From a small factory in Foshan to one of the top 10 robot companies in China, how does this enterprise embark on the journey of "soft power" going global?

More than three months ago, Qin Lei, the COO of Huibo Robotics, came to Singapore and signed a cooperation agreement on the overseas expansion strategy with a partner. This means that Huibo Robotics, the company he founded, has taken another step forward on the path of going global. "In recent years, I've increasingly realized the importance of going global," Qin Lei said.

Currently, the wave of intelligent manufacturing is sweeping across the globe. Industrial robots have become the core force driving the transformation and upgrading of traditional manufacturing industries. As a part of this wave, since its establishment, Huibo Robotics has targeted the blue ocean market of domestic substitution for industrial robots. Starting from the glaze spraying process in the ceramic sanitary ware industry, after establishing a foothold in the niche market, it has transformed and upgraded from a single robot supplier to an overall solution service provider.

Moreover, different from most robot companies that expand overseas with products and technologies, Huibo chose vocational education and training as its entry point. By combining it with industrial product services, it has provided a differentiated model for overseas expansion. Next, Huibo Robotics plans to cooperate with Boyaa Technology to jointly develop an intelligent education platform for the overseas market, promoting the large - scale implementation of products in the "AI + Education" scenario.

1. Focus on R & D of domestic substitution for industrial robots, with prices only half of foreign competitors

In 2008, Qin Lei, who had just graduated with a doctorate, started a business in the field of intelligent manufacturing in Foshan. At that time, domestic industrial robots were just starting to enter the industrial production scenario. Industries such as automobiles and semiconductors, which had higher technical thresholds and quality requirements, were basically monopolized by foreign brands, and domestic enterprises were not yet capable of competing. Therefore, Huibo Robotics chose a differentiated development path - focusing on niche scenarios in domestic traditional manufacturing industries, starting with the traditional advantageous ceramic sanitary ware industry in Foshan.

The ceramic sanitary ware industry has always been a typical industry with an urgent need for "replacing humans with machines". The glaze spraying process for toilets generates a large amount of dust and particulate matter, resulting in a harsh working environment. Enterprises in this industry have long faced difficulties in recruiting workers. At that time, robot solutions were mainly monopolized by companies from countries such as Italy and Spain, and the price of a single robot workstation was as high as 1.2 million yuan.

Huibo Robotics seized the market opportunity for domestic substitution. By combining the general industrial robot bodies of foreign companies with self - developed process modules, it reduced the price of the glaze spraying workstation to about 600,000 yuan. This strategy helped Huibo quickly win leading sanitary ware customers such as Arrow, Dongpeng, and Kohler, forming the first batch of implementation cases in the Foshan industrial belt and laying the market foundation.

According to the statistics of the Robot Branch of the China Federation of Machinery Industry, from 2018 to 2020, the market share of Huibo's automated glaze spraying production lines for ceramic sanitary ware in the domestic industry had reached over 70% in terms of project value. Qin Lei revealed that the annual revenue scale of the company's business in the ceramic sanitary ware field remained between tens of millions and hundreds of millions of yuan.

As the company continued to grow, on the one hand, Huibo Robotics upgraded to more in - depth production line and overall factory solutions. On the other hand, it was no longer satisfied with a single niche market and further developed systems such as intelligent painting, automatic polishing, automatic welding, and automatic loading and unloading, and customized automatic production lines for customers.

In order to enter high - end manufacturing industries such as semiconductors, which have higher technical thresholds and greater project profit margins, Huibo also participated in and undertook national projects such as the National 863 Program and the National Development and Reform Commission's Intelligent Manufacturing Special Project, and was continuously short - listed as one of the "Top 10 Chinese Robot" benchmark enterprises by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Qin Lei said that currently, Huibo Robotics has more than 400 employees, and the revenue from leading enterprises in the industry accounts for over 70% of the company's total revenue.

2. From "tool provider" to "service provider", the revenue from education and training business surpasses robot sales

In Qin Lei's view, Huibo Robotics' growth in the past few years has benefited from two aspects of competitive advantages.

Firstly, based on the accumulation of past project experience, it can provide customers with overall solutions. Qin Lei said that the key to the industrial application of robots lies not only in the robots themselves but also in whether they can be effectively integrated with the specific production processes of enterprises. Even among different enterprises in the same industry, there are differences in process details, which requires robot companies to be able to provide accurate and efficient customized solutions.

Huibo's approach is to form a joint team consisting of its own robot technology team, the customer's process personnel, or self - hired experts to jointly determine the final integration plan through a large number of experiments. As Huibo deepens its understanding of the processes in different industries, it has gradually built up cross - industry customized service capabilities, which have become the company's biggest business moat.

