)創始人馬繼華表示。他估計，爲了吸引中國消費者通過智能手機使用打車、按摩和洗車等服務，互聯網公司每年用在補貼上的資金多達500億元人民幣。
But he concedes that companies have little choice. “In this market, if you don’t burn cash you won’t get market share which means you won’t get funding, consequently meaning you won’t stand a chance against competitors that do burn.”
但他也承認，企業別無選擇。“在這個市場上，如果你不燒錢，你就無法獲得市場份額，這就意味着你吸引不到投資，結果是你在燒錢的競爭對手面前毫無機會。”
‘A big party for consumers’
“消費者的盛宴”
Funded largely by venture capital and private equity firms, along with larger — and profitable — internet companies like Tencent and Alibaba, most of the subsidies are going into apps that aim to be the Uber of massages or the Airbnb of car washes. These “online to offline” services, or O2O, are the hottest investment theme in China’s internet sector.
投資主要來自風險資本公司、私募公司，以及騰訊(Tencent)、阿里巴巴(Alibaba)等規模更大並且盈利的互聯網公司。大部分補貼投向各類應用，它們都希望成爲按摩服務業的優步，或者洗車服務業的Airbnb。這些“線上到線下”(O2O)服務是中國互聯網行業時下最熱門的投資主題。
The potential benefits to the market leaders help explain why they are so willing to spend: according to HSBC, China’s O2O sector is a Rmb10tn market that is only 4 per cent penetrated, and grew 80 per cent year on year in the first half of 2015. HSBC estimates that in five years the “profit pie” in the industry would be worth Rmb26bn.
市場領軍者的潛在利益有助於解釋它們爲何如此樂意花錢：根據匯豐(HSBC)的數據，中國O2O市場有10萬億元人民幣規模，而目前滲透率只有4%，這個市場在2015年上半年同比增長了80%。匯豐估計，這個行業的“利潤蛋糕”在5年內將達260億元人民幣。
“O2O right now is a big party for consumers,” said Meng Xing, CEO of Helijia, a health and beauty app, in an interview last month. “We have no plans to make profit in the near future, because the VCs are still offering money.”
健康美容應用河狸家(Helijia)首席執行官孟醒上個月在一次採訪中表示：“眼下O2O對消費者而言就像一場盛宴。我們沒有在近期實現盈利的計劃，因爲風投還在提供資金。”
Over the past year, his company has “burnt several hundred million renminbi,” he said, though he has cut back on subsidies after his main competitor went out of business. “That’s just how the Chinese internet is, it’s too popular. There are so many VC and [private equity] companies that are willing to fund these wars.”
孟醒表示，過去一年他的公司“燒掉了幾個億的人民幣”，不過在最大的競爭對手倒閉後，他已經降低了補貼。“這就是中國互聯網的情況，太火了。有很多風投和（私募）公司願意爲這些戰爭提供資金。”
Start-ups are busy raising funds from investors at ever more dizzying valuations, only to plough them back into subsidies. Recent funding rounds have valued Didi Kuaidi at $20bn, up from $15bn last July. Uber China was valued at $7bn in a January funding round, while the merger of Meituan and Dianping, the two largest food delivery and group discount sites, was valued at $15bn-$17bn in November.
各家初創公司都在忙着融資，它們的估值一次比一次驚人，籌得的資金大多用於補貼。滴滴快的去年7月估值爲150億美元，在最近幾輪融資中已達到200億美元。中國優步(Uber China)在今年1月的一輪融資中估值爲70億美元。去年11月，中國最大的兩家美食外賣和團購網站——美團(Meituan)和大衆點評(Dianping)合併，估值爲150億-170億美元。
Many of these companies do not publish financial statements, so it is impossible to see what the true scale of cash burn is. Mr Zhou estimates that Rmb20bn was burnt by car-hailing apps like Yidao, Uber and Didi Kuaidi on rider subsidies in 2015, while Meituan Dianping, the biggest seller of restaurant reservations and cinema tickets in China, put out a cryptic press statement in February that said it had “saved food lovers Rmb58bn” in 2015.
