The following is the main content of the article:
At Didi Beijing headquarters, company founder and CEO Cheng Wei was called “the boss†by many employees. Some employees simply call his English name "Will." But this summer, Cheng Wei added another nickname, UberSlayer, because he finally stopped his opponent's progress in the fierce competition with Uber. Uber is also considered to be a self-bill. · Bill Gates is the richest and most greedy startup company since Microsoft was founded. In August, after a one-and-a-half-year, multi-billion-dollar "subsidy war", Uber finally agreed to sell its Chinese business and then withdraw from the Chinese market.
For Uber, this retreat preserves its face - according to this deal Uber received a 17.7% stake and $1 billion in cash. But for Cheng Wei, this is a major victory. Eight weeks after the two sides signed the investment agreement, Cheng Wei still cautious about his final defeat against his opponent, which sounds great. “Uber is a great company,†he said. “Their strategy in the Chinese market is the best among all Silicon Valley companies. They are more flexible than Google, and they have not shown this attitude in many countries in the world but in China. They learned to express their good intentions. They are different from those foreign companies that are common in China and more like a startup company. They are full of enthusiasm and feel like they are fighting for themselves."
Didi Founder and CEO Cheng Wei
The world is more familiar with the fighting spirit of Uber and its CEO Travis Kalanick. But before August of this year, Cheng Wei was still little known outside of China. He preferred to use fluent English President Dickie and former Goldman Sachs Managing Director Liu Qing as the company’s “image spokespersonâ€. Under the leadership of Cheng Wei, Didi's business covered 400 cities in China in just four years.
Cheng Wei said that currently 80% of taxi drivers in China use droplets to find passengers. Because there are too many people using drops, it is very difficult for passengers to get to the car without using the app during peak hours. Recently, Didi's valuation of a new round of financing reached 35 billion U.S. dollars, ranking among the world's highest-valued private companies. At the same time, Uber, which operates in nearly 500 cities on six continents, is currently valued at US$68 billion.
At the end of September this year, Cheng Wei was interviewed by the media in a rare way, telling him how he had become a Chinese business hero. “While we were planning to launch a taxi, about 30 taxi services appeared at the same time,†Cheng Wei, 33, recalled. “The business model is varied. Some companies were stronger than us.†He added, “ Everything is long and full of unexpected twists and turns."
Part-time selling insurance, working in foot spa shop
Cheng Wei was born in Jiangxi Province. His father was a civil servant and his mother was a math teacher. He said that he had achieved outstanding results in high school mathematics. However, he forgot to open the last page of the paper in the college entrance examination and missed three major questions. He eventually got admitted to Beijing University of Chemical Technology, which is not a prestigious university. He originally intended to choose the information technology profession, but was transferred to the business management profession by the school. In his senior year, Cheng Wei went to an insurance company to practice internships and began to buy insurance, but in the end he did not sell one. Later, at a job fair, Cheng Wei submitted a resume to a company that claims to be a "Chinese well-known health care company," and hired a manager assistant. However, when he went to work at this company, he discovered that it was a chain foot massage shop.
Later stories may be better known: Cheng Wei, 22, found a sales job at Alibaba. He was paid 1,500 yuan per month. “I am very grateful to Alibaba,†said Cheng Wei. When he went to the front desk of Alibaba’s Shanghai headquarters to “self-proclaimâ€, “A person appeared, but he did not drive me away. He said, 'We need to be like you. young people'."
Although he did not sell a single insurance, Cheng Wei eventually proved himself very good at selling online advertising to merchants. In Alibaba, he met Wang Gang – the supervisor of Cheng Wei. Wang Gang said that Cheng Wei’s sales performance is great, but his real talent is reflected in hosting customer activities. In 2012, Cheng Wei and Wang Gang left Alibaba.com, and Wang Gang became an angel investor, investing RMB 800,000 in this company (according to Wang Gang’s estimation, the DDT shares he holds are now worth US$1 billion. ).