Tech firms release SME-friendly products, services in Shanghai
Tech firms, including Huawei and Weimob, are upgrading their strategies and tailored services for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the backbone of China's economy and prime employers of millions of workers, Shanghai Daily learned.
This will also advance China's digital transformation, analysts believe.
Huawei Technologies has upgraded SME-friendly strategies of its Enterprise Business Group (EBG), one of the fastest-growing business groups in Huawei. It has developed a "Partner+Huawei" strategy to serve SMEs nationwide and offers supporting resources valued at 4 billion yuan (US$555 million) annually for its integrator partners, the tech giant said in Shanghai on Monday.
With partners, Huawei can offer services for SMEs round the clock and help them solve problems immediately.
Huawei is upgrading its brand image to serve all business clients, including SMEs, compared to the earlier focus on big-scale clients, said Qiu Heng, chief marketing officer of Huawei EBG in China.
Huawei's mobile showcase stops in Shanghai's Hongkou District. The company released a SME-friendly strategy upgrade in the city.
In Shanghai, Huawei released 60 new products, as well as 30 tailored ones for SMEs. The city has attracted the most industrial investment by Huawei, including a regional office in Hongkou District and a 10-billion-yuan research center in suburban Qingpu District, which will open in 2024.
At the ongoing China SME Investment & Finance Expo, Shanghai-based FinVolution shared how to support SMEs with financial innovation.
SMEs in China face an uncertain external environment and unstable cash flow. They lack full-coverage standard process for credit evaluation, bringing challenges in getting loans and other financing services, FinVolution chief operating officer Wang Yuxiang told the SME event.
Many FinVolution users are SMEs, some even operating individual businesses.
With innovations, including artificial intelligence, FinVolution offers valuation, risk control, loan management and SaaS (software as a service) services for SMEs.
In 2022, FinVoultion SME loans reached 43.4 billion yuan, 10 times more compared with that in 2020, meaning that SME-related businesses accounted for a quarter of its total transaction. In 2022, when SMEs, like nearly all other sectors, were hit by the pandemic, over 900,000 SMEs benefited from the company's services, according to the New York-listed firm.
Shanghai-based Weimob, meanwhile, released new AI services with low thresholds and costs, which has helped online retailers, including many SMEs.
Weimob's latest AI tool WAI, with ChatGPT-like features, helps users save about half the time for content creation on social media and up to 80 percent for related image creation. It helps Weimob users with video scripts, community operation, Xiaohongshu seeding notes and public tweets.
It makes smart retail more easy and accessible, Hong Kong-listed Weimob pointed out.
In future, Weimob will upgrade the AI large model for high-quality and customized "Prompt" models and more targeted services in the smart retail industry.
The three-day China SME Investment & Finance Expo closed in Beijing on Tuesday.
With Weimob's new AI tool, users can generate promotion text and images fast and easily.
