Recently,According to The Information, citing people familiar with the matter, ByteDance plans to raise $700 million to $800 million for Know Car Emperor, which will be used to promote the independent development of Know Car Emperor and pave the way for its IPO.
People familiar with the matter said that sequoia capital china, as the lead investor in this round of financing, is expected to invest 400 million to 500 million US dollars. At the same time, KKR and General Atlantic, two well-known investment institutions, also plan to participate in this round of financing. After the completion of this round of financing, the valuation of Knowing Car Emperor is expected to reach $3 billion.
Interface News asked ByteDance for verification on this matter, but no response was received as of press time. However, some people told the interface news that the car emperor is indeed splitting from bytes and realizing independent financial accounting.
All the above investors have participated in financing in ByteDance. amongSequoia ChinaexistIn 2014, the company became a shareholder in the C round of financing.,And become one of the major shareholders of the company..Participating parties: Transatlantic Capital and KKRruleParticipated in ByteDance’s 2017 E round of financing and 2018 Pre-IPO round of financing respectively.
If it is successfully listed, it will be operated for 7 years.Knowing Car Emperor will be the first IPO in ByteDance’s big family.According to industry speculation, bytes may be inIn the absence of its own IPO.,borrowKnow the car emperorThe listing of the company provides a return on investment for the old shareholders who have been running for many years.
According to Tianyancha, at the end of 2023, Beijing Zhicheti Technology Co., Ltd., an affiliated company of Zhicheti, had undergone industrial and commercial changes.,Today’s headlines of ByteDance have withdrawn from the shareholding structure of the company.,thatThe major shareholder was changed to be established on December 8, 2023.ofXiamen Zhiche Technology Co., Ltd. holds 100% of the shares. There are two founding shareholders of Xiamen Zhiche Family.amongHe Jian, president of Che Di.forHolding 60%ofstrong stock holder.
Know the car emperorAuto channel, who was originally born out of today’s headlines.,Personalized recommendation algorithm hatched by ByteDance commercialization department and inherited from headline system.andFull platform big data,And launched an independent App in 2017..In January 2018, auto channel made headlines today.formalRenamed to understand the car emperor channel; In October 2019, I knew that the car emperor was on the live car..
In July 2023,Knowing the car emperor announced that it has been fully integrated with the car content of Tik Tok, Today’s Headlines and Watermelon Video. Knowing the car emperor as the overall operator, it will co-ordinate resources at all ends..After the integration, the daily life of automobile users on the four platforms reached 310 million person-times, the daily average page views of automobile content exceeded 5.6 billion times, and the operation covered more than 6.34 million automobile creators.
Starting from an initial channel, Knowing Car Emperor began to expand related businesses.Currently mainly for users.Provide car number, car circle, evaluation system, car library, car classification, etc.Car content and car selectionservice,Provide solutions for automobile brands and dealers..
According to the Data Research Report of Mobile Internet Industry in Q3 2023 released by Aurora, the average DAU (Daily Active Users) of automobile information platform in Q3 2023 is compared. In the first echelon, car home, Car Master and Easy Car rank among the top three.
In 2000 and 2005, two automobile information websites, Easy Car and car home, were established respectively, which quickly beat the traditional portals by virtue of their advantages in traffic and user accuracy, attracting the attention of consumers and automobile companies. Among them, easy carLi Bin, founder of WeilaiFounded and listed in the United States in 2010,Home of the carThen byanotherhomeNew forces of building cars,Li Xiang, founder of LIFounded and landed in the US stock market in 2013,In March 2021, it returned to the secondary listing of Hong Kong stocks..
Know the car emperorThe corner overtaking is mainly because it stands on the tuyere of short video.Short video form of UGC (User Generated Content)Breaking the graphic content restrictions of traditional websites such as Easy Car and car home, and putting the main battlefield on independent APP, the emerging automotive information application as a mobile platform quickly ranks among the first echelon in the industry.
However, in terms of income structure,Know the car emperorLike the traditional car information website, it still relies mainly on"cluesservice"And advertising.Among them, "clue service" refers to the sale of consumer clues that have been selected and registered on the platform toCar companies and 4S stores and dealers. For reference,The first quarter of 2024Car home’s cue service revenue was 726 million yuan, accounting for 45.1% of the total revenue of 1.609 billion yuan, exceeding media revenue (327 million yuan) and online marketing and other income (555 million yuan).
andCPT mode used by car home and Easy Car.,That is, the clue fee is paid for the platform by the user’s usage time.Different, knowing the car emperor changed the cooperation mode toCPS mode (Cost Per Sales) of paying the lead fee according to the volume..Although on the surface, this enables dealers to better realize transaction conversion, in fact, manyDealers believe that this settlement mode leads to uncontrollable budget.、The cost has risen sharply, soThe refusal to cooperate caused a storm at that time.
