Qinglang Intelligent Li Tong 11 years of entrepreneurship is still financing? In 2019, the revenue of food delivery robots was only $14 million

Operator Finance Network Intern Yang Lin/Wen

Recently, at the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas, Qinglang Intelligent brought the new generation of food delivery robot T8 for the first time in the field of vision of global visitors, attracting great attention because of its cute appearance, advanced technology and high performance. Speaking of Qinglang Intelligence, everyone may feel relatively strange, in fact, this company is the founder of Haidilao smart restaurant robot, and the founder of this company is named Li Tong, and today the operator financial network tries to sort out his experience for you.

There is little background information about Li Tong, he graduated from Huazhong University of Science and Technology with a master's degree in 2009, under the supervision of Professor Cheng Shijie, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and an expert in artificial intelligence.

He achieved excellent results during his college years and served as the leader of the robot team of the science and technology innovation base. During his studies, he became interested in AI algorithms.

After graduating from graduate school, Li Tong worked at the Incubation Team of Microsoft Asia Academy of Engineering, responsible for software development in the robot OS project Robot Studio and the mobile Internet FonePlus project, and then served as the manager of the R&D department of Shanghai Guangmaoda Partner Robot Co., Ltd., directly leading the research and development of AS-MF09, AS-EI and other systems.

After accumulating years of experience in robot research and development, in 2010, he established Shanghai Qinglang Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., focusing on the field of unmanned delivery of service robots.

In the second year, the company experienced a major setback. Because of the difficulty of promoting new products, sales partners and technical support have left one after another.

In order to persevere, Li Tong, who came from research and development, could only turn to sales with his scalp. For the days of sales, Li Tong described it this way: "Our robot products at that time were used in schools, and I put small robots in aluminum alloy boxes by myself, like the male protagonist in "When Happiness Comes Knocking", for several months in a row, carrying small boxes to visit various schools every day, and being rejected again and again. “

The first order he signed was at a central primary school in a town in Shandong. After taking a train from Shanghai, changing buses, changing cars, and waiting at the school gate for three or four hours, I finally met the principal and sold for 60,000 yuan.

But even on such a day, Li Tong also insisted, and later a large part of Qinglang's revenue was based on the sale of robots, and now Qinglang Robot has iteratively released 9 products, and has achieved offline business scenarios.

In the new crown pneumonia epidemic, Qinglang has donated and landed robots to more than 50 hospitals and isolation points in more than 10 provinces and cities such as Hubei, Beijing, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Guangdong and Jiangsu in the hard-hit areas, and docked with Wuhan Huoshenshan and Leishenshan Hospital to provide emergency communication with medical-grade robot services and solutions.

According to Qinglang, its food delivery robots sell well in more than 50 countries around the world, accounting for 70-80% of the global catering distribution market share, and cooperative customers include Haidilao, Banu Mao Mao Hot Pot, Grandma's House, New White Deer Restaurant, Guangzhou Restaurant, etc. But the question is, how big is the market for this kind of food delivery robot, and can it support the future development of Qinglang?

Moreover, since its establishment in 2010, it has been more than 11 years, Andrang Intelligence is still in financing, and Qinglang Intelligence has announced that in 2018, the revenue is close to 100 million yuan, and the profit margin level is good. It's hard to feed a business at this scale that develops robots.

Later, in September 2021, Li Tong said that Kinlang Intelligent has provided robots and compatible solutions for more than 1,000 companies in more than 400 cities in China, and is currently operating in the United States, Canada, European countries, Japan, South Korea and other global markets. In 2019 alone, more than 3,000 robots for food and beverage delivery and shopping guides have been delivered, and about $14 million in revenue has been generated.

The annual revenue of food delivery and shopping guide robots is only $14 million, which shows that the scale of Qinglang Intelligence is really not large enough.

Now That Li Tong is only 40, his career is still in a golden upward period, and I believe that he will lead Qinglang Intelligent to go better in the future.