Founded in 2003 and merged with Meituan in 2015, Dianping's real life span is 13 years. The APP, which is positioned as a "food recommendation", is still an essential app for most people before eating.But now, Dianping may be difficult to appear in the eyes of emerging users.

Meituan announced on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on the afternoon of Sept. 11 that he planned to simplify the company's name to "Meituan". The original text of the announcement is as disclosed in the announcement of the Company dated September 11, 2020The board of directors recommends that the English name of the company be changed fromMeituan DianpingSimplify toMeituanAnd adopt the Chinese name Meituan as the dual foreign language name of the company to replace its existing Chinese name Meituan comment

The reason for the renaming was also mentioned in the announcement: the board of directors believes that the simplification of the company's name will help to build a unified brand image of the company and enhance users' and merchants' awareness of the company's multi-business capabilities, thus promoting the company to continue to explore new business type while focusing on the food+platform strategy, creating more long-term value for all participants in the ecosystem as well as the society.

This means that Dianping「No.」。

1. A long-doomed departure

There are early signs of this name change, this year.7In April, the front hall of Meituan headquarters in Wangjing, Beijing was reorganized, and the name of the company on the wall has been changed from「Meituan's comments」Changed it to「Meituan」。

In addition, in November 2018, Meituan commented on adjusting the organizational structure. Huang Hai and Wang Huiwen are jointly responsible for the newly formed user platform; Zhang Chuan is appointed president of the Zhidian business group; Wang Puzhong is appointed the president of the home business group; Chen Xudong is in charge of the fast donkey business department; Chen Liang is in charge of the Xiao Xiang business department; LBS

Wang Huiwen is in charge of the platform.The persons in charge of these business groups are basically Meituan, and Dianping's former senior executives did not take over any business groups.

In addition, on January 16, 2019, Tianyanchu data showed that the equity of Dianping's main body, Shanghai Hantao Information Consulting Co., Ltd., changed, and all the original shareholders, such as Dianping founder Zhang Tao, withdrew, adding Wang Xing and Mu Rongjun. After the change, Wang Xing took 95% of the shares and became the actual controller of the company and served as a supervisor, while the legal representative was replaced by Mu Rongjun, co-founder of Meituan. In other words, Dianping is completely owned by Wang Xing of Meituan.

Now Dianping's interface UI is full of Meituan's entrance, and Dianping's core UGC content comments will also be displayed at Meituan. In addition, Meituan will also take away the most profitable items, such as merchant recommendation, ranking, and UI of fee-paying merchants.In a sense, Dianping's mission is to guide Meituan.

There are signs that before the formal announcement, Meituan has taken to「Comment」And this announcement is more likely to be left to「Comment」The last glory.

In October, the industry reported that Meituan would merge with Dianping, although the news was denied by both sides at that time, but the rest of the story became known to everyone. From the moment of the merger, Dianping has actually lost. The merged new company will be dominated by Wang Xing's team. Although the new company adopts a dual CEO system, Zhang Tao, CEO of Dianping, will fade out.

This was confirmed by subsequent events. In November 2015, Meituan Dianping announced the adjustment of the structure. Zhang Tao will no longer serve as the co-CEO of the new company to become the chairman of the company, and Meituan CEO Wang Xing will become the CEO of the new company and will no longer serve as co-chairman.Zhang Tao in「Meituan-Dianping」Only pawned for a month.CEOJust leave the field hastily.

It was not so much Zhang Tao who gave up comment as Capital gave up comment.According to insiders involved in the merger at that time, the merger was the result of the operation behind the main investors of both sides, not the management of both sides taking the initiative to seek a merger. The main reason for the investor's decision to merge is the money-burning dilemma faced by both Meituan and Dianping.

A detailed account of Meituan's expansion history is actually the history of capital burning. In2014There are two financing in one year, which shows how quickly Meituan burns money.

The market is made with money. Meituan had a market share of more than 60% in 2014, but at the cost of a monthly loss of hundreds of millions of yuan. At that time, some investors said frankly that although they were optimistic about the future of Meituan, few players could afford to play at this speed of burning money.

At that time, the capital behind Meituan was mainly BABA, Tencent, Sequoia, Boyu, etc., and Dianping's investors were BABA, Tencent, Sequoia, Trustbridge Partners, Today Capital, and so on.At the shareholder level, the two companies overlap, and the current situation of burning money coupled with the overlap of shareholders is the basis for the merger of the two companies.

2. A family「Slow company」The end of

Dianping has been gone for 13 years from its establishment to its merger. In April 2003, Dianping was founded in Shanghai, and its foundation comes from Zhang Tao's pursuit of delicious food. At that time, when Zhang Tao returned to Shanghai from overseas, he wanted to try local restaurants. He found recommendations from friends around him, but there were only a few recommended restaurants.After trying one by one, Zhang Tao is not satisfied with this, he has a bigger ambition——How about setting up a website where users can rate restaurants? Dianping was established in this way.

The website is easy to build, but the income is difficult. In the early days of the Internet, many webmasters are faced with the dilemma of the business model.Dianping is one of them. Under the operation of Zhang Tao, the website has gained a lot of fame in the local area. But there is traffic, there are users, but there is no revenue. According to Zhang Tao's own words, "during that time, the family's income was only his wife's salary." "

It was only two years after its establishment that Dianping began to try commercialization in 2005. Zhang Tao launched the first product is the physical membership card, through cooperation with offline merchants, consumers holding Dianping membership card can get a certain discount. With the blessing of word-of-mouth and fame, the membership card has accumulated a certain circulation.But the biggest problem with membership cards is homogenization. At that time, there were already many similar membership cards on the market, and Dianping's membership card was not attractive enough to consumers.

