The track where Anker failed, the big guys received tens of millions of financing

Lawn mowing robots are becoming a rigid demand among overseas consumers, and this market is experiencing an explosion. Under high demand, many companies have entered the market one after another. Anker Innovations also made a layout, but ended in failure. In the market where it failed, other players are also thriving, and Changyao Innovations is one of them.

Changyao Innovation received tens of millions of financing , led by Gree

Recently, Changyao Innovation, a developer of smart lawn mowers, received tens of millions of RMB in Pre-A round of financing, led by Gree Group, followed by Tongchuang Weiye, Gaofeng Patience Fund, Zelos Capital, X Group and individual investors, and old shareholders continued to increase their investment . The funds raised will be used for production, marketing and R&D of new robot products.

Prior to this round of financing, Changyao Innovation had completed three rounds of financing last year, with a total amount of nearly 100 million yuan .

Changyao Innovation was founded in Shenzhen in 2022. The company provides home borderless smart lawn mowing robots to consumers around the world. It is a "newcomer" in the niche field. Why is a company that was established not long ago favored by capital?

Let’s first look at some data. Changyao Innovation launched pre-sales of its first products AIRSEEKERS TRON and Tron Max on Kickstarter. Within one month, the crowdfunding amount exceeded 2.2 million US dollars, and the first batch of products ordered exceeded 1,500 units.

At present, Changyao Innovation has begun to deliver the first batch of crowdfunding users , and will start delivering orders from offline channel dealers and chain stores in the spring of next year. It is reported that Changyao Innovation has received orders worth more than 10 million yuan.

The company has set up branches in the United States and Europe, and will gradually expand to new countries in the future. At the end of this year, Changyao Innovation will also start selling its products on its overseas independent website, and the first product is expected to be priced at more than US$2,000. The high unit price of US$2,000 is due to the fact that its products are hardcore enough.

Changyao Innovation's borderless intelligent lawn mower robot is different from the traditional push lawn mower. The product does not need to be wired in advance to define the working area. It can use a variety of positioning solutions such as UWB, RTK (Real-time kinematic), laser SLAM and visual SLAM to achieve autonomous operation in multiple scenes such as lawns and gentle slopes. Users only need to use the mobile phone app to remotely control the operation to start, monitor and stop the mowing task. The innovation of the product is exactly what users need.

It is understood that AIRSEEKERS TRON can last for 3 hours, complete a single mowing and evenly cover the grass clippings as fertilizer. During the mowing process, its front wheels can tilt inward 30 degrees and climb slopes with a gradient of up to 65%.

The 100 billion-level track attracted many big players to join, but Anker lost

According to a research data released by Report Linker, the compound annual growth rate of the global lawn mowing robot market segment is expected to exceed 12% between 2019 and 2025. In contrast to the high demand, the penetration rate of smart lawn mowing robots is low, with penetration rates of approximately 10% and less than 1% in Europe and North America, respectively.

After seeing the blue ocean of lawn mowing robots, many big players are scrambling to make layouts. According to incomplete statistics from Gaogong Mobile Robots, a total of 32 domestic companies have entered the market from 2019 to 2024. These include many well-known cross-border big sellers, such as Anker Innovations, Ninebot, Ecovacs, Roborock, and Dreame.

In 2022, Anker Innovations entered the lawn mowing robot market and formed a team of nearly 60 people dedicated to the research and development and production of lawn mowing robots. However, as a company that started with charging energy storage products, Anker Innovations' technical accumulation and market experience in the field of robots are relatively insufficient, and it has not formed a competitive advantage in a short period of time.

After more than a year of hard work, the project ultimately failed to succeed, the team was forced to disband, some members moved to other projects, and about 20 people left. The reasons for the failure were: first, the lawn mowing robot category is relatively complex, the R&D and product implementation cycle is long, and the requirements for technology and funds are high; second, there are already many new manufacturers and robot manufacturers with deep accumulation in the market, and the competition is extremely fierce.

"This is a money-burning industry. Startups without a basic base are not recommended to blindly enter the market now." An industry insider bluntly stated that the investment in lawn mowing robots is particularly large. Even if start-ups can survive the early stage of solution exploration and publicity and display, they will most likely die in production and delivery.

In the same year , Wei Jidong, a former senior executive of DJI, discovered the rapid growth of the lawn mower robot market and launched a sub-brand Mammotion, officially entering the field of smart lawn mower robots.

Mammotion's smart lawn mowing robot was launched on Amazon for only one month and it quickly topped the BS list in the Amazon lawn mowing robot category. Its borderless planning lawn mowing robot LUBA even raised over 1 million U.S. dollars on the first day of its launch on the crowdfunding platform.

Focus on making products

Changyao Innovation also entered the field of lawn mowing robots in 2022. Facing strong competitors such as Anker Innovations, it is not easy for this company to carve out a path. If we talk about the key point of successful breakthrough, we have to mention that they have placed technical products and commercialization on an equal footing from the beginning, trying to achieve the best balance between good products and good commodities.

Hu Yue, the founder of Changyao Innovation , graduated from the Department of Electronic Engineering of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He has worked in R&D and product positions at Huawei and ZTE. He was once the co-founder and marketing director of a unicorn robot company in Songshan Lake.

Hu Yue analyzed that when starting a hardware business, one must first determine the product idea, constantly do subtraction, and proceed step by step. In the early stages of market development , there was no fierce competition and no signs of price wars. Product strength was the key to winning users. In the early stages of the market, users were not most concerned about price, but more about product stability and practicality.

It is worth mentioning that Hu Yue had lived abroad for a long time and was very clear about the pain points of lawn mowing and the rigid demands of European and American users.

Most houses in Europe and America have lawns. The market believes that there are 250 million private lawns and gardens around the world , which need to be taken care of and maintained for 8 months a year. Mowing the lawn is a rigid demand and has certain risks. Many people are too busy to choose to hire workers , but the cost is relatively high, so they set their sights on lawn mowing robots.

After in-depth market research, Hu Yue found that the lawn mower robots on the market were not well made and were following the trend. The common buried wire lawn mower robots required pre-buried magnetic wires under the lawn, which had low mowing efficiency and high laying and maintenance costs. Some lawn mower robot manufacturers also adopted more advanced automatic driving solutions, but both the solutions and costs had obvious shortcomings and could not mow the lawn perfectly.

Finally, Hu Yue believed that the vision solution was the only technical development trend of the intelligent lawn mowing robot. With a 360-degree field of view, it can more comprehensively and accurately perceive changes in the surrounding environment. At the same time, with the self-developed algorithm, it can efficiently realize automatic driving in the semi-enclosed scene of lawn. This led to the birth of the first product AIRSEEKERS TRON.

Changyao Innovation is now in the limelight by not blindly following the trend and focusing on making good products. However, as this blue ocean is gradually being targeted by new players and the competition landscape intensifies, it remains unknown whether Changyao Innovation can continue to maintain its advantage in the future.

Changyao Innovation

Mowing Robot