DAY 4 Local Unicorns
Personally, I found the last day of our journey maybe the most interesting. We got to meet four different companies that are really no start-ups anymore, even though they behave and felt like ones. There was a strong emphasis on culture and taking care of not just all the employees but the communities around the company. In school you learn how there are societies that value individualism and then there are societies that value collective culture and in these types of visits one really understands the difference. Last January when I did a similar type of trip to Silicon Valley the talks were all about VC money, hero entrepreneurs and the need to have personal connections. In China, not even Jack Ma Alibaba founder was celebrated as a hero. Instead, on the Alibaba IPO it was the Alibaba customers ringing the bell not the leaders of Alibaba.
Youzan was first of the companies we visited. They are a SAAS company that is partially owned by Tencent platform to provide e-commerce solution to WeChat, so it competes with Alibaba. Youzan was like any other tech company out there with nice new office space with a gym and a play room. They are now listed to Hongkong stock exchange and their turnover is estimated to be $20M annually.
Next visit was on BroadXT that is building a smart street solution using 5G, self-driving buses and sensor technology. They are co-operating directly at the National level and their aim is to provide the chosen regions a solution that enables smart traffic, “digital rail” as they called it. The solution would combine everything from garbage trucks to delivery robots and smart parking into one solution, powered by 5G technology.
Third, we visited WeDoctor, a world leading medical health technology platform (Tencent-backed company). A company that is a living example how the European countries could also solve their problem of having enough doctors for the aging society. Smart combination of technology and physical places & equipment enables patients to get the type of help they need. WeDoctor has physical clinics where patients can see either Western or Chinese medical doctor. Each room has a wide screen that the doctor can then connect with specialists while having the patient in the room. This enables specialists to be located where ever it is suitable for them but still the patients have access also to special care. Having the general doctor there present then enables all the needed tests etc. to be taken in a correct way to guide the treatment. WeDoctor provides also a kit you can buy to home to connect with a doctor. This kit has the needed video connection tools but also basic medical devices that can measure eg. blood pressure if needed. To reduce the need to build full hospitals everywhere, they provide a light clinic that is a meeting room size room that can be placed eg. to local grocery store. They had a self-service kiosks that prescription medicine can be delivered that works with facial recognition to avoid any misuse and a for rural areas they provide a truck that has all the basic equipment’s as well as full videoconference tools to connect with specialists. The company is lead by using real time data and the moment we were visiting the HQ, over 300k doctors were online helping almost 1m patients.
Last visit was to AI company called iFLYTEK that is the fourth biggest AI platform in China, after Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu. IFLYTEX works with government and provides for example solutions on education, where it can enable each student to have personalized homework based on the individual performance.
What an amount of ambition, execution and team work for one day.