Among the tens of thousands of membership cards sent out, only hundreds of thousands of them are often used, and the utilization rate is very low.Another reason is that inPCIn the era, the synchronization of information between users and businesses is not convenient, users query and use Dianping network is on the computer, while membership cards have to be docked and used with offline businesses. This not only increases the cost of users, but also brings a burden to businesses.

In 2006, Dianping received the first financing from Sequoia Capital. In 2005, Shen Nanpeng and Sequoia Capital co-founded Sequoia Capital China Fund. As Sequoia Capital's partner, Shen Nanpeng was also in Shanghai at that time. He was well aware of Dianping's potential, which may also be the reason why Sequoia invested in Dianping.

Also in 2006, Dianping set up a branch in Hangzhou after Shanghai and Beijing, with the aim of setting up a network of monuments. Word-of-mouth was founded in Hangzhou in June 2004, more than a year later than Dianping, and its business model is very similar to Dianping. In October 2006, word-of-mouth won BABA's investment and became Dianping's biggest competitor.However, Dianping did not pay attention to the word-of-mouth network with Ali blessing. With high-quality users and brand viscosity, Dianping defended his fortress.

But this success also made Dianping slow down the pace of development.2010Before launching the group-buying business in 2008, Dianping was only in the whole country6Four cities have set up branches, namely, Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.In June 2010, Dianping officially launched the group-buying business. Compared with Meituan, who has already entered the arena, and other competitors, Dianping is three months behind.

Due to the fierce competition, group buying has completely become a very expensive industry, all the group buying websites are trying their best to expand the market, and the "Thousand League War" is officially launched. By the end of 2011, group buying sites such as Meituan, Lashou and Wotuan had entered hundreds of cities, while Dianping had entered less than 30 cities.

The speed that Dianping suffers the most is speed.——In the fast-growing group-buying industry, Dianping, who is used to being a slow company, can't keep up.Zhang Tao responded: Dianping has never been a slow company, and Dianping has been acting very quickly at the executive level.

What is more deadly than the slow pace of expansion is cash flow.In April 2011, Dianping announced that he had received $100m in financing. Only a year later, in August 2012, Dianping announced that he had received $64 million in financing from investors. Like Meituan, the gap between the two financing is so short that it is generally believed that there is something wrong with Dianping's capital chain. In fact, in mid-2012, there were some rumors about Dianping's tight funds, and some media thought that Dianping's business was not as good as people expected.

Before merging with Meituan, in his 2014 New year's message, Zhang Tao gave Dianping employees the key words of change and acceleration, which refers to Dianping's reform of the business, which means that Dianping will accelerate offline expansion and integration in 2014. It can be seen that at that time, Zhang Tao had already realized the seriousness of Dianping's own problem. With the formal merger of the two sides for 15 years, the 13-year-old company was eventually handed over to its former rival.The best known is the photo of Zhang Tao crying with his colleagues after the merger of Dianping and Meituan.

Perhaps it is the helplessness to the capital, the guilt to the subordinates, or the reluctance to give up to Dianping, but in any case, there is no more Zhang Tao's Dianping in the world, and the capital never believes in tears.

3. The fate of those who finish the curtain.

在2015Announced that the merger was the final result.「Enemy」There are also DiDi Global Inc. and Kuai.No one would have thought that the most important news on Valentine's Day in the past 15 years was the merger of DiDi Global Inc. and Kuaidi, which officially announced the strategic merger of the two companies in a joint statement issued by Kuaidi taxi hailing and Didi Taxi. The new company will implement the Co-CEO system, and Didi Taxi CEO Cheng Wei and fast taxi hailing CEO Lu Chuanwei will serve as joint CEO at the same time.

Although the merged DiDi Global Inc. and Kuaidi have repeatedly stressed that their management teams will remain in office, the fact is that the fast team represented by Lu Chuanwei will definitely quit, and the new merged company will be led by Didi Taxi CEO Cheng and President Liu Qing. Subsequent news also confirmed this.2015年4月1According to relevant sources, Didi Taxi-Kuaidi car hailing is about to complete the first round of financing after the merger.—Total scale6The car-hailing management team of the original express will cash out of the management team.

Similarly, there are many examples of the gradual end of the merger.——Youku and Tudou58And go to the market.

On March 11, 2012, Youku and Tudou jointly announced that they had signed a final agreement that Youku and Tudou would merge in a 100% share exchange. Youku shareholders and American depositary receipt holders will own about 71.5% of the new company, while Tudou shareholders and American depositary receipt holders will own about 28.5% of the new company. On April 17, 2015, 58.com issued a notice announcing the merger with the domestic classified information website Ganji.com. After the merger, 58.com will hold a 43.2% stake in Ganji.com, the two companies will maintain the brand independence of both sides, and the website and team will continue to develop and operate independently.

After the merger, the status quo of the company is the same-one side of the management team will gradually withdraw, and this side of the brand will be gradually weakened.This is the price of the merger, one side is slowly digested by the other, in which large-scale layoffs and layoffs cannot be avoided.

Success and defeat, but this is the case. But what is more meaningful than the history of success is the history of failure. As Wu Xiaobo said, those enterprises that have fallen can be called great failures.For enterprises coming out of that fanatical and immature era, success comes from grasping the opportunities of the times, and failure is inevitable. It is no longer meaningful to repeat the track of their success now, but it is always effective to sum up the lessons of their failure.