Our reporter Yuan Chuanxi
On December 13th, Autohome announced the appointment of Wu Tao as the company's director and CEO, responsible for overall strategic planning, organizational management, and business development.
The CEO of Autohome was previously concurrently held by the Chairman of Autohome, Long Quan. After this adjustment, Longquan will serve as both the Chairman and CEO of Ping An Property Insurance and the Chairman of Autohome. Wu Tao serves as the Executive Director of Ping An Property and Casualty Insurance and CEO of Autohome.
It is worth mentioning that although Wu Tao is the new CEO of Autohome, he is not unfamiliar with Autohome. From July 2016 to November 2020, Wu Tao served as the vice president of Autohome, and later returned to Ping An Property Insurance.
What are Wu Tao's unique advantages in returning to Autohome as CEO? What changes will it bring? Recently, Wu Tao gave an exclusive interview to Securities Daily reporters, sharing his past and future with Autohome.
Ping An Local Talents
Cross disciplinary "versatile"
People familiar with Ping An or Autohome are not unfamiliar with Wu Tao. He joined Ping An Insurance in China in 2001 and has worked in multiple management positions at Ping An Property and Casualty Insurance, including Vice General Managers of Xiamen and Fujian branches, General Manager of the Claims Department of Vehicle and Health Insurance at Ping An Property and Casualty Insurance, General Manager of Guangdong branch, and Director of Operations at Ping An Property and Casualty Insurance. From 2017 to 2020, he served as the Vice President of Autohome.
Autohome commented in the announcement that Wu Tao stated: "Wu Tao is a localized leading talent trained by Ping An Group, who combines financial business background and internet thinking. He is also a leader with outstanding strategic vision and innovative ability, and is young and strong. He has rich successful cases in improving enterprise management efficiency, talent cultivation, and business model innovation, making him an ideal candidate for the position of CEO of Autohome."
In fact, many people are not surprised by Wu Tao's appointment. On the one hand, he has a background in the automotive industry and has been dealing with automobiles throughout his tenure at Ping An Property and Casualty Insurance, making him a senior "car enthusiast"; On the other hand, after Ping An took control of Autohome in 2016, Wu Tao, as one of the first executives dispatched by Ping An to Autohome, directly participated in the strategic transformation of Autohome from a vertical media company to a big data company, and was in charge of the company's dealer business. He has rich experience in how to use digitalization to drive the upgrading of the automotive industry and reduce costs and increase efficiency.
After being transferred from Autohome to Ping An Property Insurance, Wu Tao applied his insight and sensitivity towards the internet to his work in property insurance. Under his leadership, Ping An Property and Casualty Insurance's app "Ping An Good Car Owner" completed the upgrade of one-stop car maintenance services in 2021, and in 2023, comprehensively created a "medical, food, housing, transportation, and play" one-stop lifestyle circle around the life scenarios of car owners. Currently, it has served nearly 200 million Chinese car owners. In the industry's view, Wu Tao's appointment as CEO of Autohome has given more room for imagination in the integration of Autohome App and Ping An Haochezhu App.
Regarding this, Wu Tao said: "My experience and expertise in Ping An Property and Casualty Insurance, especially the user services provided around 'Ping An Good Car Owners', will allow me to have a more direct contact with a wide range of users, have a clear understanding of user needs, and understand the entire car network layout. This is similar to working at Autohome. Both Ping An Good Car Owners and Autohome have a huge user base, providing a series of services around cars, with the goal of being a one-stop service platform." My experience in car services and internet operations will be helpful for the car ecosystem construction work I will be carrying out at Autohome in the future
Bi-directional travel
Ecological Integration Press Acceleration Key
On December 11, 2013, Autohome successfully went public in the United States. Other companies that went public in the United States in the same year include Lanting Jishi, 58.com, Qunar.com, and 500 Lottery, many of which have disappeared without a trace. In the industry's view, the key turning point for Autohome's long-term success was in 2016 when Ping An Group took over as the largest shareholder of Australia Telecom. Since then, Autohome, which started with content information, has embarked on a strategic transformation, created a second growth curve, and integrated into an important part of the Ping An ecosystem.
The biggest change since the launch of Autohome 10 years ago is the change in strategic positioning. From its establishment until 2016, Autohome's development positioning has been vertical media for automobiles. After being controlled by Ping An Group in 2016, Autohome began to transform from 1.0 media to 2.0 platformization and 3.0 intelligence. In 2021, under the leadership of Chairman Longquan, Autohome officially launched the 4.0 ecological era, which fully integrates into Ping An's ecological strategy and creates a vehicle trading platform Complete closed-loop. " Wu Tao introduced that with the promotion of the ecological strategy, Autohome's base business has been operating steadily, new business development has accelerated, and revenue has been increasing for five consecutive quarters. It has formed a scale in the construction of content ecology, and its diversified business layout in the fields of digitalization, new energy, and used cars is also becoming a new core competitiveness.
Data shows that the Autohome App has 500 million downloads, with an average daily activity of nearly 70 million on mobile devices. It serves users throughout the entire process of "viewing, buying, using, and changing cars", covering over 90% of OEMs and dealers; Serving over 50000 second-hand car dealers; More than 50% of new/used car transactions are affected.
The arrival of Wu Tao will undoubtedly accelerate the ecological integration with Ping An Group.
"The future strategy of Autohome will continue to be based on the ecological strategy, accelerating the ecological integration construction of Ping An and Autohome. Our goal is to become a one-stop automotive life service provider of 'content ecology+tool services+trading platform', helping users save worry, time, and money." Wu Tao introduced that in the future, Autohome and Ping An Property Insurance will highly coordinate, Based on the precise high-value user group, financial products, and offline service capabilities of Ping An Car's ecosystem, it can deeply integrate scenarios such as viewing, buying, using, and changing cars. The combination of both parties can more accurately identify potential new car buyers and replacement car buyers, providing consumers with better services.
Taking the Autohome Space Station as an example, Ping An Property and Casualty Insurance has a large number of high net worth individuals and car owner resources, with high accuracy and conversion efficiency in traffic flow. By integrating its offline traffic into the Autohome Space Station, it not only creates more customer service scenes for Ping An Property and Casualty Insurance, improves customer experience, but also provides high-quality offline customer sources for the Autohome Space Station. In addition, Autohome can also leverage Ping An Property Insurance's offline capabilities to jointly build a comprehensive specialist team for dealer 4S stores.
In Wu Tao's view, Ping An Group has nearly 230 million individual customers, over 7000 offline branches, and a sales and service team of over 1.3 million. It has built a full process automotive service ecosystem, including property insurance, automotive financing leasing, and automotive insurance. These resources will become a unique competitive advantage for Autohome.
Some analyses also point out that from the job structure of Longquan and Wu Tao, in the future, Autohome will accelerate its integration into the automotive ecosystem of Ping An Group and further strengthen the integration of internal resources of Ping An Group.