After returning to its "nest," Rookie's ambition remains undiminished

Author | Huang Yu

Editor | Liu Baodan

Over the past year, from the initial public offering to the withdrawal, Cainiao has experienced significant ups and downs at the strategic level, but has always lacked an opportunity to reintroduce itself to the outside world.

Such an opportunity has arrived. On September 10th, at the 2024 Global Smart Logistics Summit, addressing the market's concerns about Cainiao's development focus, Cainiao Group CEO Wan Lin stated: "Cainiao will continue to expand its global logistics backbone network, serving not only Alibaba's e-commerce, but also the open market."

Alibaba Group's co-founder and chairman, as well as Cainiao Group's chairman, Joseph Tsai, also pointed out that Alibaba encourages and promotes Cainiao to build a logistics network facing the open market, serving diverse customer needs while serving Alibaba's e-commerce well, becoming the common infrastructure for global business partners, and seizing the opportunities brought by the new type of globalization and the AI technology explosion.

This means that even though the plan for an independent IPO was withdrawn in March this year, Cainiao will not give up its ambition to continue expanding externally.

Wan Lin revealed that in order to match Cainiao's development trend, many adjustments have been made to the internal organizational structure of Cainiao in the past, distinguishing the team into serving Alibaba's internal customers and serving Alibaba's external customers, in addition to some common capabilities at the grassroots level.

Based on this, Cainiao has dedicated teams to interface with Alibaba internally, including front-end businesses such as AliExpress and Tmall Global, to ensure the creation of competitive products tailored to their needs. At the same time, Cainiao has also established dedicated teams to serve external customers.

"In this way, we can ensure that there will be no conflicts in resources and priorities, and we can provide better, more ultimate, and more competitive services based on the clear needs of any type of customer," Wan Lin pointed out.

In fact, Cainiao, born for Alibaba's e-commerce in the early years, has long begun to face market competition. The prospectus data submitted by Cainiao in September last year showed that Alibaba contributed approximately 30% of Cainiao's revenue, while external revenue accounted for 70%.

In terms of specific business layout, Cainiao, which was once never intended to do express delivery as mentioned by Jack Ma, has built a complete logistics system. While accelerating the expansion of international business, the domestic self-operated express delivery business Cainiao Express launched last year has also been rapidly expanding.

Wan Lin pointed out that looking ahead, Cainiao will adhere to the consistent path of digitization, globalization, and industrialization, focusing on three things.

Firstly, Cainiao will continue to build a global express network. In addition to the domestic Cainiao Express and the Chinese network built with other partners in the past, Cainiao has also started to build local networks overseas in recent years.

It is reported that Cainiao initiated the first batch of e-Hubs in 2018, including three e-Hubs in Liege, Belgium, Hong Kong, China, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, all of which have been completed and put into use.

The so-called e-Hub is a cloud-based API interface used to achieve information interconnection between enterprises. Through eHub, different logistics systems and enterprises can seamlessly connect to achieve data sharing and business cooperation, thereby improving the efficiency and response speed of the entire logistics chain Wan Lin revealed that Cainiao will launch the second batch of global eHub construction, accelerating the integration of the global logistics network into the global and regional industrial chain layout. "Currently, e-commerce is rapidly expanding globally, new manufacturing centers and industrial forms are constantly emerging. Cainiao will build a global express network covering China, cross-border, and overseas local markets, aligning with the industrial chain to better serve the global e-commerce development."

Currently, Cainiao's overseas local express delivery has started operations in 10 countries and regions, including Spain, France, and Mexico.

In addition to building a global express network, Cainiao also aims to focus on building a global supply chain.

Wan Lin explained that if the express network is more standardized, the entire supply chain network enables Cainiao to face large customers, especially brand owners and manufacturers. With such a global supply chain network, it can provide more flexible, more customized, and more intensively efficient global supply chain services.

It is reported that Cainiao operates over 800,000 square meters of overseas warehouses globally, covering 18 countries. However, compared to domestic warehouses, the scale is still relatively small, roughly only 1/10 of domestic warehouses.

Lastly, Cainiao will also focus on logistics technology. Wan Lin stated that technology is always the underlying driving force, and Cainiao will continue to invest in digitalization and AI applications.

Of course, this cannot be achieved overnight. Wan Lin believes that with continuous investment, ongoing research, and refinement, by better integrating the latest technology with the entire production process and various links of the chain, Cainiao can find opportunities to significantly advance based on driving the network and products with technology.

Facing the wave of internationalization and AI, Cainiao must seize the opportunity