APTnovel Chapter 494 Stealing Tutu's Corner
Chapter 494 Stealing Tutu's Corner
While TUTU was holding a meeting, Tencent wasn't idle either.
The weather in Shenzhen was unbearably hot on the day of the alliance conference. The May sun shone brightly on the glass curtain wall of the Tencent Building, making the entire building look like a giant radiator.
But the air conditioning in the conference room was on full blast, and the cold air flowed silently out of the vents, so no one sitting at the table was sweating.
The heads of Tencent's core allies sat on either side of the long table.
Meituan sent a senior vice president in charge of its food delivery business, Pinduoduo sent a director in charge of channel cooperation, Didi Chuxing’s head of strategic cooperation sat by the window, and several people from small and medium-sized companies sat in the back row.
The deputy director of Tencent's strategic investment department sat in the main seat, next to the head of the business development department and the head of the game business unit. Each of the three had a document spread out in front of them.
The meeting has been going on for about an hour.
For the first forty minutes, each company took turns reporting on their business progress during that period, and overall, the situation was indeed quite good.
Meituan's food delivery orders have increased by nearly 10% compared to last month, and user activity has also improved.
Pinduoduo's user penetration rate in second-tier cities continues to expand, and it is said that the data in three or four new cities is already close to the level of first-tier cities.
Didi's ride-hailing order volume is growing steadily, although the increase is not large, it is stable.
The reports from several small and medium-sized companies were also quite good, with most maintaining growth and no significant decline.
The atmosphere at the venue was one of satisfaction, as if "their own business is doing well." Some people spoke with smiles on their faces, while others wrote numbers in their notebooks with lighter strokes.
The last speaker was Pinduoduo's channel manager. He closed his laptop, leaned back in his chair, smiled, and said, "To sum it up, things have been pretty smooth for everyone lately. The synergy of our alliance is definitely starting to take effect."
The deputy director of the strategic investment department sat at the head of the table without saying much, his expression unchanged. He listened quietly as each company finished speaking until the person in charge of Pinduoduo finished his final summary. Only then did he push his water glass forward and say a few words.
"I've heard the data. Overall, it's quite good; all companies are growing, none are declining. But I have another set of data here, from TUTU."
The sound in the conference room vanished in an instant.
He reached out and swiped on the tablet in front of him, and a comparison table appeared on the screen.
The left side of the table shows the changes in key metrics of major members of the Tencent alliance over the past month, while the right side shows the corresponding data from the TUTU alliance.
The comparisons are clearly listed, with specific percentage figures for each item: JD.com's supply chain cost reduction, Ele.me's delivery efficiency improvement, and Kuaishou and Douyin's user time increase.
"Meituan's order volume increased by 10%, while Ele.me didn't directly increase its order volume, but their average delivery cost per order decreased by nearly 15%. This means they can maintain the same order volume at a lower cost, and the saved money can be used to subsidize users or for promotion. The difference may not be immediately apparent, but after six months, this gap will translate into a difference in market share."
"While Didi's order volume has increased by a few percent, TUTU doesn't have direct travel data for comparison. However, Ele.me's delivery dispatch system and Didi's ride dispatch system are fundamentally similar. If Ele.me can improve dispatch efficiency through AI, Didi can do the same. They haven't done it yet, but that doesn't mean they won't in the future."
After he finished speaking, he paused for a moment and glanced at the faces of the people opposite him.
The relaxed atmosphere of "our business is doing well" has largely dissipated.
Some people looked down at the materials in front of them without looking up, some held their cups to drink water but the cups were already empty, and some leaned back in their chairs, staring at a certain point on the table without moving.
The senior vice president of Meituan spoke first, his voice lower than before: "So, TUTU's growth rate is indeed faster than ours?"
"It's not just a little faster, it's significantly faster," the deputy director said bluntly. "Their growth rate, in absolute terms, may not be as large as their overall scale, but proportionally, it's higher than most of us here."
There was a silence in the meeting room for about ten seconds. It was a different kind of silence than the silence before the meeting started, which was a silence of "how long until it starts?" Now it was a silence of "how should we handle this situation?"
A Didi representative broke the silence first, their tone revealing obvious confusion and anxiety: "Our growth is indeed lagging behind theirs, and the problem lies in the reasons. Is it because we're not doing well enough, or is it because we simply lack what they have? If it's the former, we can improve. If it's the latter, then no matter how we improve, it won't make a difference. AI isn't something you can create simply by having more people. We've tried optimizing our scheduling algorithm ourselves, and while there have been some effects, they're far from the level of improvement seen with Ele.me."
The deputy director tapped his fingers lightly on the table twice: "There are two reasons. On the one hand, there is indeed room for optimization in our resource integration, but this is not entirely an execution-level issue; it involves the differences in the business models of each company. On the other hand, the gap in AI technology cannot be bridged in the short term using conventional methods. There is currently no publicly available technical information to explain how their system works. Our own technical team has tried to reproduce similar logic, but after two months, it hasn't achieved the expected results."
He paused, then said something that silenced everyone in the meeting room: "So we don't have many options left. We can't win in direct competition, channel suppression has limited effect, and acquisitions and expansion into new sectors take time. The only way to effectively strike at TUTU in the short term is to find a breakthrough from within."
The head of the business development department chimed in: "To be specific—poaching talent."
TUTU's most valuable asset right now is not their game products, but the R&D team behind their AI technology.
If we could poach one or two key figures from their technical team, even if they were only privy to some of the core logic, our understanding of that technology would change from "having absolutely no idea what it is" to "having a general idea of how it works."
This gap is enough to save us a lot of trouble in our subsequent technology planning.
The head of the gaming division also spoke up, his tone more pointed than in previous meetings: "From what we understand, two people in TUTU's technical team play crucial roles. One is Zhao Yiming, TUTU's technical director, who is mainly responsible for driving the implementation of the AI engine. The other is Lao Wang, a veteran in charge of the overall technical architecture, who should have a deep understanding of the underlying logic. If either of these two is poached, TUTU's AI R&D schedule will be disrupted for at least several months."
"Besides technical roles, we can also get in touch with key personnel in operations and product development," said the Deputy Director of Strategic Investment. "Several key operations staff under Chen Mo, and the channel team that Wang Huabing built in Shanghai—these people, while not directly involved in coding, have a deep understanding of TUTU's internal organizational processes and decision-making chains. If we can recruit one or two of them, we can more quickly grasp their decision-making rhythm and strategic direction."
Someone asked, "What criteria would you use to poach them? TUTU's current salary level is considered high in the industry, and they just had a salary increase; the compensation for core positions is already very competitive."
"Salary is just the basics," the deputy director said. "We can offer more than just money. Greater opportunities for growth, a more stable future with the company, and more abundant resources. At TUTU, no matter how capable someone is, they're just a core employee in a company of limited size. At Tencent, they can access a much larger user base and more diverse business scenarios. This difference is sometimes more attractive than a multi-million dollar annual salary."
He paused for a moment after speaking, then added, "And we don't need them to provide any confidential information immediately. We just need them to come over and do their jobs normally. Whatever they know, once they're inside Tencent's system, will naturally become Tencent's knowledge over time."
No one responded in the meeting room.
Everyone knew that this was no ordinary battle; from the very beginning, the poaching was a fight to the death.
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