In 2021, the trend of scientific and technological innovation and entrepreneurship returning to the "hard core" is obvious, and the "hard technology" entrepreneurship is more and more favored by investors and the market, and what practical problems can be solved by scientific and technological innovation rather than what stories can be told.
In the era of digital economy, science and technology are more important, and the venture capital model is also changing.
In recent years, China's digital economy has flourished and has become a key force in economic growth and social development. The data shows that the scale of the digital economy will reach 39.2 trillion yuan in 2020, accounting for 38.6% of GDP and a growth rate of 9.7%.
China's consumer Internet has developed rapidly, and the scale of mobile payment and e-commerce has led the world, but there are still challenges in the development of "Internet + industry". In order to promote better services and integration of the digital economy into the new development pattern, "hard-core" science and technology innovation is critical.
This year, Nandu Kechuang Studio of Nandu Metropolis Daily launched the "2021 Kechuang China 50 Top Selection" activity. The tide of the development of science and technology enterprises rises and falls, but the innovative spirit embodied by science and technology figures is more valuable, or actively explores technological innovation, or actively explores the application of technology and dares to try new investment models. This has also become the original intention of Nandu to launch this activity.
During the selection and solicitation process, Nandu Science and Technology Innovation Studio joined hands with the data ecological partner Tianyancha to conduct data analysis and industry observation on sample enterprises that meet the "hard-core" science and technology innovation indicators, and deeply test the company's science and technology innovation degree and industrial investment, as an important indicator of character selection. Among them, the enterprise data of the four industry tracks of intelligent cars, robots, industrial Internet and components also reflect the development trend of the industry in the past two years.
01
Smart cars
The commercialization path is gradually clear, or to meet the secondary investment boom
2021 is a year of rapid development of the intelligent car industry, especially the related industrial chain in the field of automatic driving, and the formulation of policies and the recognition of the capital market fully reflect this.
As early as 2015-2018, the field of automatic driving ushered in rapid development, but due to the cold winter of the automobile market and capital market in 2019, coupled with insufficient technical maturity and limited ability to land scenarios, the automatic driving industry began to "fade". Starting in 2021, as smart cars have become the world's largest entrepreneurial outlet after the Internet and commercialization scenarios are expected to accelerate landing, the investment enthusiasm of venture capital institutions in the field of autonomous driving technology has been ignited again, and the field of automatic driving has also ushered in a second investment boom.
According to Tianyan, the vast majority of the companies registered in the smart car track of China's top 50 people in science and technology have obtained financing from venture capital or are on the road to IPO in 2021. Among them, taking the latest financing situation of the company as the standard, 15% of the companies have obtained B-level financing, 30% of the companies have obtained C-level financing, 15% have obtained D-round financing, and 10% of smart car companies have successfully IPO or are applying for IPO. It is worth noting that the financing amount of smart cars is also very considerable, and its units are mostly in "billions" units, and the vast majority are US dollars.
At the same time, the automatic driving industry has gradually formed a similar consensus: at present, automatic driving has completed the first half, the feasibility of automatic driving technology has been basically verified, and Demo has achieved small-scale landing; while the second half is a competition of cost control, scale and operational capabilities, while constantly adapting to the restrictions of relevant laws and regulations, looking for a balance between the two.
Some people in the industry believe that after the first round of voting, everyone is still relatively confused, and even many people in the industry think that automatic driving can never be achieved. But now look down, a lot of L2 level, L3 level automatic driving technology has begun to have revenue, including ports, mining areas, sanitation and other subdivisions to see the landing of profit models, business models, many companies have a certain hematopoietic ability.
In addition, 2021 is also known as the "first year of automatic driving listing", and a number of leading enterprises in autonomous driving science and technology have sent out signals of listing. In addition, around 2021, a new round of "cross-border into the car circle" phenomenon from more than 20 leading enterprises in the field of science and technology and the Internet broke out, boosting the market in the field of automatic driving.
02
Industrial Internet
The degree of verticalization is deeper and the industrial application is further advanced
2021 is the first year of the 14th Five-Year Plan. Under the background of relevant national policies and industrial transformation and upgrading, the development of digital economy is a key year for promoting digital industrialization and industrial digitalization, and accelerating the deep integration of digital economy and real economy. In this process, the industrial Internet will appear in the form of industrial digital ecological reconstruction, and it is expected to continue to maintain a good development trend.
