Team 35 recently made a special topic on agricultural layout with Tencent. The content of this article is extracted from the topic for readers to read.
Main findings:
What's the difference between Tencent, a giant that also lays out agriculture?
Internet companies lay out agriculture? In the past, people would think that Internet users must be crazy, but they want to taste the dry steamed bread in other people's hands.
However, nowadays, agriculture is no longer a dry steamed bread with weak value. For Tencent, this is the number one venue for the group to turn stone into gold.
However, although Tencent is an Internet company like Alibaba and JD.COM, it is different from Ali and JD.COM in the choice of agricultural layout.
First of all, the obvious difference is that Tencent's layout of agriculture is relatively late, while JD.COM and Ali, as the two most important online sales channels of agricultural products, have subtly brought in the genes of agriculture while developing the e-commerce industry, and their layout of agriculture is relatively earlier than Tencent's.
Secondly, in terms of business choice, Tencent has not really laid out agriculture in depth like Ali and JD.COM because of its late layout, and its business scope in agricultural layout is relatively narrow, but it still adheres to the development concept of technology first.
Third, if we jump out of the shackles of Tencent and agriculture, we can see that although Tencent has laid out agriculture, according to some data of the current 35-bucket integration, Tencent's real focus is on agricultural layout, which may not actually lie in the word "agriculture", but the real focus needs to be analyzed from Tencent's genes as an Internet company-to realize future industrial interconnection. In this way, agriculture may be an important opportunity and breakthrough point for horses to cut into the whole industry.
Tencent lays out three main bodies of agriculture.
Knowing the difference between Tencent and other internet giants in agricultural layout, we can see where the essential connection between Tencent and agriculture is, and the three main bodies that contact Tencent and agriculture are as follows.
1, Tencent Investment
Since 20 15, Tencent has opened the door to agricultural layout in investment. Different from other technical business departments of Tencent, Tencent's investment in agriculture is more concentrated on food, channels and agricultural or agricultural products group purchase and sales platforms.
At the same time, we also see a very special law. In addition to agriculture, Tencent has also invested in many big data service providers. First, this is a clear signal that Tencent is optimistic about the future digital transformation. Second, big data service providers can also set foot in other industries while providing digital services for the agricultural industry. Tencent's actions outside the agricultural layout seem to show that agriculture is not the end of Tencent's new business, but a good starting point for realizing the interconnection of the whole industry.
2. Tencent Cloud and Smart Industry Group (CSIG)
On September 30th, 20 18, Tencent officially announced the third organizational restructuring in Tencent's history. In this "change", Tencent's original seven business groups were adjusted and merged into six.
In addition to retaining six business groups, namely, enterprise development business group (CDG), interactive entertainment business group (IEG), technical engineering business group (TEG), WeChat business group (WXG) and platform and content business group (PCG), Tencent also established the Cloud and Smart Industry Business Group (CSIG), which was headed by Tang Dao, the former head of Tencent SNG.
The main part of the Cloud and Smart Industry Group (CSIG) was born out of the Tencent Cloud business of the original SNG, including the audio and video team of the original SNG and the UTU AI lab team. In addition, it has been merged into the original CDG's smart retail, the original MIG's map, security and incubator's internet plus business.
This is the first time in Tencent's 20-year history that a big business unit that is completely TO B has appeared. At this point, under the management of Tang Daosheng, Tencent's TO B business, which was originally scattered in various business groups, has obtained a unified interface to provide services to enterprises and industries in a more aggregated and efficient way.
In terms of agricultural layout, Tencent Cloud is the main body of Tencent's external cooperation in agricultural digitalization, such as joint venture with New Hope to build an agricultural digital economy industrial base in Shenxian County.
3. Tencent Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Tencent AI Lab is Tencent Cloud's business unit with AI technology application innovation as its core. Established in April 2006+2065438. As an enterprise-level AI laboratory, Tencent AI Lab focuses on the combination of basic AI research and application exploration, aiming at building a comprehensive AI capability for Tencent, with a view to realizing the vision of "making AI everywhere".
As one of the three major subjects of Tencent's agricultural layout, the difference between Tencent AI Lab and other subjects is that it is a subject focusing on agricultural science and technology and focusing on front-end technology research and development. Judging from the external cooperation of Tencent AI Lab in cucumber and tomato planting, the main task of Tencent AI Lab is to develop technology, solve agricultural problems, reduce costs and increase efficiency, and at the same time, unite with other agricultural enterprises and teams with advanced technology to help enterprises incubate and establish cooperation in related projects.
4. Other agricultural themes of Tencent
In addition to the above three entities displaying agricultural layout, Tencent also has some other business entities that have been exposed to the agricultural industry, such as Tencent's own investment fund "Tencent Industrial Eco-investment" and official website Dawei, the chief explorer in charge of international cooperation of Tencent Group.