這些公司大多沒有公佈財務報表，所以外界無法得知它們實際的燒錢規模。周航估計，2015年易到用車、優步和滴滴快的等打車應用在乘客補貼上燒掉了200億元人民幣。美團大衆點評在2月份發佈了一份含糊的新聞稿，稱2015年“爲吃貨節省了580元人民幣”，該公司是目前中國最大的訂餐及電影票銷售網站。
Last year, 84 O2O companies went bankrupt, but the sector also attracted huge headline investments. Alibaba and its payment affiliate, Ant Financial, announced they will each invest Rmb3bn to develop a food delivery service called Koubei, while search engine Baidu has said it would invest Rmb20bn in Nuomi, a group discount and food delivery app.
去年中國有84家O2O企業倒閉，但該行業也吸引了大量引人矚目的投資。阿里巴巴及旗下支付公司螞蟻金服(Ant Financial)宣佈將各自投入30億元人民幣，發展送餐服務“口碑”(Koubei)。搜索引擎百度(Baidu)則表示將向旗下團購和送餐應用“糯米”(Nuomi)投入200億元人民幣。
JP Gan of Qiming, a venture firm that is funding the Helijia app, says there is method to the subsidy madness. “Most sophisticated venture capitalists are looking at the same model — you buy users, you buy service providers, you scale up the platform to 100 cities or 200 cities, and you build up a concentrated workforce to provide services to the parts of the cities where there are customers,” he says.
啓明創投(Qiming)是投資河狸家應用的風投公司之一，該公司的甘劍平(JP Gan)表示，這種狂熱的補貼行爲是有章法的。他說：“多數資深的風險資本家都在盯着同樣的模式——你買用戶，買服務提供商，把平臺擴展到一二百個城市，召集大量人手，向城市中消費者集中的區域提供服務。”
But the pitfalls are obvious in a sector where the providers are fragmented and the services closely resemble each other. Ken Xu of Gobi Capital, a VC firm in Shanghai, says the problem is that “the user has no loyalty to anybody in these sectors; they only go for the apps that have the subsidies. In car-hailing apps, everybody is starting to realise they are subsiding the same group of people who either use Uber or Didi Kuaidi, depending on who is paying them more.”
但是O2O行業的缺點也是顯而易見的，比如供應商分散，服務同質性很高。上海風險投資公司戈壁創投(Gobi Capital)的徐晨(Ken Xu)表示，問題在於“用戶對這些行業的任何企業都沒有忠誠度，他們只使用有補貼的應用。在打車應用領域，所有人都開始認識到，他們補貼的是同一羣人，這羣人既用優步也用滴滴快的，誰補貼多就用誰”。
‘Last man standing wins’
“最後還站着的人就贏了”
The O2O model has been subjected to scrutiny elsewhere, especially in the US, where many apps that form the basis of the “gig economy” have failed after venture funding dried up. That experience has spawned worries in China about whether the same will happen once the era of “VC welfare” ends.
在其他地方，O2O模式已經遭受過審視，尤其是在美國，許多組成“零工經濟”(gig economy)基礎的應用都在風險資金枯竭後失敗。這些經驗在中國引發擔憂：一旦“風投福利”時代終結，是否也會發生同樣的情況？
One difference between the US and China, however, is that the offline shopping and services are so much farther developed in the US that “business is not desperate for the internet to make it more efficient or attractive”, says Duncan Clark, head of Beijing technology consultancy BDA and author of a forthcoming book on Alibaba. In China, bricks-and-mortar commerce is often overpriced or simply dismal, he says, so investors are betting that the internet will be the primary way that Chinese connect to services in the future.
不過中美之間有一個區別，就是美國的線下購物和服務要成熟得多。北京博達克諮詢公司(BDA China)的董事長鄧肯•克拉克(Duncan Clark)表示：“美國企業並不渴望用互聯網來提高效率或增加吸引力。”鄧肯寫的一本關於阿里巴巴的著作即將出版。鄧肯表示，在中國，實體商業往往產品定價過高，或者不能提供愉快體驗，因此投資者相信未來互聯網將成爲中國消費者與服務“連接”的首要方式。
“In the west, we’ve had efficient retail for a long time,” Clark adds. “In a sense China is leapfrogging the west.”
“在西方，我們的零售長期以來是高效的，”克拉克補充稱，“在某種意義上，中國正在超越西方。”
Another advantage for China’s high tech economy is a distinctly low-tech factor: labour costs. Couriers are 10 to 20 per cent the cost of what they are in the US.