Clue service also brings privacy security risks to consumers.On January 22, 2021, among the first batch of 157 APPs infringing on users’ rights and interests released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, car home’s car quotation was named because of two problems: "illegal collection of personal information" and "the app is forced, frequent and excessively demanding authority".
On the black cat complaint, there are 544 complaints about the car owner. Many users said that they were often harassed by dealers, used car dealers and other telephones because they registered their personal information on the platform.
On the core content,Know the car emperorIt has also caused quite a controversy recently.
The platform gives on the one handThe creators provided a lot of support measures.,On the other hand, it also producedA series of original programs,For example, the comparative disassembly and horizontal evaluation of multiple models, the long-term test of winter endurance, etc.,"Seriously, you have to understand Che Di."Is its propaganda slogan.
The source of controversy is its winter test in 2023. In December 2023,Know the car emperorwhatIn the extreme low temperature of Mohe River in Heilongjiang Province,Tested 5More than 0 mainstream cars,andInvited 25 groups of car companies, media, industry organizations, user representatives and other on-site observation and live broadcast.
Subsequently, the platform announced the results of the winter test.In the ranking of pure electric endurance achievement rate of hybrid vehicles, only three models have achieved a pure electric endurance achievement rate of more than 50%, namely BYD Looking Up to U8, BYD Song PLUS DM-i and Ideal L7..The extended range version of the M7 is ranked first from the bottom with a endurance achievement rate of 31.6%. Geely, Great Wall’s many models in the test reached the endurance rate did not exceed 40%.
This has caused many car companies to question.Wen Jie automobile issued a documentexpressUnderstand that the car test process "seriously deviates from the user’s real use scenario", and attach the detailed car data of the vehicles participating in the test, including the number of door opening and closing, the temperature inside the car, and the heating time of the air conditioner. In the process of servicing the boundary M7, the tester has operated to open and close the doors and windows for more than ten times, of which the longest time is more than 3 minutes, resulting in only 74.9% of the battery power when the boundary M7 leaves.
Yu Chengdong, managing director of Huawei and chairman of BU, a smart car solution, issued a document the next day.Know the car emperorWinter measurement"cheat people’s test, misleading people"; Yang Xueliang, Vice President of GeelyCall it a test"unscientific, not rigorous, and the conclusion is not convincing"; Great Wall MotorAlso said, "Knowing the unscientific and imprecise test of Chedi not only misleads users, but also damages their own credibility."
faceQuestioning, knowing the car emperor emphasized that "the test standards are completely unified and all models are treated equally" and conducted the second live broadcast evaluation on December 14.
However, because its business model is mainly based on the launch of car companies, the content neutrality of knowing the car emperor is still suspected by all parties.At the beginning of this year, Huawei HarmonyOS Zhixing’s brands such as Wenjie and Zhijie.Be exposed to pauseCooperate with "members" who know about Car Emperor, car home and Easy Car.
In addition, in recent years, many car brands are more willing to cooperate with themselves to complete their marketing strategies through offline stores and online channels, and the founders and responsible persons of various brands have also appeared.Online celebrity flow effect,The advertising and "clue service" business growth space of automotive information platforms is getting smaller and smaller.
Car home’s growth has basically stagnated in the past few years.,Compared with the highest market value in history, it has dropped by about 80%. Easy carThen in 2020,Announce the completion of privatization“Sell yourself "Tencent,By the time of delisting, its share price was only $16.
Understand that Chedi is also looking for room for business expansion under pressure.Gradually expand to automobile trading and after-market services.
In 2021, Knowing Car Emperor launched the car trading service, and in 2022, it opened an offline new car experience store and a used car trading market. In 2023, Know Car Emperor further entered the offline automobile trading stores and opened the "Know Car Emperor Automobile Mall".,The store has an overall area of about 8,000 square meters and can provide one-stop transactions such as new cars and used cars..
However,Automobile after-service marketThe competition is equally fierce, except forTu Hu yang chealreadyOccupy a certain market scale,JD.COM, AlialsoLaunched successivelywatch from a height or distanceJD.COM keeps cars and Tmall keeps cars..And from the light asset platform of automobile information to the heavy asset platform.Offline automobile service business,Know the car emperorIt also needs to pay more investment and wait for a longer payback period.
Even if ByteDance can successfully list the car emperor on the capital market, itsWill still face a severe test.