The Unicorn Trip 2.1 was a great opportunity to create a real-time learning experience for Indian entrepreneurs like us who are interested in collaborating and seeking synergies with the flourishing startup ecosystem of China. HSCo joined in to explore meaningful engagement, collaboration and experience scale of the Chinese companies. The emphasis of the trip to exchange ideas, concepts and strike relevant partnership.
Here we got hands-on exposure to the business models and working procedures of Chinese conglomerates and mid-sized startups. Apart from exploring the beautiful country we had a chance to interact with people from different educational backgrounds and varying educational experiences. The goal of this trip was to combine the USPs of both the ecosystems while accommodating various ideas thereby creating mutual benefits and growing our network.
Over a span of 5 days, we got a chance to interact with around 11 prestigious companies, Alibaba, Xiaomi, and APUS to name a few. Our trip started on 11th November in Shanghai where we were introduced to the companies namely Oyo China – a Chinese subsidiary of the SoftBank backed hospitality chain and Paipaidai – a leading online consumer finance marketplace that was ranked No1 among other online consumer marketplaces. Our day ended with a successful meeting with Pingan – the largest online travel agency in China and one of the largest travel service providers in the world.
The next day, before heading to Shanghai, we visited Little Red Book which is a social media and e-commerce platform widely used in China. In Hangzhou, we met a China-based social media and e-commerce company called Mogu which specialized in fashion, content, products, and services.
We continued the third day in Hangzhou started with Alibaba – a Chinese multinational conglomerate holding company specialized in e-commerce, retail, internet, and technology. We visited their divisions namely Taobao, Alicloud the HQ tour and concluded our meeting post-lunch. After a very successful meeting, we visited Yunji a company that bills itself as a ‘social e-commerce’ service which takes advantage of social relationships on apps like WeChat to acquire, engage and sell to end-users.
On day 4, we arrived in Beijing where we met 3 companies namely Bytedance – a Chinese IT company operating several machine learning-enabled content platforms, Baidu – a multinational giant specializing in Internet-related services, products and Artificial Intelligence (AI). The last stop was at Xiaomi – a leading Chinese electronics company that has been popular for their smartphones, apps, fitness bands among many other products.
On the last day of the trip, we visited APUS – a Chinese technology company specializing in Android development and information technology services. It’s currently one of the top 10 developers for mobile applications.
From traveling to the world’s first Maglev train to gazing at Shanghai from the top of a skyscraper, the journey left a fulfilling impact. Apart from making some wonderful connections in China we thoroughly enjoyed sharing ideas and anecdotes during this trip.