David Wallerstein joined Tencent on 200 1 as the senior executive vice president of Tencent's international business department, working with international partners to promote Tencent's international business.
At the second international intelligent greenhouse planting challenge jointly organized by Tencent AI Lab and Vakhnin Gen University, David Wallerstein said: "Through years of cooperation with WUR and many other partners, we have proved that AI can be competent as a' senior administrator' in greenhouses, monitoring and controlling important environmental factors affecting the growth of crops such as cucumbers and tomatoes. AI can not only increase crop yield, but also save resources and increase profits. We will continue to work hard to promote such artificial intelligence applications and help mankind cope with various global challenges. "
Tencent: Grasping the "Head" and "Tail" of Agriculture
Different from JD.COM and Ali, Tencent, as an Internet giant that started from entertainment, has no business related to agriculture, so Tencent's layout of agriculture mainly depends on investment or cooperation with cloud merchants.
Looking closely at the current overall layout of Tencent, it is found that Tencent, which takes technology as its core, has also maintained this tradition in its agriculture-related business. Observable data show that Tencent's distribution of JD.COM shares has been from 20 14 to now, and Tencent's agricultural product distribution channels have basically covered; And around 20 18, Tencent began to exert its strength in agricultural science and technology, and developed agricultural science and technology through the foreign cooperation of Tencent AI Lab; In addition, in 20 19, Tencent also started to cooperate with other cooperative organizations to build related agricultural industrial parks to help build the ecological environment of the future agricultural industry.
1, technical research and development output
20 18 12 12 the iGrow team, composed of Tencent AI lab and agricultural experts, stood out in the international artificial intelligence greenhouse planting competition hosted by Vakhnin university in the Netherlands and won the first place in the "AI strategy" and the second place in the overall score. In the competition, Tencent realized the technical exploration in the field of AI+ agriculture, and its first agricultural artificial intelligence system overcame the problem of embedding machine intelligence into agricultural expert knowledge.
Since then, Tencent AI's cucumber planting has become a beautiful talk, but when it comes to Tencent's layout of agriculture, it will definitely talk about it. It can be seen that whether for the agricultural sector or Tencent itself, this game must be a landmark node. After a round, Tencent is more sure that agriculture has absolute value in the future, which comes not only from the technological changes facing agriculture, but also from other hidden businesses closely related to agriculture and people's livelihood.
On June 9, 2020, in the second international intelligent greenhouse planting challenge, Tencent no longer appeared as a team, but Tencent AI Lab cooperated with Vakhnin Genn University in the Netherlands to hold the second competition. Luo Dijun, a former contestant, also became the agricultural director of Tencent AI Lab and served as the judge of the second challenge. When the global epidemic is raging, the five teams in the semi-finals challenge to optimize planting decisions with cutting-edge technologies such as AI and IoT, and remotely control the cultivation of small tomatoes in greenhouses.
In addition, at this conference, Tencent not only contacted the agricultural science and technology innovation projects brought by other teams, but also released Tencent's achievements in the field of AI planting since 20 18.
Tencent AI Lab, together with Tencent TEG Architecture Platform Department, brought the AI algorithm and experience developed in the last competition and the "iGrow of Tencent AIoT Smart Planting Scheme" created by Yunyuan Technology to China, and reached a cooperation with Liaoning, a major agricultural province, to start two pilot planting projects.
In the first stage, tomatoes were planted in three local solar greenhouses, and two of them deployed the experimental group of iGrow scheme. After the pilot in May, compared with the control group, the experimental group increased its net profit by several thousand yuan per mu every quarter. In the next step, Tencent said that it will continue to explore and conduct in-depth research with Rutte University in Vakhnin in the fields of crop model research and development, full-cycle management and so on.
2. The scene layout of agricultural products channels
Grasping the "head" of agriculture through the layout of advanced agricultural technology, then let's see how Tencent grasps the "tail" of agriculture through the layout of capital investment.
Starting from 20 14, Tencent began to consciously invest in some online sales channels related to agriculture. However, at that time, the main investment factors were affected by the development of e-commerce, and Tencent's awareness of agricultural layout was not very obvious. On 20 1 1.05, Tencent participated in the round B investment of 200 million yuan per day. Prior to this, Tencent also invested 65438+ daily fresh in May of the same year.
As an O2O fresh e-commerce, it covers fruits and vegetables, seafood, meat and poultry, milk snacks and other categories, and has a self-built cold chain logistics system including urban sorting and community distribution. This round of financing is also used to invest in upstream resources of high-quality agricultural products every day, improve the construction of urban cold chain distribution system and accelerate market development.
