Prompt Cast
Trends in China Tech for 2021: Consumer brands, community group buying, and electric vehicles
TLDR In this special episode of Acquired, the hosts collaborate with Ray Ma and Yinglu from the TechBuzzChina podcast to discuss the trends in China Tech for 2021. Some of the key trends include consumer brands being run like internet companies, the rise of community group buying, and the prioritization of electric vehicles in China's efforts to address climate change and national security.
Timestamped Summary
00:00
In this special episode of Acquired, the hosts collaborate with Ray Ma and Yinglu from the TechBuzzChina podcast to discuss trends in 2021 for China Tech and how their research process works.
05:48
Ray Ma and Yinglu from the TechBuzzChina podcast discuss their personal experiences in China tech and how the industry has evolved over the past decade, including the influx of capital and changing social attitudes towards entrepreneurship.
11:31
Consumer brands being run like internet companies, community group buying, and the rise of electric vehicles and autonomous driving are some of the trends to watch in China tech.
17:30
Genki Forest, a Chinese beverage brand, differentiates itself by constantly testing and iterating on a wide range of products, with only 5% making it into mass distribution channels, demonstrating how Chinese companies are applying internet software product iteration to physical products using their advanced and flexible supply chain.
23:23
Chinese fashion brand Xi'en is a success story of overseas direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands coming out of China, with a flexible supply chain that allows for ultra-fast fashion production and just-in-time creation and design of products, attracting a growing proportion of Chinese DTC fashion brands benchmarking themselves to Xi'en.
29:09
Chinese DTC brands aim for a gross profit margin of 30-40% in order to be competitive in the market, but when larger players like Xiaomi enter, they push prices down to around 5%, leading to a race to the bottom in terms of margins; in China, there is a merging of online and offline retail experiences, with highly digitized offline stores that serve as pickup points for online purchases and offer personalized recommendations and promotions based on user behavior.
34:43
In China, personalized content and promotions are common in e-commerce and gaming companies, and operations remain important, even in platforms like Billy Billy, which is known as the YouTube of China for Gen Z.
40:08
Community group buying is a distribution play in China where platforms like Meituan, PDD, and Alibaba aggregate demand for unbranded products, starting with fresh groceries and expanding into other goods, and save money on last-mile logistics by sending the products to customers for self-pickup the next day.
46:20
Group buying platforms in China, such as PDD and Meituan, handle the entire procurement process, including cold chain logistics, for perishable foods, while pushing the last mile delivery onto users, making it a promising sector for investment.
52:23
China is prioritizing electric vehicles as part of its efforts to address climate change and national security, with major brands like Huawei, Xiaomi, and DJI investing in the EV market.
58:08
Chinese companies like Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent are investing heavily in autonomous driving and electric vehicles, with Baidu working on both the software and infrastructure for autonomous driving and China potentially having a strong chance of being the first country to achieve level five autonomy.
01:03:54
China has been working on antitrust laws for several years, with the first version passed in 2008, and recent actions against platform companies like Alibaba are aimed at protecting consumers and vendors from abusive practices.
01:09:41
China is focused on catching up with the rest of the world and is determined to enforce fair practices among big tech companies, which is seen as a positive development by investors and consumers.
01:15:12
Chinese entrepreneurs are driven by a sense of existential anxiety and are willing to invest in various industries, including fintech, hospitals, and potentially electric vehicles, in order to make money and adapt to constant change.
Categories:
Technology
Business