The "China Industrial Internet White Paper" predicts that in 2025, the scale of China's industrial Internet market will reach 4 trillion yuan; in 2030, it will reach 12.22 trillion yuan. At the same time, the penetration rate of the domestic industrial Internet market will also enter a period of substantial growth, from the current 3% to 12% in 2025 and 38% in 2030.
Some insiders have analyzed that in the past decade, the consumer Internet has achieved explosive growth from 1 to positive infinity, the industrial Internet has only changed from 1-10 digital changes, and in the next decade, the industrial Internet and industrial manufacturing will erupt into multiple rising waves.
According to Tianyan, the vast majority of the companies registered in the industrial Internet track of China's top 50 people list of science and technology have received financing from venture capital between 2020 and 2021. Among them, taking the latest financing situation of the company as the standard, 25% of the companies have obtained B-level financing, 37.5% of the companies have obtained C-level financing, and 25% of the companies have obtained D-level financing.
Under the general trend of accelerating the development of cross-border integration and development of traditional industries and new technologies such as digital technology and information technology, the industrial Internet no longer only tells the story of technological empowerment, but puts more footholds into multi-angle and multi-field integration applications, such as in-depth applications in various vertical fields of automotive electronics, machinery manufacturing, textile and clothing, intelligent mining, logistics and transportation and other industrial Internet combined with 5G, blockchain integration technology applications. In this process, the industrial Internet has also continuously cultivated new tracks such as enjoy manufacturing, full life cycle management, crowdsourcing research and development, industrial live broadcasting, personalized customization, and C2M.
At the technical application level, the industrial Internet platform will also diverge, becoming more suitable for the demands and application scenarios of enterprises, and cloud-based services such as AI applications, big data processing, and digital modeling have been widely used by the industrial Internet, and the application of the industrial Internet in the form of cloud has become more extensive.
03
robot
Scientists are leading the way to grab the crown jewel of the beach manufacturing industry
Robots are the "pearl at the top of the manufacturing crown", which has become the consensus of the industry. Its research and development, manufacturing and application are important indicators to measure the level of scientific and technological innovation and high-end manufacturing in a country.
In the series of national policies for the high-quality development of manufacturing industry in "Made in China 2025" and later, China regards robots as one of the key strategies for the development of intelligent manufacturing. In September 2020, Guangdong cultivated 20 strategic industrial clusters from a high starting point. The robot industry has become one of the top ten strategic emerging industrial clusters in Guangdong Province.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, from 2016 to 2020, the output of industrial robots in China has grown rapidly from 72,000 sets to 212,000 sets, an average annual growth rate of 31%. With the continuous release of intelligent demand in medical, pension, education and other industries, service robots and special robots also contain huge development potential.
The robot track has received high attention from capital in the past two years. According to the data of Tianyancha, the robot track companies included in the selection have disclosed financing events on average more than 5 times per enterprise, and after the financing stage has reached the B round, they basically maintain more than one round of financing per year.
This shows that after the early investment in the first round of robot entrepreneurship boom, these science and technology innovation enterprises have been further recognized by more investors for their technology and application. From the perspective of financing amount, most of the latest round of financing of these companies has reached more than 100 million yuan, and many of them have the strength to impact listing.
How "hardcore" is the robot track? Combing through the science and technology innovation enterprises included in the selection can be found that most of them have founders or CTOs with strong professional and technical backgrounds.
According to the data of Tianyancha, the founders or CTO of the robot science and technology innovation enterprises included in the selection are mainly divided into three categories, one is directly led by professor-level experts in automation and machinery-related majors of well-known domestic engineering colleges to establish robot enterprises, and there are many such enterprises; the other is founded by graduates of colleges and universities with strong automation disciplines, and these graduates often participate in various robot competitions and rank among the best during school. In addition, there is also a professional founder + professor expert as a corporate technical consultant model. Overall, the "pile-up" of technical personnel from famous schools is also a distinctive feature of the robot track in the entire selection.
04
Components
The industry-wide "lack of core" opens a window for localization acceleration
In 2021, affected by the imbalance between market supply and demand caused by the epidemic, the tide of chip shortages swept through all digital intelligent industries, bringing a lot of trouble to enterprises in smart cars, consumer electronics, Internet of Things and other industries. In order to increase the development of "C*Core", not only the government departments are actively developing related industries through the formulation of policies, but the market also focuses on the field of components.
For example, microcontroller (MCU) chips have a wide range of market applications and are the key to the transformation of digital intelligence. Driven by the control of each MCU, the industrial control system, data acquisition system, automotive electronics and household appliances in the factory can be operated. In this selection of semiconductor and component tracks, there are many samples of science and technology innovation enterprises in this field, involving applications including intelligent car control, computing platform, intelligent cockpit, battery control unit, high-precision detection devices, etc.
