Text | Lü Pin
Edit | Cao Weiyu
Source | East Forty Article Capital, a subsidiary of China Investment Network
OPPO officially entered the 10 billion scale intelligent projection track.
According to Tianyan, recently, Shenzhen Huole Technology Development Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Huole Technology"), the parent company of "JMGO Nut Projection", has undergone industrial and commercial changes, and shenzhen has added shareholders such as Cruise Investment (Chongqing) Co., Ltd. After investigation, Cruise Investment (Chongqing) Co., Ltd. is the main body of OPPO.
It is worth noting that OPPO's shot is somewhat special compared to the past. OPPO investment mainly around the main line of the industry, most of them are concentrated in the early round, and this investment is not directly related to the main business, and the round after the rare E round, it can be seen that OPPO is becoming more diversified and broad in investment.
In addition, the intelligent projector is an emerging subdivision track, in this track, in addition to industrial capital such as OPPO and Alibaba, many VCs such as Dachen, IDG, Songhe and so on have also entered the game.
A micro-investment unicorn with 10 years of establishment and 10 rounds of financing
You may not be familiar with Huole Technology, but the mention of its brand "JMGO Nut Projection" must be a bit of an hearsay.
Favored by a number of first-line institutions, what kind of company is Huole Technology?
Let's start with the founders. Hu Zhenyu, the founder of Huole Technology, is a typical serial entrepreneur who has previously made an application similar to WeChat social function, and then sold it to a domestic Internet giant at a high price.
In 2010, the rich BAT almost infected all the Internet software, but there was no concept of intelligent hardware at that time, and Hu Zhenyu, who came from a software clerk, smelled the business opportunities of software and hardware system integration products, aimed at the projection of this "screen that has not been too concerned", and entered the intelligent projection track.
In 2011, Hu Zhenyu founded Huole Technology and plunged into the field of intelligent projection. In the past 10 years, Huole Technology has also become the head brand of domestic projectors, and many of its products are selling well. As of 2020, JMGO Nut Projection has won the first place in the "Tmall Double Eleven Projector" category for four consecutive years, and in 2021, Double Eleven has set a record of breaking 100 million in sales across the network in only 2 minutes.
But in fact, Hu Zhenyu is not smooth sailing on the entrepreneurial road of Huole Technology.
In 2014, Huole Technology was facing "life and death" - employee wages, social security and even have been in urgent need of blood transfusions. At that time, Huole Technology urgently needed an excellent product design, Hu Zhenyu finally persuaded Chen Xingbo, who was well-known in the design circle, to personally handle the work, and then Chen Xingbo also joined Huole Technology, injecting more supply chain and industrial design energy into the company.
All this also injected confidence into the capital, at the end of December of the same year, Huole Technology obtained a Series A financing of 60 million yuan from StarVC, Dachen Caizhi and IDG Capital. In the following years, Huole Technology maintained the rhythm of one round of financing every year.
At present, Huole Technology has 10 rounds of financing, including IDG, Dachen, Alibaba and other first-line institutions.
Since its establishment in 2011, Huole Technology has gone through 10 years, as a high-tech company specializing in the research and development and production of intelligent projection equipment, it is now a unicorn in the micro-projection (micro laser projection technology) industry, creating a smart home theater ecosystem integrating "terminal + content + platform + software".
At present, nut projectors mainly have four product lines: home theater series, portable theater series, laser TV series and smart wall series.
Capital grabs the beach tens of billions of tracks
Behind the many capital into Huole Technology is the quiet rise of the intelligent projector track.
According to the Lotto Technology report, the sales volume of China's intelligent projection market in 2020 was 3.72 million units, with sales of 8.78 billion yuan. It is predicted that the sales volume of China's intelligent projection market will reach 4.26 million units in 2021, an increase of 14% year-on-year, and the sales volume will reach 10.2 billion yuan.
Intelligent projectors are mainly divided into consumer-grade projectors and commercial projectors, and most of the domestic enterprises are concentrated in consumer-grade home projectors. In the context of consumption upgrading, home projectors have obvious cost-effective advantages compared with traditional liquid crystal display technology. However, at present, home projectors are still in the early stages of domestic and foreign markets, and the development space is huge.
In the field of home projectors, there have been many players running out in China, such as the "first share of intelligent projection" pole rice, followed by nuts, dangbei, and peak rice.
As the industry leader, Jimi Technology has received three consecutive rounds of investment from Baidu and landed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in March 2021, with a current market value of more than 20 billion yuan.
Dangbei Network, which was also founded in 2013 with Jimi, although there are not many financing rounds, it has the blessing of Shunwei Capital and Suning Tesco. It is worth noting that Shunwei Capital invested in Dangbei in 2015, and in 2016, together with Xiaomi, invested in the angel wheel of laser projection TV developer "Fengmi Technology". In addition, Xiaomi is also building its own projector products internally.
Relying on the capital behind the blessing, domestic brands continue to rise, even in the face of the strong attack of overseas brands, they can still maintain the continuous improvement of market share.
According to the shipment volume of various brands in the domestic market in the figure below, it is not difficult to see that nuts and extreme rice have quickly seized the market share of the consumer-grade intelligent projection industry. Nuts rose rapidly in 2019 as a dark horse of the year, ranking among the top five. By the first half of 2021, nuts and rice shipments together accounted for 45%.
OPPO shot: more, more wide, wider
In this case, OPPO is also worth paying attention to.
OPPO itself is not unusual to do investment, but most of them are mainly in the early stage, and this time it has invested in intelligent projection companies after the E round, which means that its investment is more diversified, the scope is wider, and the stage is wider.
In addition to nuts, OPPO also invested in Cloud Mouse Technology, a well-known domestic sweeping robot solution provider and PCBA manufacturer, in April 2021.
This wave of operations seems to have a bit of a millet meaning. OPPO's investment layout coincides with Xiaomi's high degree, and about 13 companies are also invested in Xiaomi portfolio. Oppo doesn't want to imitate Xiaomi, lay out the ecological chain, and make efforts to make smart homes?
But in fact, OPPO and Xiaomi's investment style is not the same. Xiaomi's investment is mostly product-oriented, serving the Xiaomi ecosystem, while OPPO is more focused on technology.
Huole Technology looks like an intelligent hardware on the surface, but in fact, it has a certain technical content. There is a saying in the industry, "The core of the projector is the optical machine, and the core of the optical machine is the chip". As early as 2018, Nut announced at its autumn new product launch that it had mastered the independent research and development rights of the two core components of the optical machine and the lens, breaking the monopoly of foreign brands in these two technologies.
Including the above-mentioned Cloud Mouse Technology is also a technology provider. From this perspective, OPPO's investment in Huole Technology is still around the "technology" line.
Why say "still", look at OPPO's past investments is clear.
The investment network has been in the "this CVC is really exciting, Duan Yongping big apprentice to do investment, even grab 5 A rounds | Negative nova" details OPPO's investment play. Before 2020, OPPO shot less and no fixed style, but after 2020, the "lack of core" forced OPPO to determine the investment strategy of science and technology as the main line, the pace of shooting began to become faster, the intensive layout of cutting-edge technology in the upstream of the electronic industry chain, the average month to sell 1-2 related companies, the number of investment is 5 times that of the past four years.
OPPO's investment "weapons" are also becoming more and more comfortable. According to incomplete statistics, OPPO has shot more than 20 times since 2021, and there are cases almost every month, and the number and frequency are unprecedented.