Property management company builds its own express cabinet.

20 18, citron announced a round of financing 1 100 million yuan. This enterprise independently developed the world's first intelligent unmanned rice mill, explored the community retail model, and provided consumers with fresh rice in the season and self-service rice milling services. The reason why Xiannong Intelligent Unmanned Rice Milling Machine got the capital support is that on the one hand, it benefited from the new retail outlet, on the other hand, it benefited from the eight-year accumulation in Xiannong rice milling field.

In 20 10, Xiannong began to do the current rice milling business, exploring the mode of brown rice circulation and field rice milling, and changing the reality that "people eat less than animals", that is, the polished rice (white rice) eaten by people is low in nutrition, and the rice bran eaten by animals is rich in nutrition. In 20 15, citron developed an intelligent unmanned rice mill, and in the following two years, while iteratively updating the equipment, it explored the community retail model. From this perspective, this financing is only a "logic" in its development process.

One, unchanged: make rice safer and better to eat: three meals a day, rice is the staple food of China people. From the legendary Shennong to the present, China people have always loved and pursued rice.

As the saying goes, a clever woman can't cook without rice. Compared with cooking techniques and electric cookers, the key to delicious rice is rice. The upsurge of purchasing Wuchang rice, Thai fragrant rice and Japanese rice in recent years shows that people have realized the importance of rice itself and are pursuing better rice.

In fact, in addition to the place of origin, there is also a key factor affecting the taste of rice, that is, the way of processing and circulation. The circulation mode of rice in China is to transport the rice from farmers and farms to the grain market, buy it from rice mills, process it into rice, transport it to the grain market and other channels, and then distribute it to residents for consumption.

In this process, 29% of the peel and 66% of the germ are removed after the rice is mechanized and continuously produced in the rice mill, leaving only 5% of the rice blank with nutritional value, that is, rice in the usual sense. Such fine processing and long-term circulation affect the nutrition and taste of rice, and also easily lead to food safety problems, such as stale grain and poisoned rice. Shannon's brown rice cycle+current rice milling model solved this problem. Li Junyi, the founder of Citron, holds a doctorate from Peking University. In 2009, the regulatory economics of food safety in China was studied, and the poisoned rice incident occurred on 20 10. Through case analysis, the problems existing in this processing and circulation mode are found.

In his view, there are some problems in the rice industry in China, such as the aging of grain, the loss of nutrition caused by aging of grain, the decline of taste caused by many circulation links and long time, and the standardization can not meet the diversified needs.

Second, change: equipment from manned to unmanned iteration: 20 10 August, citron was formally established to solve the problem of rice consumption upgrading. "After many detours, we finally locked in the current model," Li Junyi said.

Drawing lessons from the model of Japanese brown rice circulation and community rice milling service station, combined with the domestic reality, Citron decided to put the processing scene in front of the consumption link and set up a rice milling machine at the consumption terminal to realize the mode of grinding and selling now. According to reports, the Japanese model is brown rice circulation. After consumers buy brown rice with skin in the supermarket, they take it to the community rice milling service station to grind rice by themselves.

But this model doesn't work in China. On the one hand, the property cost in China is too high; On the other hand, consumers have to go from one terminal to another, with poor experience and high transaction cost.

Through exploration, Shannon found a way to cooperate with Shang Chao, laying equipment, selling brown rice and providing rice milling service. Li Junyi said that the Shang Chao channel has solved the problem of high customer acquisition cost. 50%-60% of China people's rice, flour, grain and oil are purchased through Shang Chao channels, and customers who go to Shang Chao grain and oil areas are accurate customers, so they don't need to spend huge advertising fees to attract customers.

On the contrary, if a brand is not exposed in the supermarket channel, the recognition of consumers will be very low. Moreover, with the help of Shang Chao's national chain advantage, this model can be quickly replicated throughout the country. Now Shannon has reached cooperation with CR Vanguard, Wal-Mart, Guorainbow, Yonghui and Carrefour.

Third, rapidly expand the market 20 18: The development of Citron intelligent unmanned rice milling machine can be divided into two stages vertically. The first stage is mainly "self-cultivation", building a supply chain and exercising "muscles". As Li Junyi said, it takes time to support the stability of intelligent hardware. From the public appearance of the first intelligent unmanned equipment on 20 15 to the continuous research and development iteration on 20 16 and 20 17, the intelligent unmanned rice milling equipment of citron has been more than three years.

After three years of technical iteration, more than 20 core technology patents of rice milling have been produced. Now, Shannon's intelligent unmanned rice milling equipment has been iterated to the fourth edition. 0, it can realize different retention of chaff and germ, and support various payment methods such as WeChat, Alipay and cash. At the same time, in the upward direction, Shannon cooperated with Guangdong Grain Storage Management Corporation, Guangdong Grain Industry Association and SF Express to further open up the production area and logistics links.

For example, 20 17, citron 1 10,000 mu rice base project was signed and landed, and the project base is located in Heilongjiang high-quality rice producing area. According to Li Junyi, the supply chain solution of most rice sales enterprises is "enterprise+order", while Xiannong adopts the way of self-built base. "Xiannong provides farmers with seeds, rice and so on. Let farmers plant according to the requirements of the first farmers. " Supply chain optimization brings cost reduction. He said that the large-scale planting of the base model brought down the cost of raw materials, self-service equipment and cooperation with SF brought down the cost of warehousing, logistics and channels, and finally brought down the price of products. "Compared with rice of the same quality, the price of citron is 20%-30% cheaper." Downward, citron explores the business model and builds a new retail model of intelligent unmanned rice milling community.

According to reports, Citron has reached strategic cooperation with property parties such as Color Life and Great Wall Property, which has laid a solid community support for the large-scale laying of 20 18 intelligent unmanned rice milling machine. Different from the current mode of unmanned equipment such as express cabinets entering the community, the cooperation between Citron and the community adopts the bookkeeping mode.

According to Li Junyi's analysis, they need to pay a fixed fee. When Xiannong enters the community, there are only variable costs and no fixed costs. Xiannong and the channel side are tied together, and their interests are the same. The more they sell, the more points they get. Whether it is manned rice milling mode or unmanned rice milling mode, whether it is supply chain optimization or business model exploration, Citron is developing at its own speed.

When talking about the development of Citron, Li Junyi said: "We have been doing it for seven or eight years now, and many enterprises have become unicorns in the industry, but we are not in a hurry. We have our own strategic strength, because what we are doing is slow and fast, and it needs to be done step by step. " If the focus of Citron intelligent unmanned rice milling machine was to develop and further strengthen its own strength, Citron will accelerate its market expansion with the help of capital from 20 18.

It is understood that in 20 18, Shannon plans to directly lay 1000 sets of equipment in the north, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and recruit city partners in second-and third-tier cities. As for the city partners, Li Junyi said that Citron will provide support in terms of supply chain, technology, site selection, operation, brand and operation, and the two parties will cooperate in a shared way. "The sales revenue of equipment is mainly distributed to partners." Shannon hopes to occupy the market quickly in this way and continue to strengthen the company's leading position in this field.