Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

8:30 PM, MUSE Bar, Hang City.

Inside a lavishly decorated private room on the second floor, Chen Yansen sat in the center of the sofa, flanked by NetEase’s Ding Lei on his left and Zhou Shouzhi, President of DST China Region, on his right.

Cheng Weixing, Gao Weilin, Song Yuncheng, and the assistants of Ding Lei and Zhou Shouzhi were seated on either side.

”President Chen, I hear the subsidy war between DiDi and Fast Taxi is getting pretty intense. Is it true even Li Yanhong is getting desperate?”

Ding Lei swirled his glass, the ice cubes clinking softly against the sides. A teasing glint appeared in his eyes from behind his glasses, and the corners of his mouth lifted into a smile as he posed the question to Chen Yansen.

”Burning money is just the first step in fighting for market share. Building a solid foundation is what’s truly key,” Chen Yansen replied with a smile, gently setting his glass down on the coffee table.

He had studied DiDi Dache’s passenger and driver apps. They had too many fundamental flaws, making it extremely easy for gray studios to find and exploit system vulnerabilities.

Cheng Weixing had mentioned to him that every day, Fast Taxi detected a large number of accounts using GPS spoofing software, as well as multiple accounts being logged into from a single device—all kinds of tricks to fleece the system for subsidies.

Even though Fast Taxi’s risk control and anti-fraud mechanisms were quite strong, a portion of these ”wool-pullers” were relentless, leading to countless devices, accounts, and IPs being banned every day.

From this, it was clear that the amount of subsidy money being siphoned off from the loophole-ridden DiDi Dache every day was absolutely astronomical.

Only then did Cheng Weixing realize why Chen Yansen had been so demanding about risk control when Fast Taxi was first launched.

Before Fast Taxi’s installation package was even uploaded to the app store, their internal GPS spoofing software had already gone through more than a dozen versions, and they had developed seven or eight different programs to simulate trips in a test environment.

You could even say that the GPS spoofing software used by the gray studios wasn’t as stable, stealthy, or secure as the versions Fast Taxi had developed internally.

”DiDi Dache’s technology for intelligent dispatch, geolocation, and route planning is far inferior to Fast Taxi’s. That’s one of the reasons DST didn’t invest in Cheng Wei,”

Zhou Shouzhi added with a faint smile, helping Chen Yansen make his point.

”It’s a good thing President Chen hasn’t gotten into the gaming industry, or NetEase would be in trouble,” Ding Lei joked, raising his glass to toast with the other two.

”You never know,” Chen Yansen said, deliberately putting on a serious expression.

”Alright, whenever President Chen decides to make a game, DST will give its full support,” Zhou Shouzhi said in a serious tone.

Ding Lei’s expression froze for a moment. He shook his head with a helpless look, then picked up a bottle of red wine worth tens of thousands of yuan and refilled the glasses for Chen Yansen and Zhou Shouzhi.

Of course, he didn’t take their banter seriously.

”Yaoyao Zhaoche went bankrupt, and so did Yidao Zhuanche,” Ding Lei said with a sigh, leaning back and narrowing his eyes wistfully.

Yaoyao Zhaoche?

Yidao Zhuanche?

Chen Yansen had no memory of them; Cheng Weixing had never mentioned these two companies in his work emails.

”Boss, those are two very small ride-hailing companies. Their daily orders were less than 1,000. As soon as we entered the Yanjing market, their business volume plummeted to nothing, so I didn’t pay them much attention,”

Cheng Weixing, who was sitting nearby, quickly explained.

”Oh,” Chen Yansen said with a nod, not giving it much thought.

Little did he know, while Yaoyao Zhaoche was negligible, Yidao Zhuanche would, at its peak three years later, reach a valuation of one billion US dollars.

But now, before it even had a chance to make a name for itself, it had been crushed by Fast Taxi and DiDi.

And the man responsible for it all, upon hearing the news, had merely responded with a casual ”Oh.”

Chen Yansen knew perfectly well that the subsidy war in the ride-hailing market was no different from the price war in the courier industry. Without money and resources, you were destined to be eliminated.

This was true even though Fast Taxi and DiDi hadn’t specifically targeted Yaoyao Zhaoche and Yidao Zhuanche.