Douyin purchased a land parcel in Wuhan for 20.56 million yuan, and plans to invest 1.1 billion yuan to build its Central China headquarters.

On August 24, an industrial land parcel in Wuhan was auctioned off, and the winning bidder is Wuhan Guangyu Zhigu Technology Co., Ltd.

Location of the land parcel

Judging from its shareholders, it has a strong background. Equity information shows that it is 100% held by Hubei Juliang Engine Technology Co., Ltd. Tracing further upward, its actual controlling entity is the Douyin Group (hereinafter referred to as "Douyin").

Source: Ai Qicha

This land parcel is located on the north side of the East Square of Wuhan East Railway Station. According to market information, after acquiring this land, Douyin will build its Central China regional headquarters here. As early as the end of July, a citizen consulted on the Wuhan City Message Board about the land that is exactly the scope of the Douyin plot auctioned today. The East Lake High-tech Development Zone responded that this plot is expected to introduce the headquarters office building of Douyin (ByteDance) Internet enterprise.

Source: the Internet

This settlement in Wuhan also marks that Douyin will usher in its sixth urban regional headquarters across the country. Previously, ByteDance has made layouts in Zhongguancun of Beijing, Nanshan of Shenzhen, Yangpu Riverside of Shanghai, Future Science and Technology City of Hangzhou, Pazhou of Guangzhou and other places, landing five major regional headquarters.

Different from the commercial service and financial land parcels that Douyin acquired in the other five cities, the land nature of the plot it obtained in Wuhan is relatively special, which belongs to industrial land. According to public information, this plot was originally planned as a financial supporting land, and the government adjusted it to industrial land this year. However, this plot is not used to build traditional factories, and its planned use is "social and economic consultation", which actually carries functions such as headquarters office and industrial services, creating policy conditions for the settlement of Douyin's Central China headquarters.

Source: Land Transfer Document

A more intuitive difference is the land price. The transaction price of this plot is only 20.56 million yuan, which is in sharp contrast to the land acquisition cost of often 1 billion yuan or even more than 2 billion yuan in Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai and other cities. In terms of unit price, according to the land area of about 15,810 ㎡ and the floor area ratio of no less than 2.0, its floor price is about 650 yuan per square meter, which is also far lower than the floor price of tens of thousands of yuan per square meter of regional headquarters in other cities.

Behind the low price, it is certainly related to the urban energy level and plot attributes, but the more critical reason may be the Wuhan municipal government's consideration of industrial support and investment attraction, to provide support for the introduction of leading head enterprises.

According to the requirements of the land transfer document, the construction of the plot must start within one year after the transaction, the completion acceptance must be completed within three years from the date of commencement, and the formal production and operation shall be realized within one year after completion. By this calculation, the operation time of Douyin's Central China regional headquarters is expected to be around 2030.

On August 21, on the official website of Wuhan Public Resources Trading Platform, a project tender announcement for "EPC General Contracting of the Second Phase Project of Wuhan East Railway Station Digital Entertainment Industry Base" was released. The construction site of this project is completely consistent with the plot that Douyin won today. The announcement shows that the total investment of this project is about 1.1 billion yuan, and the planned construction period is 990 days.

Source: Website of Wuhan Public Resources Trading Platform

In terms of location, the plot that Douyin acquired today belongs to the core area of Wuhan Optics Valley. Now locating its Central China regional headquarters here also has its practical logic.

First of all, Optics Valley is the concentrated area of Douyin (ByteDance)'s existing leased office resources in Wuhan. As its business base in Wuhan, it has a solid development foundation.

Secondly, the advantages of industrial clusters are obvious. The Wuhan East Railway Station section where the Douyin project is located is exactly the "Digital Cultural and Creative Industry Agglomeration Area" that Optics Valley focuses on building. The tracks such as live streaming, digital entertainment and new media are well matched with Douyin's business ecosystem. According to relevant media reports, this section also intends to introduce a number of leading cultural and creative enterprises such as Xiaohongshu, Bilibili and China Literature in the future.

Since 2018, Douyin (ByteDance) has made layout in Wuhan for nearly 9 years. It has gradually expanded from early content operation and technical support to multiple businesses such as Douyin E-commerce, Feishu and Ocean Engine. Since the beginning of this year, its layout pace in Wuhan has accelerated significantly. At the beginning of June, Wuhan Vector Engine Technology Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Volcano Engine, was registered and established, mainly engaged in cloud services and AI technical services, with its registered address at No. 473, Guanshan Avenue, Optics Valley, which is only about 2 kilometers away from the straight-line distance of the plot today.

Source: Ai Qicha

In the past year or more, Douyin's pace of land acquisition has accelerated. The Wuhan plot it won today is the third one it has bought this year. In the first half of the year, it invested nearly 6.1 billion yuan to acquire two plots in Haidian, Beijing. Last year, it successively won the plots in Pazhou of Guangzhou and Yuehai Sub-district of Shenzhen with more than 2 billion yuan. In the three years before that, Douyin's land acquisition records in the public land market were almost zero.

Of course, the regional headquarters it has settled in have different positioning.

For example, in East China, Douyin Shanghai Riverside Center, which is planned to be put into use in the fourth quarter of this year, not only has functions such as headquarters office, but also specially strengthens the positioning of "performance and release". For this reason, in addition to office and commercial supporting facilities, the project has also specially built a 3,000-square-meter performance center. In South China, the Shenzhen Houhai Center that has been put into operation is responsible for technical R&D and back-office support in the Greater Bay Area; the Guangzhou Pazhou Headquarters under construction is mainly responsible for e-commerce operation, life services and merchant ecology, and undertakes more front-office business exchanges and related display functions.

In the Central China region, after acquiring the land today, the settlement of Douyin's Central China headquarters has become a certainty.

From the perspective of layout, it may not only have the functions of regional management headquarters and traditional operation. More likely, it will combine the digital economy and cultural and creative direction of Wuhan East Railway Station, as well as the cloud service and AI technical service direction of the new subsidiary, to carry out new business exploration.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Future Habitat", the author is Future Habitat, and it is released with authorization from 36Kr.