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The event

Can we say that China is the new Silicon Valley?

Last Tuesday (18), Startse promoted another event: China Innovation Day—a full day of immersion in new technologies from the Asian continent.

To shape the event, major players and companies from the Chinese market brought solutions for retail, presented methodologies using AI (Artificial Intelligence), and discussed how to educate the population with new technologies.

The Chinese population stopped using cards and cash and migrated to mobile payments. In the same app, it’s possible to access social networks, retail services, and make digital payments. By contrast, in Brazil, payments without using debit or credit cards are still relatively new—even though online shopping is no longer taboo and is now part of everyday life.

In China, online payments are no longer a novelty. The country has four different innovation hubs: Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou. This ecosystem is one of the most innovative in the world, connected with hardware factories, startups, fintechs, and—above all—with the future.

During the event, we realized that this market keeps growing and that adapting to this business model can benefit any company very quickly. Many companies took the stage, including Movile and BYD, sharing why they look to China as an inspiring scenario—and showing how part of this innovation can be built in Brazil.

China as an inspiring scenario

Movile

With the goal of impacting 1 billion people through its apps, Movile—a mobile services and entertainment company—opened an extension of its headquarters in Campinas in China, aiming to create new resources as work tools.

As a reference, Helisson Lemos, Movile’s COO, highlighted how Chinese companies use AI in business execution and customer relationships. This model inspired Movile, one of the Brazilian companies that has received the most investment (behind Nubank), focused on helping small businesses connect with the world.

In general, the segments Movile is interested in following in Chinese culture are related to retail, the financial market, health, and education. These principles support the company’s discipline, guiding its focus toward long-term strategies, meticulous planning, and speed in product launch (“go to market”), with continuous improvement in mind. “They do all of this with a lot of technology. That’s why, more and more, we want to participate in this ecosystem,” says Lemos.

“We swapped Silicon Valley for China”, Helisson Lemos, from Movile.

BYD

BYD, a manufacturer of electric vehicles, solar panels, and other solutions, began partnerships with several Brazilian states and has defined plans in Brazil for the coming years, with projections through 2022.

With the goal of changing the world, BYD’s partnership in Brazil aims to encourage mobility solutions, guiding the country toward a more cautious and independent future in relation to traditional fuels and reducing pollution.

With the construction of a battery factory in Brazil, the company would reduce costs related to importing from China and also intends to manufacture solar panels, with forecasts around 2022. The expansion plan includes farms in the interior of São Paulo with several projects across Brazilian territory.

These directions brought from China’s business model are part of Industry 4.0—with security and productivity methods combined with automation, cloud computing, data transformation, and the Internet of Things—capable of raising global productivity levels and improving quality of life for different populations.