"Robot technology is constantly evolving, and Huibo is also iterating itself along with the industry changes," Qin Lei said. Currently, industrial robots have been upgraded from the early stage of performing repetitive actions to a more intelligent and automated trend. For example, with the help of model - driven and automatic programming technologies and by adding sensors such as integrated cameras, robots can achieve intelligent recognition of the environment and autonomous planning of action paths, improving their adaptability and flexibility in complex production environments.

In addition to providing industrial robot solutions, another differentiated advantage of Huibo is that it uses the educational resources of its parent company to provide targeted talent training services for customers. Qin Lei said, "Talent training services are now also a key factor in demonstrating the company's overall strength when we compete for customer orders. When the product solutions are not significantly different, this business ability is often the reason why customers choose us."

The talent training service has helped Huibo transform from a "tool provider" to a "service provider". Qin Lei said that currently, the revenue from the education business segment has exceeded that of the industrial robot business, becoming a new growth point for the company. The training content covers multiple fields such as digital twin, image processing, robot operation, PLC programming, and the application of new sensors, with an annual training volume of over 5,000 people and an annual revenue scale of hundreds of millions of yuan.

3. From expanding overseas with enterprises to expanding overseas through vocational education, how can robot companies effectively export their soft power?

Since focusing on the ceramic sanitary ware industry, Huibo has started its overseas expansion journey following the footsteps of domestic customers relocating their production capacity overseas, providing robot equipment support for customers' overseas factories. In this process, it has encountered problems such as personnel dispatch, cross - border equipment transportation, and customs clearance.

During the process of exporting industrial products, Huibo discovered another overseas expansion path. In 2019, the "National Vocational Education Reform Implementation Plan" (the "20 Guidelines for Vocational Education") issued by the State Council clearly stated that "build a vocational education brand with Chinese characteristics and promote the going - out of vocational education." In line with the trend of "vocational education going global", Huibo, leveraging the cooperation resources between its parent company and some domestic vocational colleges, has established training bases in countries such as Thailand, Kyrgyzstan, Cambodia, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Indonesia, providing technical talent training services such as curriculum and teaching material resource development and teacher team building for local higher education institutions.

For example, in September 2024, Huibo jointly built the "Kaiwu Workshop" project with Jiamusi Vocational College, equipping Osh State University in Kyrgyzstan with Huibo's self - developed integrated teaching innovation platform for industrial robot application programming, the innovation and development platform for intelligent manufacturing virtual commissioning and production control training, and the comprehensive training system for industrial robot technology application, providing teaching and training from basic operations to advanced programming.

In April 2025, Boyaa Technology and Huibo Robotics signed an agreement focusing on the Southeast Asian market. They plan to connect Huibo's AI education robot products to Boyaa's intelligent education platform to achieve multi - language adaptation and curriculum localization; use Boyaa's local resources in Singapore to connect with Southeast Asian universities and vocational training institutions and jointly establish a "technology output + talent certification" system; regarding the issue of cross - border education data, Boyaa has designed a data governance architecture compatible with GDPR for Huibo to ensure the legal and compliant transmission and storage of data and guarantee the smooth progress of subsequent business.

It is reported that Huibo Robotics is gradually establishing cooperation relationships with higher education institutions or vocational education institutions in multiple Southeast Asian countries:

On April 11th, it jointly held a signing ceremony for the international cooperation project of the "Digital and Intelligent Workshop" with a vocational education institution in the eastern region of Thailand.

On May 13th, it jointly built the "Digital and Intelligent Workshop" with the National Polytechnic Institute of Cambodia, introducing technologies such as artificial intelligence and industrial robots into the Cambodian education system.

On June 10th, the unveiling ceremony of the "Digital and Intelligent Workshop" jointly built with the University of Technology Malaysia was held.

On August 7th, Guangxi Vocational and Technical College and Bang Kae Technical College in Thailand jointly built the China - Thailand Intelligent Manufacturing Modern Craftsman Institute, which was officially inaugurated in Thailand.

From the market research in Southeast Asia, Qin Lei found that the industrial situations in different overseas countries vary greatly. It is necessary to adopt a strategy that suits local conditions and formulate targeted curriculum content based on the market research results.

For example, the automation level of the ceramic sanitary ware industry in Vietnam is close to the domestic standard, and there is a large demand for advanced solutions such as robots, automated transmission equipment, and three - dimensional warehouses. In contrast, the automation degree of industries such as electric vehicle manufacturing in Indonesia is relatively low, and the application of robots is still in its infancy. Therefore, the training content focuses on basic technology training and knowledge of equipment operation.

Under the overseas expansion model of tailoring curriculum settings and equipment configuration according to the local industrial situation, Huibo plans to combine talent training services with industrial projects, leverage the synergistic effect of the industrial and education sectors, and provide a one - stop solution from talent to technology.

"We hope to find real customers in the overseas market in the future and give full play to our technological and product advantages in the field of intelligent manufacturing," Qin Lei said.