Editor's note:
The science and technology innovation track is becoming a target for urban competition.
Shaanxi has many colleges and universities, leading scientific research achievements in the country, talent reserves and output are at the forefront, and with many endowment advantages, Shaanxi's scientific and technological innovation power has been accelerated, enabling enterprises to develop resiliently, and the industrial competitive advantage has become increasingly significant, and the regional competitiveness has been continuously highlighted.
At the same time, Shaanxi's top-level design attaches great importance to promoting the science and technology industry and the real economy, and reserves the seeds of science and technology innovation for the capital market.
In August 2022, Shaanxi Province successively launched the second "three-year action plan" to promote the listing of enterprises, and the provincial local financial supervision and administration bureau continued to innovate and improve government service measures, and urged high-quality enterprises to accelerate their listing in the multi-level capital market. The listing of science and technology enterprises will feed back to industries and entities, optimize innovation-driven efficiency, and form a virtuous circle.
Under the guidance of the Shaanxi Provincial Local Financial Supervision and Administration Bureau, the third season of "Science and Technology Innovation Planet" was launched, and in-depth dialogue with the founders/chairmen and other executives of the company.
From a professional financial perspective, we will gain insight into the core advantages of the enterprise, decode the growth logic, show the real scientific and technological innovation, provide value information for the market and investors, and promote local high-quality scientific and technological enterprises, attract national and even global visions, and focus on the hot land of scientific and technological innovation in Shaanxi.
In 2023, the robot industry will coexist with competition.
The market's perception of robots has changed from a wait-and-see to a consensus, and continues to heat up in the enthusiasm of capital, all kinds of players continue to enter the market, industry competition is further intensified, and some manufacturers even exchange volume for orders at low prices.
Even if we have the will to use technology to break the shackles, it still needs time to test.
For Zhang Zhaohui, founder of Xi'an Youai Zhihe Robot Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Youai Zhihe"), 2023 is actually a harvest year: "brushing face" in phenomenal science fiction movies; iterative scheduling system, which can support the unified deployment and management of up to 1,000 robots; being elected as a national specialized and new "little giant"; revenue and orders have doubled year after year, and overseas markets have been successfully developed, and financing is not as urgent as in previous years, indicating that its products and technologies have been recognized by customers and can realize its own hematopoietic cycle.
In the seven years of entrepreneurship, although the process has been full of ups and downs, the overall positive feedback is greater than the negative feedback. In the face of intensified industry competition in the future, Zhang Zhaohui also said frankly that he will spend more efforts to help the upstream achieve integration and upgrading on the basis of doing a good job in its own business, and promote downstream customers to achieve digital or intelligent transformation and iteration faster.
Optimistic about the industrialization of robots
The story of the establishment of Youai Zhihe also starts from the period of study at Xi'an Jiaotong University.
Born in 1992, Zhang Zhaohui has been studying the field of mechanical engineering and automation at Xi'an Jiaotong University during his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees. During his Ph.D., Zhang Zhaohui's experimental group researched the autonomous positioning and navigation of mobile robots, and how to realize the landing of mobile robots has become a problem that Zhang Zhaohui has been thinking about.
"Since I love this thing very much, and I am good at researching this, and I am also very optimistic about the possibility of industrialization of robots for a long time in the future, I did the industrialization of mobile robots when I came out. In 2017, Zhang Zhaohui led four students in the same laboratory to form Youai Zhihe, which was strongly supported by his mentor Professor Mei Xuesong, and served as the company's chief scientist to provide technical support.
Contrary to the determination of entrepreneurship, the industry was in a delicate tug-of-war at that time: after the concept of service robots was popular in the market, it was still a gimmick to land, and the market heat gradually cooled.
