Editor | Yu Bin

Produced by Chaoqi.com "Yu Jian Column"

In recent years, with the wave of mass entrepreneurship and innovation, the number of start-up companies has increased Also surged rapidly. The corresponding enterprise services have also entered a dividend period. Tianyancha, which is positioned as a commercial query company, is one of the powerful players in this field.

Among them, the inquiry website under Tianyancha is mainly responsible for corporate credit information inquiry and retrieval functions, while Tianyan Enterprise Service mainly provides standardized services on the enterprise side. For example, industrial and commercial services, financial and taxation services, personnel and social security services, qualification licensing processing, intellectual property services, marketing and promotion services, etc.

The missions of the two can be seen at a glance. One is responsible for driving traffic, and the other is responsible for monetization. However, the seemingly perfect match did not make the development of Tianyancha seamless. On the contrary, its commercialization did not go as smoothly as imagined.

Therefore, as a latecomer in the industry, does Tianyancha have the strength to catch up from behind, and has it established a foothold in the enterprise service track? We may be able to find the answer through the current development status of the industry and the internal and external environment analysis of Tianyancha.

The enterprise service market is highly competitive, and Tianyan is involved in data disputes

The vigorous development of the enterprise service market can be seen through a series of data. First of all, the number of market entities in our country continues to increase, allowing this market to expand rapidly.

According to statistics from the State Administration for Market Regulation, the number of market entities in my country reached 123.395 million in 2019, an increase of 11.195 million from 2018, which has also created a huge market for corporate credit services.

For example, according to Qianzhan.com data, in 2020 alone, the credit service market size, including personal credit reporting and corporate credit reporting, will exceed 6 billion yuan. It is this rapid growth that attracts many companies.

Public data shows that as of the end of December 2019, 128 corporate credit agencies in 22 provinces (municipalities) across the country have completed registration at branches and branches of the People's Bank of China.

The companies entering the market are divided into two aspects: credit reporting services and credit reporting credit information services. For example, Tencent Credit and Zhima Credit belong to the former, which collect credit data, while Tianyancha and Qichacha belong to the latter, and mainly apply credit data.

It is precisely because of the fierce competition that this industry has always been in constant disputes. Just by looking at the sky, we often fall into it.

Regardless of what is right or wrong, the bickering between the two at least shows that the fierce competition in this industry has become fierce, and the contradictions within the industry have also been put in front of the public.

According to Qichacha’s “complaint”, there are too many contents similar to Qichacha’s on the query page of the Tianyancha platform. Moreover, Qichacha even named him directly on Weibo, saying that except for replacing "Qichacha" with "Tianyancha" in the news posted by Tianyancha, the rest of the content was word for word, so he strongly requested Tianyancha to apologize for this. .

In fact, Qi Chacha’s “accusations” are not groundless. Before that, the two had been going back and forth with each other, quarreling with each other. And business competition led by the two is also often staged.

For example, as early as 2018 to 2019, Qichacha applied for multiple "Qichacha" trademarks, but they were all judged to be invalid. After the trademark was reviewed, multiple trademark review requests from Qi Cha Cha were still rejected because Tianyan Cha had already preemptively registered trademarks related to "Qi Cha Cha".

For this reason, the two went to court again. Since then, the two have fallen into a new game because "Qi Cha Cha" used the slogan of "Tian Yan Cha" operated by it, which is "check the company, check the boss, check the relationship" for publicity. At that time, according to information released on the Haidian Court website, Tianyancha sued Qichacha in court on the grounds of unfair competition, seeking compensation of 5.2045 million yuan.

The reason why Tianyancha and Qichacha hate each other is that, on the one hand, Qichacha and Tianyancha are on the same track, and compared with Qichacha, Tianyancha entered the game later.

On the other hand, in terms of market share of both parties, Tianyancha has already overtaken it, while Qichacha is even far behind compared with it. Therefore, tit-for-tat is inevitable when it comes to marketing.

According to iiMedia Consulting data, Tianyancha’s market active user share reached 72.4, and Qichacha’s market active user share accounted for 17.6.

Moreover, in addition to these two leading companies, there are also Qixinbao, Aiqicha, Qixintong, Qi Insight and other companies, all working together to carve up this market.

Therefore, Tianyancha’s falling into a data dispute is just a symptom, and it also confirms that the corporate credit service market is already a red ocean. Although Tianyancha currently leads the market share, it is squeezed by competition from many players and cannot sit back and relax.

Taking the media route, the data is inaccurate and frequently questioned

As we all know, the existence value of corporate credit inquiry platforms, or the development mission of such enterprises, is to serve as a third-party information platform. Provide the public with fair, objective and true business operating data.

However, many media have previously reported that such companies frequently make mistakes in public information, and even negative information is "harmonized".

Therefore, some media, enterprises and even regulators have questioned its business model. The doubts focus on whether there are some "grey industry chains" behind these phenomena?

Picture source: Screenshot of Qichacha official website

Because the operation method is quite similar to the behavior of some "media public relations", it even runs counter to the original intention of the platform.