Starting from the daily fresh food, Tencent's investment layout in agricultural channels began to increase. 20 16, successively invested in meituan, Pinduoduo and JD.COM. In 20 17, Tencent once again participated in Tiantian Youxian, and also invested heavily in offline supermarkets, new brands of agricultural products, colorful fresh food and super species, compared with 12 in 20 17.
After that, Tencent also reinvested in the agricultural channel that had been laid out many times. Now it seems that Tencent's distribution channels related to agricultural products are relatively saturated, covering almost the mainstream apps on the market.
In addition to the outstanding distribution of agricultural products channels, in 2020, Tencent participated in hundreds of millions of A-round financing of Fengjiang Intelligent, which is the first time Tencent has invested in domestic agricultural science and technology enterprises. Previously, Tencent also invested in an Israeli agricultural science and technology company named Phytech, which effectively saved agricultural resources and increased aquaculture output through intelligent monitoring and early warning of the environment and aquaculture.
Meanwhile, we observed another phenomenon. At the end of September 20 18, Tencent changed its business structure and took Tencent Cloud as a separate B-side business center. Since then, Tencent has invested in a large number of digital service enterprises, and in March 2020, Tencent Cloud's funds also launched strategic cooperation with New Hope Group to jointly build a digital economy brand "Xinteng Digital" integrating government affairs, industry, agriculture and people's livelihood. Xinteng Zhi Zhi said that in the future, he will spare no effort to deepen the fields of smart agriculture and animal husbandry and digital government.
The relevant person in charge of Tencent Cloud's statement on this cooperation: "Further cooperation with New Hope can help Tencent better understand the agricultural Internet and smart urban and rural areas and accelerate the implementation of related programs."
3. Ecological layout of agricultural industry
In addition to the layout of agricultural technology and product channels, the third largest layout of Tencent agriculture is the construction of industrial ecological environment.
On April 3, 20 19, Tencent Cloud held a signing conference with Guangdong Wang Yue Agricultural Group, Shenzhen Yijiacang Supply Chain Technology Co., Ltd. and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Industry and Finance Fund at Guangzhou Baiyun International Convention Center. The parties signed a strategic cooperation agreement and will work together to create a "smart agriculture platform".
This cooperation is Tencent Cloud's first industrial Internet project in the agricultural field. Many parties will carry out in-depth cooperation in smart agriculture platforms, smart agriculture industrial parks and smart agriculture vertical incubators, and strategically lay out the agricultural industry Internet.
165438+20201On October 27th, the unveiling ceremony of Tencent Cloud (Shenxian) Agricultural Digital Economy Industrial Base was held in Shenxian. According to Ma Bin, vice president of Tencent Group, this is the first agricultural digital economy industrial base laid out by Tencent Group in China. The base has laid out the construction of smart agriculture application systems such as digital agriculture, cold chain intelligent management, AI planting and digital villages.
At the opening ceremony, the operator of Tencent Cloud (Shenxian) Agricultural Digital Economy Industrial Base signed on-site contracts with the first batch of 20 enterprises.
In addition, on 202 1 1 2 1 day, the fourth phase of Tencent AI accelerator was officially announced.
The fourth phase of AI Accelerator focuses on "AI+5G+IoT" technology integration and "application scenario landing", selects high-quality AI enterprises on the vertical track, and promotes the subsequent joint construction and business docking with Tencent.
The 40 companies currently selected focus on vertical AI application scenarios, covering industries such as industry, enterprise services, cultural tourism, retail, medical care, government affairs, travel, agriculture, etc. 1 1. Among them, agricultural enterprises accounted for 3% of the total, and Iaconon of Samos became the only one selected.
As can be seen from the above layout, in fact, Tencent's output troops in the agricultural field are mainly Tencent Cloud and its AI Lab, which are engaged in agricultural technology layout, while the auxiliary troops are invested by Tencent, mainly to open up agricultural product channels.
Tencent's "Kill Two Birds with One Stone" Plan
Although Tencent's agricultural layout is not as comprehensive as that of Ali and JD.COM, and its layout started relatively late, it still has its own unique positioning and industry advantages.
Ma once said that the future will be the era of the transition from mobile Internet to industrial Internet, and cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence will become the protagonists of the times. Tencent is destined not to be absent. In the second half of the year, we will help the industry and consumers form a more open new connection ecosystem.
From Ma's point of view, perhaps the layout of agriculture has the value of agricultural related things besides the long-term value of agriculture itself, and this is Tencent's plan of "killing two birds with one stone".
From the commercial point of view, the low profit of agriculture is obvious, but at the same time, agriculture is the foundation of people's livelihood and is closely related to people's daily life.
This particularity makes leading agricultural enterprises gather around local governments. In other words, the layout of the agricultural sector may also be a bridge for Internet technology companies like Tencent to get close to local governments and obtain local government business.
The universality of the underlying technology is also the basis for Tencent to extend its digital agriculture business to digital government business.