Zhang Zhaohui told the "Daily Economic News" reporter, "To be honest, it was not a good time at that time, and the entire industry can be described as walking on thin ice, but several of our founders feel that this time is very good." Because the robot itself is actually a step by step, it is a career that has to be done for a long time. Only when the industry cools down, can we better pay attention to technology and industry landing. ”
At the same time as the heat of the track is cold, there are also blurred boundaries of marketization and uncertain layout direction. "We have an open-ended view of this matter, so we look for scenarios for robots to land based on the company's business. ”
Within two years of its establishment, Youai Zhihe has completed the smooth delivery of two major customer scenarios, Michelin tire inspection and customs contraband inspection, which has opened a hole in the long-dormant robot track.
The story behind is logical, in just a few years, Youai Zhihe has been deeply involved in the semiconductor, 3C and other precision electronic manufacturing industries, and has become a leading player in the industrial mobile robot industry.
Because of its technical background, the technical foundation of the R&D team is very solid, and it has developed products with high precision, high stability and flexible scheduling. In addition, Youai Zhihe has also spent five or six years constantly extending and expanding, from the performance of the earliest robot single machine, to the scheduling and management of group multi-machine in the back, and then to the business management system, all of which are gradual.
At the same time, the founders of the technology school can deeply understand the essence of technology, so they can have a more accurate insight into the long-term development trend of the business, and can use the core advantages of the enterprise in the past to match the current strategy and growth direction, and find the core growth point in the future development.
"Our judgment of the market is relatively accurate, mainly in the semiconductor industry, new energy and other projects of the downstream industry, many peers have made robots into tools to serve all walks of life, but we do not think so, only deep in the industry, so that the robot really becomes a trustworthy emerging productivity, in order to win the depth of the market competition. ”
Rooted in the current industrial scene
In the case of the general cold heat of the track, it is not easy to get money for entrepreneurial projects, and the first financing that Youai Zhihe got was the investment fund of the founding team's alma mater.
In 2017 and 2018, Youai Zhihe successively completed seed rounds and angel rounds of financing, and with the industrialization of the company's projects, the investment events that began to occur in Youai Zhihe in 2020 can be described as "star-studded".
From 2019 to 2020, Youai Zhihe completed three rounds of financing, Pre-A round, A round and A+ round, attracting the blessing of many star capitals such as Lanchi Venture Capital and Zhen Fund, and there is no lack of participation from old shareholders.
In the next few years, the robot industry, which has broken through the bottleneck period of application landing, has gained unprecedented attention, and countless industrial capitals have gone to sea to grab high-quality robot start-ups with investors.
In the primary market, industrial mobile robots are one of the most lucrative areas.
At that time, as the head of the segment, Youai Zhihe realized the closed-loop implementation of intelligent upgrade solutions in more than 20 fields, and maintained the market first advantage in power plants, electronic semiconductors and other industry segments, received a lot of attention from capital, and completed Series B financing in 2021.
For a while, the industry bubble and heat flew together, but the merger of Youai Zhi was not carried away by the traffic dividend, but participated in the filming of "The Wandering Earth 2" by chance. In the whole film, a total of 14 models with a total of 16 robot "actors" are from Youai Zhihe, which has become one of the important forces supporting the movie science fiction universe.
After the release of the film, word-of-mouth and discussion continued to soar, and some hard-core "black technologies", including Youai Zhihe robot, attracted a lot of attention. What is further conveyed through the film is that robots already play an important role in less common scenarios in everyday life.
For example, in the real industrial scene, the Youai Zhihe inspection robot completes the all-weather autonomous inspection of the outdoor booster station, liberating manpower from the high-risk and complex environment, and greatly improving the inspection efficiency and accuracy;
The robot world presented in the movie also coincides with the original intention of Youaizhihe: YOUIBOT, that is, based on scientific theory and scientific logic, and rooted in the current industrial scene and the actual development of science and technology, the future society is a social relationship between robots and people that cooperate with each other in production and division of labor, and harmonious symbiosis.