For example, at the end of July 2020, Sina Weibo announced accounts that had "violated the rules of editing and reprinting news and pretending to be media", and batch-processed such accounts. At that time, Tianyancha’s official Weibo account was banned from posting for 90 days.

What is strange is that most of the accounts announced this time have been closed, but in fact, the ban period of Tianyancha did not reach 90 days. In this regard, Tianyancha said that they did not Not sure why.

At that time, many media people also questioned this, thinking whether Tianyancha was using its "media attributes" to repeat its old tricks and conduct public relations behind its back?

Is Weibo’s punishment of Tianyancha’s official account reasonable? In fact, according to relevant Internet laws and regulations, opening a self-media account to publish news for a long time requires certain qualifications.

According to the provisions of paragraphs 1 and 2 of Article 5 of the "Internet News Information Service Management Regulations", non-news units set up institutions to reprint news information, provide current affairs electronic bulletin services, and send current affairs communications to the public. Internet news information service units shall be subject to the approval of the State Council Information Office.

However, judging from the relevant terms, the threshold for becoming a news media account is not low.

Therefore, the voice of doubt is whether Tianyancha, as a third-party enterprise credit platform, has such qualifications. At that time, the media also verified that the subject of the Tianyan Cha was Beijing Jindi Technology Co., Ltd., and it was found that it did not have the qualifications to collect, edit and reprint news.

Source: Weibo

In addition, Tianyancha was also officially refuted due to the news that "Zhou Hongyi resigned as chairman of 360 Finance" and was directly "censored" Face" has also been pushed to the forefront of public opinion.

At that time, 360 Finance even directly sent a lawyer’s letter to clarify the facts, saying that Beijing Qibu Tianxia Technology Co., Ltd., where Zhou Hongyi resigned as chairman, was not the listed business entity of 360 Finance. Zhou Hongyi, as the chairman of 360 Finance listed company, The identity has not changed.

In fact, this is not the first time that similar inaccurate information has appeared on Tianyancha.

For example, in May 2019, Tianyancha data showed that Hangzhou Ruhan Holdings Co., Ltd. had undergone many changes, and eight shareholders including Alibaba and Legend Capital had withdrawn from the company.

Some people in the industry even believe that the frequent errors in news are caused by some black PR who think they are creating public opinion? Such speculation may not be unreasonable.

It is understood that many media have previously exposed that in order to maintain brand reputation, some companies have gone to some business search platforms to "pay to delete information", although such companies have I firmly deny it, but the emergence of many representative cases makes it difficult to convince people of such a statement.

Therefore, it is somewhat ironic that a platform that focuses on establishing a credit system has encountered a crisis of trust because of these problems.

Difficulties in Tianyancha’s business model

In fact, the above-mentioned problems only expose some of the problems of commercial query companies. What is more fatal is that such companies are becoming more and more It has increasingly shown the disadvantages of homogeneous models and lack of innovation.

For example, the Tianyancha enterprise service platform launched by Tianyancha at the end of 2019, its main business is to provide enterprises with trademark services and copyright registration, and also acts as an agent for industrial and commercial registration, financial and taxation agency, qualification licensing and legal services.

These services are provided by countless small and medium-sized enterprises in China, and have always been a relatively scattered field. In addition to the traffic advantage of Tianyancha's commercial search platform, Tianyancha does not seem to have much differentiation in terms of products and services. Although its slogan is "product standardization, can be delivered online".

However, judging from its development trend in recent years, it is still difficult to escape the dilemma of a single profit model and difficulty in scaling up. It is understood that the income of most business investigation platforms comes from membership fees from B-side and C-side users. Tianyancha's revenue sources mainly come from three parts, namely B-side and C-side member users and enterprise service platforms.

However, the business part, which is different from other platforms, has been filled with complaints since its launch. Many dissatisfied voices flooded the third-party complaint platform.

For example, some users said that they were applying for trademark registration, but there were problems such as customer service being unable to be contacted and no refund entrance.

The profit model of the business search platform is limited, and the data information comes from the same source. The value of the platform is to organize and classify, making the search faster.

But when it comes to commercialization, if the model is not innovative, then there are countless companies that provide general enterprise services. How Qichacha stands out can only be a question mark?

It is not difficult to understand why some people suspect that the business investigation platform may make profits from processing negative information to support revenue.

Conclusion

As a well-known brand in the business investigation field, Tianyancha’s influence at the top of the industry is self-evident. However, it is trapped in platform data management, service content is too homogeneous, and lacks too many competition barriers. Therefore, as the industry matures, it has fallen into a world where there are more and more players in the industry and competition has become increasingly fierce. Awkward situation.

At the same time, because its commercialization problems have not been solved, it is also facing tremendous pressure in terms of sustainable development and large-scale expansion. Therefore, as the number of peripheral players continues to increase and grow, its original market share will also be eaten away, and how Tianyancha can stabilize its leading position has become an anxiety that is difficult to get rid of.