The successful story of Hesai Technology

During the COVID-19 outbreak, Jiading-based Hesai Technology, which researches and manufactures sensors for intelligent connected vehicle, provided technical support for the “White Rhino,” a driverless distribution robot working in the Wuhan No. 3 People’s Hospital’s Guanggu branch in Hubei Province, the former epicenter.

Its production Pandar 40P, the main sensor on the White Rhino, has many advantages including high accuracy and anti-interference.Hesai, which was launched in Jiading in 2014, has become a leading company in the industry.

It first produced an unmanned aerial vehicle, earning more than 10 million yuan (US$1.44 million) from the first batch which were equipped with LidAR (a laser detector).

“Not only a cluster of research centers gathers in Jiading, but also the most complete auto industrial chain in the country is located here. Jiading is valuable to us when we transferred our business to the driverless car area,” said Yang Cailian, vice president of Hesai.

“Usually, if a Chinese company wants to enter the high-end manufacturing industry, it has to make domestic substitutes for low-end products at first,” said Li Yifan, CEO of Hesai Technology. “However, we did exactly the opposite, entering the high-end market of LidAR directly and winning the middle and low-end markets afterward.”

The tactics helped Hesai’s “Pandora,” an all-in-one sensing kit, win a Red Dot Design Award, an international accolade, in 2018.

For Hesai, the engineering team is the key. It has expanded from tens of employees to more than 700 over the past few years, attracting many graduates from overseas universities and researchers who once worked for technology giants such as Apple or Samsung.

Liu Yue switched his job from a world-renowned auto company to Hesai. He said that except for company’s business strength and future development, residency policies, housing allowance and living subsidies it offered were among the reasons to stay, both in the company and in Jiading.

So far, the LidAR Pandar series has gained recognition from 18 countries and 42 cities and regions.