In Zhang Zhaohui's view, excellent product quality, core technical barriers and landing capabilities are the core reasons for the influx of capital. On the one hand, investment institutions support enterprises through funds, including continuous investment in research and development, long-term business development, etc., and on the other hand, they also graft some enterprise management experience and industry resources.
It is worth noting that at the R&D level, Youai Zhihe also undertook the national key R&D plan and took the lead in launching the project of "Logistics Scheduling and Optimization Software Development for Semiconductor Manufacturing Smart Factory for Multi-machine Collaboration" to solve some scientific and technological gaps for the country.
Deep track
At present, the robot products of Youai Zhihe have been widely used in semiconductors, lithium batteries, 3C and other fields. On the one hand, it is used in smart factories and industrial logistics to do material circulation in the field, and the other field is mainly for the inspection and operation and maintenance of the energy industry.
These two major business lines are the fields that Youai Zhihe has continuously explored in the practice of the industry and will continue to expand in depth. With its breakthrough performance in advanced manufacturing intralogistics, in July 2023, Youai Zhihe was elected as a national specialized and special new "little giant".
"In the short term, the strategy of the whole company is to further deepen the industry, and now several industries should be able to support the rapid growth of the company's short cycle. At the same time, we also hope to make best practices: robots pay more attention to intelligence and refinement, and do not seek to blindly expand the scale. ”
Zhang Zhaohui also gave an example to reporters, Youai Zhihe achieved the basic improvement of the entire solution at the end of 2017, formed a new more modular and standard solution around 2020, and released the intelligent cluster scheduling system YOUIFleet5.0 in 2023, which is actually the in-depth research and development of the scheduling system from one to many.
The above-mentioned intelligent cluster scheduling system YOUIFleet5.0 can realize the global flexible scheduling of large-scale mobile robots in the factory through the cluster scheduling management of mobile robots and the interactive cooperation of heterogeneous mobile robots, ensure the stability and safety of mobile robot cluster operations, and optimize the handling efficiency of mobile robots in the whole field.
"It can support the training scheduling and management of up to 1,000 robots in the same area, which is a turning point in the entire industry. Zhang Zhaohui revealed to reporters.
Under normal circumstances, Youai Zhihe will spend a lot of time to investigate the feasibility of judging the needs of the industry, and in the process predict whether its own technical capabilities and product direction can meet the needs of the industry, and then design solutions around it. After successful adaptation, large-scale laying will be done.
If there are new scenarios, there will be some changes and adjustments in industry solutions, but at the beginning, the existing solutions and products have been standardized and implemented on a large scale, covering most of the market demand, and at the same time, according to the actual scenarios of customers, we will quickly build applications suitable for this industry solution.
Zhang Chaohui also said, "When everyone sees the product, in fact, we have spent a lot of energy to do all the work in the early stage. Thanks to the fact that more than half of the company's employees are R&D personnel, our main energy and investment are in product research and development. ”
Based on the rich accumulation in the field of advanced manufacturing, the products of Youai Zhihe have also achieved good results in the domestic and foreign markets.
In 2022 and 2023, Youai Zhihe has doubled its orders and deliveries, and has always maintained its market No. 1 advantage in semiconductors, power plants and other fields. At the same time, it has become a partner of many well-known brands at home and abroad, covering 26 provinces and cities in the domestic market, and its products are exported to more than 30 countries such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Spain, and Germany. By 2025, the proportion of overseas business will increase to more than 30% of total revenue.
Even though the results are quite good, but since the beginning of the business for 7 years, Zhang Zhaohui has always maintained a high sense of crisis, especially in the past two years, the "involution" of industrial robots is serious, and this sense of crisis is also increasing.
"If you look at it for a long time, the whole market is still very broad, and what we see is only the tip of the iceberg, which means that there will be more and more players in this track, and the next industry competition may be a more combined and difficult process. However, we will make greater efforts, not only to do our best, but also to help our upstream manufacturers achieve integration and upgrading, and truly promote downstream customers to achieve digital or intelligent transformation and iteration faster. ”