中國高科技經濟的另一個優勢是一個低技術含量的因素：勞動力成本。中國快遞成本是美國的10%至20%。
Hans Tung, a managing partner at GGV Capital, said that cheap labour and urban population density in China are among the main reasons why the O2O services are economic, compared with the US, where the sector has struggled. “In the US there has been uneven uptake of this so-called gig economy because consumers are more spread out, delivery cost is higher, usage frequency is lower,” he says. “It is harder, besides Uber and Airbnb, for start-ups in this category.”
紀源資本(GGV Capital)的管理合夥人童士豪(Hans Tung)稱，廉價勞動力和城市人口密集是O2O服務在中國具有經濟效益的兩個主要原因，而在美國，這個行業發展困難。“在美國，由於消費者更加分散、配送成本更高、使用頻率更低，這種所謂的零工經濟發展不均衡，”他稱，“除了優步和Airbnb外，這一類的初創企業是比較艱難的。”
In China these factors are all flipped in favour of the industry. “The costs of delivering O2O services are lower, urban population is denser, and therefore, the fundamentals of the sector can be better once there is consolidation around category leaders,” he says.
在中國，這些方面的因素都有利於O2O行業的發展。“O2O服務的配送成本更低，城市人口密度更大，因此，一旦行業領頭羊出現整合，行業的基本面可能更好，”他稱。
But it is clear that subsidies still play a defining role.
但顯而易見的是，補貼仍然起着決定性作用。
Companies are giving massive discounts to tempt consumers. At Rmb99 on the app , it is cheaper to invite a chef over to your house to cook a five-course Sichuan meal than to go to a restaurant, where the same meal might set you back Rmb200. Taking an Uber ride a short distance for Rmb8 is two-thirds the price of a ride in a licensed taxi, whose fares are already held low by government fiat.
企業以極低的折扣來吸引消費者。在“好廚師”應用上，只要99元人民幣就可以請一名大廚上門做5道川菜，而去餐廳吃同樣一桌菜可能要破費200元。用優步短途出行只需要8元人民幣，是乘坐有牌照出租車的價格（已經被政府法令壓低了）的三分之二。
A driver for both Uber and Didi, who gave his name only as Mr Guo, says both companies pay subsidies that often amount to two to three times the cost of the ride.
一名只透露自己姓郭的優步兼滴滴司機稱，兩家公司支付的補貼通常相當於行程成本的兩到三倍。
“Subsidies are an essential part of the income. Because of the competition, the fare is very low,” says Mr Gou. “Without subsidies, the fare is not enough to cover the gas — it wouldn’t pay off.”
“補貼是收入中必不可少的部分。由於競爭，車費已經非常低了，”郭先生稱，“如果沒有補貼，車費還不夠油錢——划不來。”
The ultimate viability of this business model depends on what happens when the money stops, as it inevitably will, say analysts.
析師稱，這種商業模式最終的可行性將取決於停止燒錢——這是不可避免的——後會發生什麼。
Last year, there were already signs that investors have had enough of “cash burn”. Pressure from investors was thought to be behind the merger last year of Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache, two reigning taxi apps, who no sooner had solved their cash burn problem than Uber appeared on the scene. Later in the year, Meituan and Dianping merged, only to be confronted with search engine Baidu’s competing platform Nuomi.
去年已經出現了投資者受夠了“燒錢”的跡象。來自投資者的壓力，被認爲是去年滴滴和快的合併背後的原因。這兩家領先的打車應用剛解決了燒錢的問題，優步就登場了。去年末，美團和大衆點評合併，只是爲了對抗搜索引擎百度旗下的平臺糯米。
“That’s the story of the Chinese internet — the last man standing always wins. And sometimes when there are two last men standing they will merge,” says Mr Gan of Qiming.
“這就是中國互聯網的故事——最後一個站着的人總會贏的。有時，如果最後還站着的是兩個人，他們會合並，”啓明的甘劍平稱。
Brian Viard, an economist who teaches at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing, says platforms like Uber and Airbnb depend on large numbers of customers and sellers to achieve a critical mass, which drives down costs. But he said the fundamental model of “burning cash” is more about optimism than economics.
在北京長江商學院(Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business)授課的經濟學家布賴恩•維亞爾(Brian Viard)稱，優步和Airbnb這類平臺依賴於大量的消費者和商家來形成足夠大的規模，從而拉低成本。但是他稱，“燒錢”的基本模式更多與樂觀有關，而不是成本效益。
“A lot of these companies have one thing in common — their perceptions of the odds of success are higher than they actually are,” he says.
“這些企業大多都有一個共同點——他們心目中的成功機率高於實際情況，”他稱。
