From a small factory in Foshan to one of the top 10 robot companies in China, how did this enterprise embark on the journey of "soft power" going glo
Introduction:
Going global is no longer an option for enterprises, but there are still many choices in the way of going global. Brand going global, supply chain going global, cross - border e - commerce... Behind each model, there are countless stories of arduous exploration by Chinese companies; In North America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America... On every distant continent, there are more and more international presences of Chinese brands.
From introducing foreign capital forty years ago to "going global in groups" today, Qiantang, as the main front of Hangzhou's export - oriented economy, has always been the bridgehead for enterprises to transform themselves and make breakthroughs and innovations. The China Enterprises International Service Center has been paying long - term attention to overseas markets and enterprises going global. Based on this, in 2025, we launched a new column "Wave Riders in Going Global" to find benchmark enterprises going global in various fields, disassemble practical cases from a professional perspective, precipitate methodologies in the process of seeking consensus, and explore differentiated development paths in non - consensus.
The following is the tenth article in this column.
More than two months ago, Qin Lei, the COO of Huibo Robotics, went to Singapore and signed a cooperation agreement on the going - global strategy with his partner, which means that Huibo Robotics, the company he founded, has taken another step forward on the path of going global. "In recent years, I have increasingly realized the importance of going global," Qin Lei said.
Currently, the wave of intelligent manufacturing is sweeping the world. Industrial robots have become the core force driving the transformation and upgrading of traditional manufacturing industries. As a part of this wave, Huibo Robotics targeted the blue ocean market of domestic substitution of industrial robots from its establishment. Starting from the glaze spraying process in the ceramic sanitary ware industry, after establishing a foothold in the niche market, it transformed and upgraded from a single robot supplier to an overall solution service provider.
Moreover, different from the general practice of robot enterprises going global with products and technologies, Huibo chose vocational education and training as the entry point. By combining with industrial product services, it provided a differentiated going - global model for the industry. Next, Huibo Robotics plans to cooperate with Boyaa Technology to jointly develop an intelligent education platform for the overseas market, promoting the large - scale implementation of products in the "AI + Education" scenario.
01 Focus on R & D of Domestic Substitution of Industrial Robots, with a Price Only 1/2 of Foreign Competitors
In 2008, Qin Lei, who had just graduated with a doctorate, started a business in the field of intelligent manufacturing in Foshan. At that time, domestic industrial robots were just entering the early stage of industrial production scenarios. Industries with higher technical thresholds and quality requirements, such as the automotive and semiconductor industries, were basically monopolized by foreign brands, and domestic enterprises were not yet capable of participating in the competition. Therefore, Huibo Robotics chose a differentiated development path - focusing on the niche scenarios of domestic traditional manufacturing industries, starting with the traditional advantageous industry of ceramic sanitary ware in Foshan.
The ceramic sanitary ware industry has always been a typical industry with an urgent demand for "replacing humans with machines". A large amount of dust and particles are generated in the toilet glaze spraying process, and the working environment is harsh. Enterprises have long faced difficulties in recruiting workers. At that time, the robot solutions were mainly monopolized by enterprises from countries such as Italy and Spain, and the price of a robot workstation was as high as 1.2 million yuan.
Huibo Robotics captured the market opportunity of domestic substitution. By combining the general industrial robot bodies of foreign companies with self - developed process modules, it reduced the price of the glaze spraying workstation to about 600,000 yuan. This strategy helped Huibo quickly win leading sanitary ware customers such as Arrow, Dongpeng, and Kohler, and formed the first batch of implementation cases in the Foshan industrial belt, laying the market foundation.
According to the statistics of the Robot Branch of the China Federation of Machinery Industry, from 2018 to 2020, the market share of the automatic glaze spraying production line for ceramic sanitary ware robots produced by Huibo in the domestic industry had reached more than 70% in terms of project amount. Qin Lei revealed that the annual revenue scale of the company's business in the ceramic sanitary ware field remained between tens of millions and hundreds of millions of yuan.
As the company continued to expand, on the one hand, Huibo Robotics upgraded to more in - depth production line and overall factory solutions; on the other hand, it was no longer satisfied with a single niche market and further developed systems such as intelligent painting, automatic polishing, automatic welding, and automatic loading and unloading handling, and developed customized automatic production lines for customers.
In order to enter high - end manufacturing industries such as semiconductors with higher technical thresholds and greater project profit margins, Huibo also participated in and undertook national projects such as the National 863 Program and the National Development and Reform Commission's Intelligent Manufacturing Special Project, and was continuously short - listed as one of the "Top 10 Chinese Robot Enterprises" by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Qin Lei said that currently, Huibo Robotics has more than 400 employees, and the revenue from leading enterprises in the industry accounts for more than 70% of the company's total revenue.
02 From "Tool Provider" to "Service Provider", Revenue from Vocational Education and Training Business Surpasses Robot Sales
In Qin Lei's view, Huibo Robotics' growth in the past few years has benefited from two aspects of competitive advantages.
One is the ability to provide overall solutions for customers based on the accumulation of past project experience. Qin Lei said, The key to the industrial application of robots lies not only in the robots themselves but also in whether they can be effectively integrated with the specific production processes of enterprises. Even among different enterprises in the same industry, there are differences in process details, which requires robot enterprises to be able to provide precise and efficient customized solutions.
