283: Section 283

Perhaps it wasn't due to the activity ending, but rather that Penguin Big Cafeteria itself was a failed direction!

Chapter 207: Penguin's Biggest Loss in History!

"Impossible."

"Impossible."

"Something must have gone wrong."

While looking at the document in his hand, Xiao Ma's voice kept echoing in the office.

He found this result difficult to digest and believe.

After all, they had already invested a huge amount of resources and budget into this software, and had even completely abandoned the group-buying sector to develop Waimai.

Furthermore, the offline deployment of Penguin Big Cafeteria also consumed a great deal of their energy and investment.

Overall, the budget for the entire Penguin Waimai was quite exaggerated and massive.

Almost all software previously developed by Penguin Group had not received as much investment as Penguin Waimai.

If Penguin Waimai completely failed, then Penguin Group's loss this time would almost certainly be the largest loss Penguin Group had ever experienced in its history.

After all, this iteration of Penguin Waimai was established by acquiring Baidu Takeout and then upgrading it, and it also built a massive online cafeteria system, with several such online cafeterias deployed in almost every city.

And these large cafeterias, because they needed to be close to residential areas and software parks with high foot traffic, could not be built in relatively remote areas.

Additionally, the space required for large cafeterias would not be small; some small spaces would not be able to accommodate large cafeterias.

Therefore, the construction cost of Penguin Big Cafeteria was quite high.

The entire deployment of Penguin Big Cafeteria consumed a large amount of Penguin Group's funds.

It's worth noting that when Baidu Takeout built Baidu Canteen previously, it only spread out slightly in dozens of cities; even Baidu didn't have the liquid capital to immediately roll out nationwide large cafeterias, but Penguin forcibly achieved this point.

This also demonstrates how exaggerated the capital required for this direction would be.

Originally, before the emergence of Junzi Group, Xiao Ma generally would not agree to such plans requiring huge investment, as even if successful, it would take a long time to recover costs.

The original Penguin Group, due to its stable business, rarely took such risks.

However, after Wang Mo appeared, Xiao Ma's rationality was gradually depleted through repeated failures, so when faced with a situation that the previous Penguin Group would never have touched, he still chose to attack.

In fact, there was another reason why it was said that if Penguin Waimai failed, it would be Penguin's biggest loss.

That is, Penguin no longer controlled most of the publicity channels and directions on the Yan Country internet.

Before the emergence of Douyin and WeChat, Penguin could fully conduct various large-scale publicity and promotions through its own software ecosystem.

But now, the existence of Douyin and WeChat has significantly reduced Penguin's influence.

To achieve the publicity effect from before these few software appeared, Penguin had to invest more funds and more time to accomplish this.

Previously, a 10 million advertising budget could achieve a certain publicity effect, but now, with the intervention of Douyin and WeChat, it would probably require 15 million or even 20 million to do so.

Therefore, by the time of the Thousand Group Battle, Penguin's investment in promoting its own software had increased many times over.

All these factors combined led to this software becoming almost the most heavily invested software in Penguin's history, without exception.

That is why Xiao Ma was so shocked by the current result, because he knew how much loss this number would bring to Penguin.

Listening to Xiao Ma's words, Zheng Haidi also couldn't help but take a deep breath, then slowly said:

"Perhaps today's numbers are due to the end of the Penguin Waimai activity, which caused such a large rebound."

"Maybe in a few more days, more users will return to using Penguin Waimai because of the existence of Penguin Cafeteria."

"The daily active user count of Penguin Waimai should increase in the coming days."

After Zheng Haidi finished speaking, Xiao Ma also fell silent for a moment.

Then he slowly said, "We can only hope that's the case."

"We can only hope that Penguin Big Cafeteria's appeal to users is still there."

Now Xiao Ma had placed his last hope on Penguin Big Cafeteria.

After all, before, Penguin Waimai was fully focused on developing online cafeterias, so it didn't have much energy to compete with Meituan and Ele.me for ordinary merchant sign-ups.

Therefore, the number of ordinary merchants on Penguin Waimai is currently far lower than that of Meituan and Ele.me, at least several times fewer private shops than the other two Waimai software.

Originally, because of their confidence in Penguin Big Cafeteria, everyone within Penguin felt that having fewer ordinary merchants wouldn't have much impact.

But from the current situation, if Penguin Big Cafeteria fails, then Penguin Waimai will not be able to retain users through other merchants.

Because for a Waimai software, the type and quantity of available items for order are also a very, very important and crucial factor.

Therefore, everyone in the office at this moment could only hope that the number of Penguin Waimai users would rebound in the coming days.

They still held onto a glimmer of hope.

But the cruel reality ultimately made everyone even more desperate.

The next day, Penguin Waimai's daily active user count dropped again from nine million the previous day to seven million.

On the third day, it continued to decline to six million.

By the fourth day, Penguin Waimai's daily active user count had decreased to 4.5 million!

It's important to note that just a few days prior, Penguin Waimai's daily active user count had just soared to 45 million, but in just four days, that number had dropped by more than ten times!

Previously, Meituan Takeaway, by being the first to launch the Red Envelope feature, more than doubled its user base in ten days, making everyone realize the significance of Waimai Red Envelopes for Waimai software.

Many people initially thought that this achievement could not be broken.

But now, Penguin Waimai had achieved an even more exaggerated result, but this result was completely in the opposite direction.

In four days, the daily active user count decreased tenfold!

This kind of situation, no matter when or in which country's internet it occurred, was quite explosive.

By this point, looking at the mere 4.5 million daily active users remaining, all the high-ranking executives of Penguin Group truly accepted the fact that they had completely failed.

And at this moment, Penguin Waimai...