Interview With Peng Bin, Founder And CEO Of Jifei Technology: Unmanned Agriculture Is Most Likely To Happen In China First

"We started out as geeks getting together to do things we love."

Looking back on the course of starting a business, Peng bin, founder and CEO of Jifei technology, commented on his "original intention".

Peng bin grew up in a small county in Fujian Province and graduated from Xi'an University of Electronic Science and technology. In 2007, he was particularly interested in computers and aviation models as a child, and founded xaircraft, the predecessor of Jifei technology.

Peng bin described xaircraft's ability to survive more through "diligence and Thrift" and "maintaining enthusiasm.". This phase lasted until 2013, during which the team realized net profit, and the rapidly evolving UAV industry gradually entered the explosion period. Mobile Internet and intelligent hardware start-up upsurge, capital is also increasingly active.

In 2014, xaircraft officially changed its name to "Jifei technology". In that year, the company conducted a round of financing and completed the transformation to a modern enterprise. Then, after several explorations and twists and turns, Jifei stepped onto the agricultural UAV track. In 2018, with a breakthrough in the agricultural UAV market, Jifei made a profit. Peng bin also has new requirements for the company: "we should not only look for industry for technology, we should look for technology for industry." In this year, the company of science and technology began to expand further.

In an interview with Peng bin this summer, he told several 21st century economic reporters who went to interview: "maybe one of the three of you is wearing a T-shirt related to Jifei." When interviewed again in November, "three people" became "two people.". In 2018, the UAV products of Jifei technology covered about 1 / 3 of the 37 million mu cotton fields in Xinjiang; in 2019, the proportion was 1 / 2. Pengbin didn't expect to be on the track a few years ago.

Peng bin likes to compare Jifei to a ship in wangyangzhong. He thinks that Jifei has landed twice in 2013 and 2018. When it last landed, it was China's largest agricultural UAV company, changing one of the most backward links in traditional agriculture. "We are a geek team. After landing and resupplying, we will re sail to the new world."

According to Peng bin, completely unmanned farmland "is most likely to happen in China.". In the past, developed countries have established agricultural mechanization system, which is difficult to completely change for a time. China just has a chance to change lanes and overtake.

"All in" to agricultural UAV track

21st century: what are the main difficulties in the first stage of entrepreneurship?

Peng Bin: the main difficulty is how to use our own technology to make products. Can the products be recognized? Can profit be generated to support the development of the company and form a business closed loop? This is a progressive process. We were lucky to have achieved net profit at the end of 2009, demonstrating with our technical capabilities that we can generate value. At that time, there were a lot of model innovation and Internet innovation, and it was difficult for us to start a business in terms of hardware and algorithm, and they were not popular in the capital market.

How many investors in the 21st century?

Peng Bin: before and after dozens. For investors, we still look at the fit of the general direction and goals. At that time, the team was more mature, and the values and direction were clear. It was no longer the extensive idea of "capable and willing to do".

21st century: what changes have taken place after crossing the first hurdle?

Peng Bin: first of all, organizations are no longer "small workshops" for dozens of people, but modern companies. A modern company needs a spirit of contract. We have set up a board of directors, rules and regulations. Teams no longer rely solely on love to do what they want and leave when they don't want to. The second change is to invest in agriculture, which means moving from a market with net profit in the past to a new field.

Stepping into the stage of rapid growth

21st century: after "all in" agriculture?

Peng Bin: in the first two years, we couldn't figure out the business model. We know that agricultural UAV is feasible, but in what form is it presented to the market? Later, we found that if we provided pesticide spraying service, the price was about the same as the cost of employing people to do it, and farmers would be willing to accept it. So we set up a direct marketing service team to help farmers realize the implementation of science and technology.

21st century: what is the effect?

Peng Bin: the technology has been popularized to a certain extent, and the equipment tends to be stable and the cost is reduced. Many local service companies have developed. And they have a better understanding of the complexity of rural areas everywhere. So we started selling the equipment to local service companies. In 2017, the company began to focus on selling hardware, and it was profitable in 2018. For a hardware technology company, this is not easy, it is a big "chicken blood".

21st century: is the pressure getting smaller?

Peng Bin: the pressure still comes from thinking about whether the market direction we see is real and whether the direction set by the captain can lead the crew to shore? This kind of pressure is huge and continuous. As long as you are still starting a business, you can't escape it. In fact, we are used to this kind of "anxiety". We can sleep as well as work passionately every day, but it will bring us continuous thinking and correction.

21st century: do you feel the pressure from investors?

Peng Bin: as long as the performance rises rapidly, there will not be. I believe our investors are long-term investors. We are also always thinking about: first, we should create value for the society with good products; second, we should repay investors and shareholders, including employees holding shares of the company, in the hope of forming a better win-win environment.

21st century: what is the current size of the company?

Peng Bin: before 2018, it was a team of hundreds of people. Since 2019, more than 1000 employees have been employed, and so far this year, there are more than 1400. We are still expanding, and we may have more than 2000 employees this year.

Entrepreneurship needs soil

21st century: as an emerging technology company, what is your understanding of industrial policy?

Peng Bin: it has to be phased. In the early stage of starting a business, it is very good to let the start-up company grow freely in an innovation soil without disturbing it; if there is too much intervention, it is difficult to implement innovation. Startups survive on their own. What the government can do is to encourage innovation, support more capital flow to start-up enterprises, and guide public opinion to tolerate and even tolerate the failure of innovation. If entrepreneurs fail, they will never get up again. Who dares to start a business? My experience of starting a business in Guangzhou for many years is that Guangdong has a very good entrepreneurial soil.

