On April 25, Shen Yanan, the former president of Li Auto, completed an angel round and Pre-A round of financing for the smart residential brand "Habit@ Habitat", with a total of 653 million yuan. The Pre-A round was led by Li Auto, followed by Roborock, New Taipei Science and Technology Innovation Fund, etc.
This round of financing will be used for the research and development of smart housing products, the research and development of digital design systems, and the layout of national delivery infrastructure. Habitat is a technology company focusing on life intelligence, which is different from other decoration companies, innovatively applies highly integrated module design, and provides home users with new decoration options with complete design and delivery of intelligent new residential products.
As the co-founder and president, Shen Yanan has led Li Auto from 0 to a successful IPO, and he himself has strong supply chain integration capabilities. Most of the other core teams of Habitat come from top universities such as Harvard, Tsinghua University, Peking University, Cornell University, etc., spanning high-end intelligent manufacturing, Internet, real estate and other fields, and the design team is led by international design masters. Up to now, the habitat has more than 500 employees, of which about 50% are R&D personnel.
It is estimated that by 2025, the overall size of China's home decoration and home furnishing market will reach about 5 trillion yuan. Despite this, the home improvement industry is currently highly lacking in scale effect and is in a state of "big industry and small company". Habitat hopes to make breakthroughs and innovations in business models and achieve "scale" in business through "productization". Shen Yanan, the founder of Habitat, believes that building decoration into a product is a new opportunity for innovation and iteration of the entire industry.
△ Habitat smart housing products
Different from traditional decoration services, Habitat starts from the complete experience of users, and has been committed to providing a complete solution of smart housing software and hardware decoration since its inception, providing users with complete smart housing products. Habitat creates a complete product for users from five dimensions: whole-house environment, spatial layout, living function, whole-house intelligence and aesthetics, so as to enhance the living experience.
Among them, L32 (for 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms) is the first product created by Habitat for home users based on the above five dimensions.
△ iVD digital twin design system
Like building a whole vehicle, Shen Yanan and his team self-developed almost all the hard-decorated modules that constitute a home, cabinets and other woodwork are like the body-in-white of a car, fresh air, lighting, and water purification are equivalent to the "three electrics" system on the car, and finally integrated into a set of three-bedroom and two-bathroom "smart new residence" products, with an area of 90 square meters priced at 399,800 yuan. Achieve 55 working days of delivery.
▼ A set of home decoration design made by Lu Zhirong for the habitat
Behind this, Habitat has developed its own Habit iVD (intelligent Virtual Design) digital twin design system, which allows users to roam the digital home in the virtual world, so as to explore the aesthetic design and spatial layout, and better understand hidden projects such as water and electricity, confirm the quotation and construction schedule of all decoration materials of the home, and fully control the environmental protection of the new home.
Shen Yanan introduced that they dismantled the entire decoration project into more than 1,000 modules, for example, the kitchen was divided into modules such as cooking, sink module, worktop and refrigerator, all of which were digitized, and each design directly dragged modules into the system, which greatly improved efficiency. Another benefit of modularity is that products can be produced without stopping, with guaranteed delivery times and price transparency.
We have noticed that in the whole house smart track, companies such as Oribo, Lumi, Haier Smart Home, Huawei and other companies have already deployed scenario-based intelligence, and on the basis of continuing to create popular products, they have continuously improved the integrated platform and whole-house smart solutions, and continuously expanded sales and delivery terminals in various places, in an effort to provide high-quality delivery results.
After a few years of development, these companies have achieved a certain amount. But there are also many obstacles to growth, and everyone is launching an offensive to win the attractive market high ground in every possible way. At the same time, various forces are also working hard to build a fully interconnected ecosystem, such as Huawei's ecosystem, Xiaomi's ecosystem, and Oribo's system, but it will take a little time for products to be efficiently connected to each other. More interconnection is still reflected in the same brand and among alliance members.
It seems that Shen Yanan has a lot to do, in addition to integrating some supply chain brands, he tries to cover the entire home improvement industry chain, some products should be independently developed, the entire decoration process is covered, and he tries to do better than the existing enterprises in every link with more certainty, and even do his own whole house intelligence, which is undoubtedly a very large and imaginative plan.
From the current situation described by Shen Yanan, the products he launched are expected to win the recognition of some customers, and it is not a problem to open the situation in the early stage, but whether it can be replicated on a large scale, how many customers' orders can be carried at the same time and ensure the delivery that meets expectations is the real test.
There has never been a shortage of challengers in the trillion-dollar home improvement market, and Shen Yanan is not the first, nor will he be the last. He had to deal with a sluggish housing market, an imperfect supply, and competitors who were much bigger than himself.