Xiaomi's ecological chain adds "a lock" to bet on a number of venture capital-holding companies

[Abstract] A few days ago, smart lock company Yunding Technology won nearly C $100 million in C financing. Investors include Baidu Ventures, Xiaomi, Shunwei Capital and Shuanghu Capital. At this point, by the occasion of the C-round investment, Xiaomi finally took Yunding Technology into its own ecosystem.

While the concept of smart homes is hot, routers, smart speakers, smart phones, and so on have all become "entrance" contenders. However, in any case, the real physical entrance is still the lock, and today's door locks are rapidly intelligent, is attracting a large number of home appliance companies, Internet companies flock.

According to statistics, the current penetration rate of smart locks in developed countries such as Europe, the United States, Japan, and South Korea exceeds 50%, but the penetration rate in the domestic market is less than 3%. The industry generally believes that in the next five to eight years, the penetration rate of the domestic market is expected to reach about 50%.

Xiaomi's ecological chain expands again

According to incomplete statistics, there are currently 500 manufacturers and more than 1,000 brands in the field of smart door locks. As the most complete hardware ecosystem in the current millet, obviously will not miss this position. A few days ago, Smart Lock Company Yunding Technology has obtained nearly C $100 million in C financing. Investment parties include Baidu Ventures, Xiaomi, Shunwei Capital and Shuanghu Capital. At this point, by the occasion of the C-round investment, Xiaomi finally took Yunding Technology into its own ecosystem. “We will add the smart home locks of the Mijia brand in the future, and we will focus on the ultimate cost-effectiveness,” said Zhang Dongsheng, CTO of Yunding Technology, when interviewed by the reporter. “We belong to the relatively rare late-stage enterprises of millet investment because most of the millet This is an early vote, which also illustrates two problems. First, Xiaomi believes that their user base urgently needs this product, millet smart home layout is in urgent need of this product, and second, Xiaomi believes that next year will be the turning point of smart locks. In that year, we need to invest a team in advance to lay out this track. Smart lock is a very heavy industry. We have high requirements for the company's product technology, delivery service, and supply chain, so we have voted for it."

Before Xiaomi, there was already a lot of capital bet on this track. According to public information, Yunding Technology obtained Lenovo Star and Xianfeng Evergreen Evergreen Angel Investment in June 2014; in April 2015, it received US$15 million A round of financing from Midea Group and Lenovo Star; 3 In the month of March, Fosun Ruizheng obtained several tens of millions of yuan in round B financing. In March 2017, it received Jiashi Investment and Meixing 50 million yuan in B+ round of financing. "Our company is not a VIE structure. Our revenue this year is about several hundred million yuan, and we expect it to achieve annual profit next year," Zhang Dongsheng revealed.

In fact, Yunding Technology, which has endorsements such as Lenovo, Midea, Fosun, Red Star Macalon, Xiaomi, Baidu Ventures, etc., already occupies 60% of the market share of smart lock B-end market, and after the investment in the millet ecosystem, The C-side market is even more promising. “At present, the entire intelligent door lock industry is growing at a rate of 300% per year. Our speed exceeds this. We have more than 600,000 units of 2B sales this year, and we will certainly exceed 1 million units next year. Our expectation is that we will exceed 1.5 million units. Our 2C brand has just been launched this year, and hopes to have a 5 to 10 times growth next year, with sales of 500,000 to 100 million units,” Zhang Dongsheng said.

As a C-end product, channel and brand endorsement are the most important, and this is precisely what Xiaomi is good at and is also valued by Zhang Dongsheng. “We have become extremely valuable to us after becoming Xiaomi’s ecological chain company. There is a saying, this is called sync resources.We currently have this product already started to sell in Xiaomi's online brand, and it is also possible to enter Xiaomi's larger platform in the future, including Xiaomi Mall and Xiaomizhijia. The introduction of millet or rice door locks, which will certainly enter the millet's full line of channels, pushed to all users of millet.

Smart door locks favored by Baidu AI

As an investor in Yunding Technology's B-round, Fosun Ruizheng is also an important channel partner with Red Star Macalline. According to Zhang Dongsheng, Yunding Technology's C-side smart door locks have already landed in Red Star Meikailong stores across the country, as well as pre-installed in the real estate projects of Fosun. “70%-80% of the shipments of the entire lock industry are front-loaded. Although the proportion of the retail end is higher and higher, the front-end of the engineering end is still a very important sales channel, so we are now in the country. The major real estate developers are cooperating."

In the area of ​​rental apartments, Yunding Technology is even more eye-catching. According to data from Yunding Technology, in the rental apartment market, cooperation has been reached with the Chain Home Furnishings, Park Yu, Hung Hom Apartments, Xiangyu, Piggy Short Term Rental, etc. The number of Yunding Co-ops has exceeded 600, and the amount of equipment installed More than 800,000 units.

The leading investor of this financing, Baidu Ventures Liu Wei, pointed out: “Smart home is an important direction. With the gradual maturity of AI technology, new smart home hardware can better sense user needs, monitor home security, and users. Convenient interaction, adapting to more diverse tasks, and starting to quickly enter the home, will produce smart home device companies similar to the previous generation of home appliance giants, and door locks will become intelligent products that require the highest security and reliability in the home. Enter an important entrance to smart homes and home security.”

Zhang Dongsheng said: “We did a good job of locking the door. We did the iphone for door lock industry, and did our first brand of door lock industry, similar to Gree’s status in air conditioning, or Dajiang’s position in drones. We only need to do this thing well. For us, this matter is big enough.” (Wen Jun)

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