As the company grows larger, we begin to enjoy a variety of policy support, such as the application of innovation projects, patent subsidies, and various industrial policy support. With the reduction of business risk, policies will be easier to enter enterprises, and banks will also provide some more inclusive loans to support the development of enterprises. In this process, I feel more adequate support.

The third stage is supervision. For example, when we do agriculture, we have heard some different voices one after another: "is it OK for UAVs to fight pesticides?" If the government can't, it's over. But our government is very open: it gives us a flexible space to try. For example, when we communicated with the regulatory authorities, for how to avoid similar urban security problems, we proposed that electronic fences could be set up, and the no fly zone could not fly in at all. In addition, all aircraft were equipped with SIM cards, and the operators were registered in real name, so they could be contacted at any time. All these were connected to the cloud platform. So we got the first cloud license for agricultural UAV from CAA.

The 21st century: when did you get it?

Peng Bin: proposed in 2017 and issued in 2018. Our experience shows that the government has an open logic and is willing to provide an environment to support innovation.

Of course, in addition to this, there are a lot of preferential policies for agriculture. At that time, some leaders proposed that agricultural UAVs could also be included in agricultural machinery subsidies, which could actually greatly promote the development of the industry. Since 2018, the government has supported us to launch pilot projects in six provinces, which have been expanded to more than 20 provinces this year. As long as the buyer meets the requirements and there is still a local quota, the buyer can get a subsidy of 1 / 3 of the purchase price. This shares the risk of trying new technologies. With the support of these policies, the number of agricultural UAVs in China surpassed Japan, which started earlier, in 2018, and became the largest agricultural UAV country in the world. In 2019, we will have dozens of times as many agricultural UAVs as Japan.

21st century: are you satisfied with the current protection of intellectual property rights?

Peng Bin: the cost and cost of innovation are particularly high, so it must be protected, otherwise no one is willing to innovate. Intellectual property protection is the basis of scientific and technological innovation, which is the core logic. However, as long as most acts of infringing intellectual property rights do not harm our core interests, we are not likely to take the initiative to attack. The overall logic is defensive. We are not a patent company. We are just protecting our own innovation, so that it can be turned into revenue and put into a new round of innovation.

So, we have 1600 patents, but only one lawsuit has been filed. It is others who stick to us, imitate us, or even break the basic order of market operation under our banner. Our engineers racked their brains and spent several months, scrapping five sets of molds to make the results, which were copied and directly used by others, with lower cost, cheaper price and poor quality. We hope that the state can protect innovation. We have made good progress in the current lawsuit, but the cycle is still longer.

The opportunity of agricultural unmanned

21st century: what role can agricultural science and technology play?

Peng Bin: today, a new wave of agricultural modernization is breaking out in rural China. In the past, agricultural modernization was mechanization, but now the decline rate and aging speed of rural population in China is faster than that of mechanization. We believe that China's agricultural modernization has reached a stage where science and technology are needed. This is the opportunity the times have given us. We are confident that in this process, we will grow into an excellent agricultural technology company.

The agricultural modernization of the United States and Japan took place before other countries, and their products finally went to the international market, with world-class agricultural equipment giants. We believe that in the future, China's agricultural science and technology products will also go to other countries.

21st century: what will China's farmland look like in 5-10 years?

Peng Bin: it is no longer that there are many people involved in production, and it is no longer the process of farming dominated by human experience. In the past, agricultural mechanization used to replace animal power with internal combustion engine to help people deal with farmland affairs. In the future, automatic robots will be responsible for sowing, weeding, watering and fertilizing, accurately manage the growth of crops, and finally complete the harvest.

21st century: how much will the cost be reduced to trigger the industry explosion?

Peng Bin: if the cost of 10 mu of land reaches 5000 US dollars, it will be an explosive point.

21st century: what are the bottlenecks?

Peng Bin: there is no big bottleneck, but we need to speed up the pace. The maturity of technology should surpass the speed of agricultural population reduction and meet the market demand as soon as possible.

21st century: is there such an attempt abroad?

Peng Bin: we think that the most likely place for complete unmanned is in China. There are all kinds of agricultural robots abroad, but their farmland digital facilities are poor, and the cost of producing "5000 dollars" robots will be very high. In addition, the developed countries have built up the agricultural mechanization system in the past, which is difficult to completely change for a while. China just has a chance to change lanes and overtake.

A healthy market needs competition

21st century: Jifei begins to expand into more agricultural science and technology fields, does this mean that the competition will be more intense?

Peng Bin: first of all, a commercial market without competition is unhealthy. Competition gives vitality to business and opportunities for innovation. Some of them may be competitive relations. We will fight for the better, lower cost, more powerful innovation and better service. We must be very competitive in areas where we don't need heavy agricultural machinery, but need electric, small and intelligent equipment.

Agricultural science and technology company is corresponding to the scene that traditional agricultural machinery can not meet. We have a more cooperative relationship with agricultural machinery companies. For example, tractors also need our self driving devices. This is a bit like the front loading market in the automobile field. For example, ADAS system is not produced by automobile enterprises. If we must say competition, maybe those technology companies that want to do agriculture will be our competitors. But we hope that more such enterprises will appear, so that the industry will be more interesting.

21st century: will you feel the pressure of Xinjiang?

Peng Bin: of course, I didn't feel it until this year. In fact, this year has been the least stressful year. We have more products, more complete strategy, better Revenue and larger volume. It used to be ants versus elephants. Now we are at least a raccoon.

However, small companies have small advantages, and innovation is faster. Almost all the start-ups in this field are done by us, such as the introduction of autonomous UAVs into agriculture, the introduction of high rate intelligent batteries into agricultural UAVs, the use of plug-in medicine boxes, etc. We are still the banner of agricultural UAV innovation.