According to research reports, MCU accounts for about 30% of all semiconductor devices equipped with a car, including power control, chassis and safety, battery management of new energy vehicles, intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit, etc. require the use of multiple MCUs. At the same time, MCU is the core of the Internet of Things, is the central processing element of various interconnected devices, has been widely used in the three areas of the Internet of Things - smart home, smart city, smart industry, 5G empowerment of the Internet of Things is expected to drive the rapid growth of the MCU market.
It is worth noting that whether in the field of automotive or consumer electronics, although upstream semiconductor and component companies are relatively "invisible", their profits are significantly higher than those of downstream industries. Research shows that the overall gross profit margin of global MCU manufacturers is as high as more than 60%. Therefore, while making localization breakthroughs in this field to support the "chain replenishment", enterprises are also expected to obtain considerable commercial value.
At the same time, the input threshold of upstream semiconductors and components is also very high.
The science and technology innovation enterprises included in the selection sample this time are reflected accordingly. Especially in the selection of enterprises highly related to semiconductors, according to the data of Tianyancha, these companies have carried out multiple rounds of financing since 2015, with an average disclosure of financing events of more than 6 rounds, and from the perspective of financing amount, most of the semiconductor chip science and technology innovation enterprises included in the selection have received more than 100 million US dollars of financing support in the B round stage, and the highest single financing amount has reached billions of yuan. Intensive capital investment has become a significant feature of the semiconductor and component tracks in this selection.
05
Industrial capital
The transformation from "Internet + consumption" to "Internet + industry"
Finance is the blood of science and technology development. Finding outstanding industrial investors is also an important direction of this event.
Take the intelligent automobile industry track as an example. Through statistical analysis of autonomous driving investment and financing events in the past 15 years, researchers learned that a total of 611 venture capital institutions or individuals participated in 393 investment events.
After comprehensive investment frequency, investment institution attributes and investment results, it can be found that behind a number of typical autonomous driving enterprises that are now developing, there are a number of well-known domestic investment institutions participating in the investment.
In fact, industrial investment, or expert investment, has become an important trend in the future. Judging from the venture capital track in the past 5-10 years, the track represented by Internet + consumption in the past was the most favored by venture capital, thanks to the fact that once the business model is quickly determined, the return on investment can be expected. In contrast, there is uncertainty in industrial investment, and the professionalism of investors is high.
A number of investment agency representatives said in the survey that there are not so many easy tracks at present, allowing investors to deduce business logic to make investment decisions quickly. It is becoming more and more difficult for general-purpose investors, and expert investors need to cultivate deeply in the industry for a long time and seize investment opportunities in the paradigm shift. Taking new consumption as an example, it is not only concerned about a certain product in front of consumers, but also paying attention to the changes in the industrial chain behind the product.
Relevant data show that as of the end of 2020, there are 24,561 registered private fund managers in the China Foundation Association, 196852 million private funds have been filed, and the scale of funds under management is 15.97 trillion yuan. Among them, there are 10,398 venture capital funds with a management scale of 1.6 trillion yuan. The number of newly raised funds raised by venture capital institutions was 757, and the total amount raised was 241.435 billion yuan, an increase of 48.2% over 2019. Investment projects are mainly concentrated in the IT, biotechnology/healthcare, semiconductor and electronic equipment industries.
In this regard, some insiders have analyzed that in the past, it was no longer feasible to use the theory of Internet investment thinking to invest in the technology industry. At present, many venture capital institutions have also begun to recruit compound talents with practical experience in the industry to do professional things.
The change in venture capital thinking is also related to changes in the market environment. Nowadays, the technology industry has developed to a certain extent, the model of innovative enterprises will be greatly reduced, the future investment object will be transformed into scientific and technological innovation enterprises, and is a technology moat and transformation ability of enterprises, but also to "sink", can not only look at the report and model prediction, to better understand the industrial development path and business model.
However, some venture capital representatives also stressed that "commercialization" is still the core essence of investment, and technology for technology cannot be commercialized, and it cannot be favored by capital.
Producer: Nandu Kechuang Studio
Event Planner: Ren Xianbo Zhen Qin Event Coordinator/Industry Analysis: Researcher Xu Jincong Chen Peijun
Data Partner: Sky Eye Check
Statistical explanation: The average number of financing is calculated from the establishment of the company, and the establishment time of the enterprises included in the sample analysis is after 2010.