Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

This made him believe that even if Fast Taxi wasn’t a subsidiary of Senlian Capital, it was definitely closely affiliated with it.

Pay first, then get in the car.

Cheng Wei stood by the curb, glancing around from time to time. Ten minutes later, a taxi with a license plate ending in 2681 pulled up in front of him.

Cheng Wei walked right over, opened the door, and got in.

”What are the last four digits of your phone number?” the driver asked.

”1190,” Cheng Wei replied.

After confirming the verification, the driver initiated the conversation. ”This Fast Taxi app is pretty great. Including you, I’ve already gotten 42 fares today.”

”That many? Does the platform take a cut?”

Cheng Wei quickly cut to the heart of the matter and asked the driver.

”It takes a commission, but it’s not much, only 10%. Plus, I get a two-yuan subsidy for every fare I complete.”

The driver answered as he drove.

But he was being shrewd and didn’t mention the bonuses for hitting order targets.

Fast Taxi was running a ”free ride” promotion. For passengers, any trip that fell within the starting fare was completely free.

For a while, taxi drivers in Hang City had no shortage of fares whatsoever.

Cheng Wei silently mulled over Fast Taxi’s business model. With his background at Ah Li, he quickly sensed an opportunity.

10% didn’t sound like much, but if the model were rolled out nationwide, the annual revenue could potentially reach hundreds of billions.

The thought instantly captivated Cheng Wei. He felt the product was good, with staggering potential.

That evening, the name ”Fast Taxi” appeared on both the Voice of West Lake radio station and Hang City TV Station’s lifestyle channel.

A gimmick like ”Free Rides for the People of Hang City” was just as simple and effective as the ”Milk Tea for the Whole City” campaign Kuai Pao had run in Luzhou.

In the nascent stages of the ride-hailing industry, spending money to cultivate user habits was a critical step for a project’s development.

The moment Fast Taxi launched, it caught the eye of domestic venture capital firms.

If Cheng Wei could see the enormous market potential of ride-hailing, then the investors who spent their days hunting for new projects certainly could too.

Zhu Xiaohu of Jinsha Venture Capital was the first to get wind of it. After making some inquiries, he couldn’t help but mutter in puzzlement, ”How is it this kid again!”

Penguin had beaten him to the punch on Kuai Pao Delivery’s Series A funding round. Not wanting to miss out on the ride-hailing sector as well, Zhu Xiaohu mulled it over for a moment before deciding to head to Xucheng personally to meet this business prodigy, Chen Yansen.

「On the other side.」

Chen Yansen returned to Xuyuan and took the car keys from Xiaoli. He first drove Song Yuncheng back to her dorm before returning to his own, room 0418.

He opened his computer and logged into the data backend for Fast Taxi.

Real-time user registrations for the day were at 42,000, with an order volume of 29,000. The first-order conversion rate was around 70%, and the gross profit was 171,000 yuan.

However, these figures didn’t include costs for personnel, R&D, administration, or marketing. If they did, the gross profit would immediately turn negative.

Chen Yansen put down his laptop and sank onto the sofa. The food delivery and ride-hailing sectors were similar; both required a huge initial investment of energy and capital to develop the market and cultivate a user base.

’I need to find more suckers!’

Chen Yansen thought to himself. The more VC firms that got on board, the fewer competitors he would have to face in the future.