Huibo's approach is to form a joint team with its own robot technology team, the customer's process personnel, or self - hired experts, and jointly determine the final integration solution through a large number of experiments. As the understanding of the processes of different industries deepens, Huibo has gradually built up the cross - industry customized service ability, which has also become the company's biggest business moat.
"Robot technology is still developing, and Huibo is also iterating itself with the industry changes," Qin Lei said. Currently, industrial robots have been upgraded from the early repetitive action execution to a more intelligent and automated trend. For example, with the help of model - driven and automatic programming technologies, by adding sensors such as integrated cameras, robots can achieve intelligent recognition of the environment and autonomous planning of action paths, improving the adaptability and flexibility of robots in complex production environments.
In addition to providing industrial robot solutions, another differentiated advantage of Huibo is to provide targeted talent training services for customers by leveraging the educational resources of its parent company. Qin Lei said, "Talent training services are now also the key to demonstrating the company's overall strength when we compete for customer orders. When the product solutions are not very different, this business ability is often the reason for customers to choose us."
Talent training services have helped Huibo achieve the transformation from a "tool provider" to a "service provider". Qin Lei said that currently, the revenue from the education business segment has exceeded that of the industrial robot business, becoming a new growth pole for the company's business. The training content covers multiple fields such as digital twin, image processing, robot operation, PLC programming, and application of new sensors. The annual training volume exceeds 5,000 person - times, and the annual revenue scale reaches hundreds of millions of yuan.
03 From Going Global with Enterprises to Vocational Education Going Global, How Can Robot Enterprises Do a Good Job in Soft Power Output?
Since the period when it focused on the ceramic sanitary ware industry, Huibo started its going - global journey following the footsteps of domestic customers relocating their production capacity overseas, providing robot equipment support for customers' overseas factories. In this process, it encountered problems such as personnel dispatch, cross - border transportation of equipment, and customs clearance.
In the process of going global with industrial products, Huibo found another going - global path. In 2019, the "National Vocational Education Reform Implementation Plan" ("20 Measures for Vocational Education") issued by the State Council clearly stated that "Build a vocational education brand with Chinese characteristics and promote the going - global of vocational education." In line with the trend of "vocational education going global", Huibo, by leveraging the cooperation resources between its parent company and some domestic vocational colleges, established training bases in Thailand, Kyrgyzstan, Cambodia, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Indonesia and other places, and provided technical talent training services such as curriculum and teaching material resource development and teacher team building for local higher education institutions.
For example, in September 2024, Huibo jointly built the "Kaiwu Workshop" project with Jiamusi Vocational College, and equipped Osh State University in Kyrgyzstan with the self - developed integrated teaching innovation platform for industrial robot application programming, the intelligent manufacturing virtual debugging and production control training innovation development platform, and the comprehensive training system for industrial robot technology application, providing teaching and training from basic operations to advanced programming.
In April 2025, Boyaa Technology and Huibo Robotics signed an agreement, focusing on the Southeast Asian market. They plan to connect Huibo's AI education robot products to Boyaa's intelligent education platform to achieve multi - language adaptation and curriculum localization; Leveraging Boyaa's local resources in Singapore, they will connect with Southeast Asian universities and vocational training institutions to jointly establish a "technology output + talent certification" system; Regarding the cross - border issue of educational data, Boyaa designed a data governance architecture compatible with GDPR for Huibo to ensure the legal and compliant transmission and storage of data and guarantee the smooth development of subsequent business.
It is reported that Huibo Robotics is gradually establishing cooperative relationships with higher education institutions or vocational education institutions in many Southeast Asian countries:
April 11th
A signing ceremony for the international cooperation project of the "Digital - Intelligence Workshop" was held jointly with the vocational education institutions in the eastern region of Thailand.
May 13th
The "Digital - Intelligence Workshop" was jointly built with the National Institute of Technology of Cambodia, introducing technologies such as artificial intelligence and industrial robots into Cambodia's education system.
June 10th
The unveiling ceremony of the "Digital - Intelligence Workshop" jointly built with the University of Technology Malaysia was held.
August 7th
The China - Thailand Intelligent Manufacturing Modern Craftsman College jointly built by Guangxi Vocational and Technical College and Thailand's Bang Kae Technical College was officially inaugurated in Thailand.
From the market research in Southeast Asia, Qin Lei found that the industrial status quo of different overseas countries varies greatly. It is necessary to adopt a strategy according to local conditions and formulate targeted curriculum content based on the market research results.
For example, the automation level of Vietnam's ceramic sanitary ware industry is close to the domestic standard, and there is a large demand for advanced solutions such as robots, automated transmission equipment, and three - dimensional warehouses. While the automation degree of industries such as electric vehicle manufacturing in Indonesia is relatively low, and the application of robots is still in its infancy. Therefore, the training content focuses on basic technology training and equipment operation knowledge.
Under the going - global model of reversing the curriculum setting and equipment configuration based on the local industrial status quo, Huibo plans to combine talent training services with industrial projects, give play to the synergy effect of the industrial and education sectors, and provide one - stop solutions from talent to technology.
"We hope to find real customers in the overseas market in the future and give full play to our technological and product advantages in the field of intelligent manufacturing." Qin Lei said.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Hangzhou Qiantang Enterprise Going - Global Service Base". The author is Zhejiang Enterprises Going Global. It is published with the authorization of Qiantang.
