This Week In China (2/17–2/23)
Top news in China this week
5G Satellite
The first Chinese privately-owned 5G satellite was launched, and signal transmission testing was successful. The Moon, developed by Galaxyspace, was launched on January 16th. And after reaching stable orbit for a month, the satellite’s low-frequency channels testing was successful. This satellite will be able to cover up to 30,000 square kilometers of area, approximately the size of 50 Shanghai. This signals a breakthrough in telecom technology in China. Other companies from around the world have recently established success in this area as well, including SpaceX, British telecom company OneWeb, and Canadian telecom company Telesat.
Read our source (in Chinese) »
Autonomous Vehicle
Meituan is using driverless cars to deliver groceries on public roads for the first time. Affected by the virus outbreak, more people are ordering groceries online. As delivery demand increases rapidly in the past weeks, companies are prompted to adapt innovatively.
In Beijing, Meituan launched its driverless delivery cars on public roads. The firm is targeting a contactless delivery method to minimize potential infection through human interaction. With success in its first deliveries, Meituan is planning to expand the service to more cities and also to cover more types of items beyond fresh produce. Other major vendors are also taking advantage of this opportunity to expedite their driverless delivery programs, including JD and Suning.
Read our source (in Chinese) »
Huawei
Huawei has acquired 91 5G commercial contracts and shipped over 600,000 5G base stations. Huawei executives Ding Yun also announced the firm would invest 20 million USD in the next five years to support 5G applications. Currently, Huawei is one of the leading players in the 5G sector, along with industry veterans Nokia, Ericsson, and Qualcomm. According to WIPO, Huawei owns the most 5G core patents in the world. With over 16,000 5G patents under its belt, Huawei is beating any of its competitors by over 30% quantity-wise.
Read our source (in Chinese) »
Industry insider Robotics
Service robots play an important role in assisting contactless services during the epidemic, especially in hotels. The maturity of technologies such as AI and service robots have developed rapidly, causing McKinsey Global Institute to predict that all service robots will have an economic impact of 1.1 to 3.3 trillion USD annually by 2025.
Especially during the epidemic, the application of service robots has proven to be a valuable asset in asserting contactless management of patients. Among these robots, ones that work in hotels are especially crucial. For example, at the end of January 2020, Huazhu Group requested the employment of service robots at more than 5,700 hotels under its wing to reduce the risk of virus transmission and cross infection. Services included delivery and room service.
Read our source (in Chinese) »
Coronavirus Effects
The catering industry alone loses more than 500 billion RMB (71 million USD) in 7 days, should the retail industry keep on fighting this long, strenuous battle with the coronavirus? Retail is among the most sensitive sectors to incidents such as natural disasters and diseases. Despite the positive aspects of these events for the retail industry, such as the hoarding of supplies to endure disasters, the impacts are nevertheless a double-edged sword.
Take the coronavirus, for instance, substantial internal pressure took place in many retailers in which the supply chain was cut off, costs for employment and maintenance skyrocketed, causing insufficient workforce, cash flow ran dry, etc. External pressures include severe market supervision, customer criticism, and opinions, which can often be detrimental to the company.
Read our source (in Chinese) »
Fundings this week
Fitness Online
TT Live Fit, a one-year-old China-based online fitness platform, raised tens of millions of RMB in A round funding at the end of 2019, led by Panda VC, Fellow Capital, and its previous shareholders, Plum Ventures. The platform utilizes a model of subscription-based service with a price of 30 RMB (4 USD)/month. Subscribers enjoy free online fitness courses as well as discounts on collaborative content.
According to its founder, Jason, the platform has experienced a 20% growth rate in its user-base per week since December 2019, which has become the daily growth-rate presently. It is expected that the platform will have more than one million registered users in the second quarter of this year. Furthermore, the repurchase rate of paying customers is about 80%, while the repurchase rate for trial customers is 90%.
Read our source (in Chinese) »
Online K-12
Guorou Net, a Guangzhou-based online school brand, has completed Series A and A+ funding backed by Crystal Stream Capital, Toutoushidao Fund, ZhenFund as well as Welight Capital, with the total amount the funding at more than 100 million RMB (over 14.3 million USD).
Guorou Net is an online tutoring school for elementary and middle school students, which is jointly founded by the top 5% elite teachers in the industry and Alibaba’s artificial intelligence expert team. At present, it has completed all systems of discipline in the elementary stage, and the number of paying users has reached hundreds of thousands. By targeting specific regions, Guorou Net’s online market share in some areas is the highest.
Read our source (in Chinese) »
E-Commerce
OrderPlus, a cross-border e-commerce company, has secured 100 million RMB (14.3 million USD) in Series B funding led by Cathay Capital.
Founded in 2014, OrderPlus partners with more than 50 garment and cosmetics factories in China. OrderPlus sells those products under its brands through 700 independent websites for consumers, mainly in Europe, America, and Southeast Asia. In 2018, OrderPlus’s revenue exceeded 1 billion RMB (142 million USD), achieving a profit of 100 million RMB (14.2 million USD).
In 2018, the scale of China’s export cross-border e-commerce transactions increased 12.7% to 7.1 trillion RMB, of which B2C cross-border e-commerce exports accounted for about 19.7%, nearly 1.4 trillion yuan.
Read our source (in Chinese) »
Education
Whales English Elite Education (Jinyu Peiyou), a Beijing-based English education brand, has received 100 million RMB (14.3 million USD) in Series B funding led by Sino-ocean Group, with the participation of Hike Capital and Fresh Capital.
Whales English is positioned as “Foreign Teacher Elite Education”, targeting young children aged 3–18. It chooses the North American original textbooks and three fixed (fixed teacher, fixed companion, fixed timetable) mode, to help children improve their general English ability.
Read our source (in Chinese) »
More Buzzes Online Medical
Just as how SARS cultivated the general adoption of online shopping, which made Alibaba, the coronavirus has boosted the online medical consultation industry, which helped Ping An Good Doctor. It has ushered in opportunities, increasing its user scale and average daily use time. After all, these online medical consultations, as well as online medicine sourcing, have greatly relieved the pressure of insufficient immediate resources in medical institutions.
According to its 2019 financial report, Ping An Good Doctor gained a total of 5.065 billion RMB (721 million USD) in revenue, a 52% increase year-on-year, while the net loss continued to narrow at a decrease of 18% year-on-year.
Read our source (in Chinese) »
Apple
More Apple stores have reopened in China, but its supply chain is still under stress. Apple previously closed all its retail stores in China due to fear of coronavirus on February 1st. But starting last week, Apple has slowly reopened 17 of its stores but requires masks and temperature checks before customers can enter. Apple CEO Time Cook admitted that the company would likely miss its Q2 earning guidance due to sales loss from store closure. On top of that, a major manufacturer of Apple products, Foxconn, is having difficulties returning to full productivity, so it is predicted that beginning sales of iPhone 9 will be pushed back into March.
Read our source (in Chinese) »
Happy Weekend!
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