The return of talents to their hometown is the biggest dividend brought by rural e-commerce

Attracting talents to return home is the biggest dividend brought by rural e-commerce.

Had it not been for the Spring Festival return home this year to hear about the rural e-commerce start-up project, Luo Sha, a 26-year-old Dong from Guizhou, would still be working in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, 1300 kilometers from home. He works in the lobby of the hotel-like most of the hundreds of millions of migrant workers in China, they rush into the spring tide of Spring Festival travel every Spring Festival, returning to their hometown from the coast like migratory birds to briefly reunite with their relatives.

"the job in the city is stable, but it's not as good as starting a business on your doorstep. The e-commerce major I learned in university came in handy. I can accompany my parents and feel that I have a career of my own. " Said Rosa.

Luosha is the "trader" of the "Rural Taobao" service station in Wanshan District, Tongren City, Guizhou Province. With his knowledge of the Internet and e-commerce, he competed out four other competitors for this site in Alibaba's "rural partner" selection after the Spring Festival and embarked on the entrepreneurial road.

Rosa's job is to help villagers buy goods as rich as city dwellers through the Internet, earn income through backstage purchasing rebates, and help villagers sell mountain specialties online. E-commerce enterprises provide computers, LCD TVs, regular training and backstage technical support, and the local government provides subsidies and support policies for infrastructure, such as letting express delivery be delivered to the villagers' doorstep for the first time. In the past, they had to go to the town to pick it up, even to the county.

After 21 years of access to the Internet, China has become the world's largest online retail market. When the industry and consumption of first-and second-tier cities are changing in the Internet spring tide, the vast rural areas of China have not been fully awakened due to the relative weakness of logistics and network infrastructure. At present, the growth rate of online shopping in first-and second-tier cities has begun to slow, while small towns and rural areas are ushering in an explosive period.

According to a report released by McKinsey in February, although the current Internet penetration rate in rural China is only 19%, about 60% of rural digital consumers are using e-commerce and are as active as urban residents. The Ali Research Institute predicts that the total volume of China's rural e-commerce consumer market will exceed 460 billion yuan in 2016, and with the popularity of logistics and network infrastructure, rural online shopping is even expected to surpass that of cities in the next 10 to 20 years.

Internet companies have turned to the new blue ocean of the rural market to find room for growth. JD.com recently announced the development strategy of rural e-commerce, building "JD.com help service stores" and county-level service centers in rural areas. SUNING also announced in April that he would take the rural market as a major strategy this year and would set up his own service station in the fourth or fifth tier market. Alibaba Group launched the "Thousand Counties and villages" program last year, announcing that it would invest 10 billion yuan and set up 1000 county-level operation centers and 100000 village-level service stations within three to five years, covering 1/3 of China's counties and 1/6 of rural areas.

The business logic behind this is to take the e-commerce platform as the basis, break through the bottleneck of logistics and information flow and realize the two-way circulation of online goods to the countryside and agricultural products to the city by building a service network at the county and village levels.

In addition to scrambling to put slogans on the walls of the countryside, e-commerce companies began to look for e-commerce entrepreneurs locally. But soon they found that a large number of young people in rural areas went out to work for a long time, and it was common for women, children and the elderly to stay behind, and it was difficult to find people who were proficient in using the Internet.

Another reality is that with economic and social development, local governments in the central and western regions are also trying to attract young people to return home to start their own businesses, but the previous industrial base is often inconsistent with young people's willingness to work.

"in the past, there was a lack of suitable carriers to attract young people to return home. With the introduction of the Internet and e-commerce, young people are more willing to come back. Not only open an online store, e-commerce extends the logistics, packaging, marketing planning of the entire industrial chain can bring a large number of entrepreneurial opportunities. " Wu Zhaohui, executive deputy director of the Electronic Commerce Office of Tongren City, Guizhou Province, said.

Guizhou Province is promoting the return of talents to the "wild goose return project". In practice, Tongren City has reached a cooperation with e-commerce enterprises to mobilize college graduates and young people with skills and ideas to return home to start their own businesses. Since the end of 2014, 50 village-level rural Taobao service stations have been opened in Tongren, and 500 stations are planned to be opened this year.

"some entrepreneurs are mobilized through the'e-commerce lecture hall', and the government also has special departments to liaise with young migrant workers. More and more people are signing up, and there are usually four to five people competing for a position. " Wu Zhaohui said.

In Zhejiang, where e-commerce has a strong entrepreneurial atmosphere, returning college students are injecting the vitality of transformation and upgrading into the small-scale rural e-commerce "Taobao Village". At present, there are 212 large-scale "Taobao villages" in China, of which 62 are in Zhejiang. Lin'an Bainu Village, which is characterized by the processing and sale of nuts, is a representative, but over the years, the constraints of homogenized price war and lack of e-commerce talents have become more and more obvious.

Zhang Qing, secretary general of the Bainiu Village E-commerce Association, originally worked in finance in a listed company after graduating from university, but now she has returned to her hometown to start a business and opened a Taobao shop, introducing professional and technical personnel who are difficult to invite in the countryside, and connecting with the e-commerce platform to help the online shop in the village take the way of brand and characteristic.

More and more government departments have seen the driving effect of the Internet on young people returning home to start a business. The Department of Human Resources and Social Security of Zhejiang Province recently reached a cooperation with Alibaba, planning to train 50, 000 e-commerce talents in the next five years, promote 40, 000 rural e-commerce entrepreneurs and directly lead to 150000 jobs.

The "opinions on further doing well Employment and Entrepreneurship work under the New situation" issued by the State Council at the end of April pointed out that we should support farmers to start businesses online, vigorously develop "Internet +" and e-commerce, and actively organize innovative and entrepreneurial farmers to dock with enterprises, well-off villages, markets and parks, and promote the action of rural youth to start businesses and enrich the people.

However, the weak infrastructure and even the lack of some areas and the lack of industrial chain are all difficulties in front of us. In the rural areas of the central and western regions, some villages do not have network coverage. In some areas, the population density is small, the volume of express delivery is small, the logistics cost is high, and the express delivery site is difficult to sustain. From buying to selling, entrepreneurs have to help rural households sell agricultural products. Most of the companies in the packaging and preservation of agricultural products are not stationed in rural areas. As for food safety, the quality inspection of personal and household agricultural products is in urgent need of support. Some areas are trying to introduce third-party quality inspection agencies.

"Young people return to their hometown to start businesses to help farmers buy and sell, which brings more changes in consciousness. Farmers have never known the value of the Internet to wait and see, understand, and participate, and they will have new thoughts on agricultural products and agriculture, which will bring changes to the appearance of rural areas. " Wu Zhaohui said.