“Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily”, April 24 (Special Research Fellow Tian Xiao) Recently, Communication Holdings released its 2023 annual report. Net profit to the mother in 2023 was 5,537 billion yuan, an increase of 122.93% over the previous year. A mobile phone manufacturer that the vast majority of Chinese people don't necessarily know has quietly become the vanguard for Chinese companies to go overseas.

This is indeed a very low-key but fast-growing company. It was listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board in 2019. It has not yet entered the top ten market capitalization of the Science and Technology Innovation Board in 2022. It has already reached sixth place in 2023. By April 23, 2024, it had already ranked fourth in market capitalization.

This leader in the emerging mobile phone market, uses smart phones and feature phones from the three major brands of Tecnoitel and Infinix as its main products. It has been deeply involved in the African market for many years. In recent years, it has vigorously developed emerging markets such as South Asia and Southeast Asia. Overseas markets account for more than 95% of revenue.

While the consumer electronics giants of Xiaomi, Huawei, and OPPO were still fighting for the Central Plains, Zhu Zhaojiang, the founder of Communication Holdings worth 13 billion dollars, had been in the position of “African Machine King” for many years.

Why Africa?

From BP machines, big brothers, feature phones, and smart phones to AI phones that are ready to be launched, this small device in the palm of your hand has gone from being a communication tool for connecting people to a smart portal to the Internet of Everything. At every node in the technological transition, mobile phones are the most popular and important products.

Every time communication tools are being updated, the wave of technology will take away a number of brands that have not kept up with the times. These “predecessor” brands may no longer be known to everyone today, but the fun and experience they once brought to consumers will remain in the memory of a generation. “Waveguide phone, fighter in a mobile phone” is one of them. In the era of feature phones, Waveguide was one of the mainstream players in the market. This mobile phone company from Zhejiang was Zhu Zhaojiang's first stop.

Zhu Zhaojiang was born in 1973 in Ningbo, Zhejiang. He comes from an ordinary family and has been curious about the business world since childhood. Since middle school, Zhu Zhaojiang has been thinking about running small businesses, dabbling in candy, drinks, watches, etc. He once said, “I've been interested in doing business since I was a kid. This not only allowed me to meet all kinds of people, but it also brought me income.”

After graduating from college, Zhu Zhaojiang returned to his hometown to join the popular waveguide phone. At the time, we were in a period of transition from pagers to mobile phones. Zhu Zhaojiang advanced the pager department. Soon, he caught the trend of the times and resolutely requested that he be transferred to the mobile phone department.

In just three years, Zhu Zhaojiang achieved waveguide sales in North China and immediately joined the waveguide management team. In 2003, Zhu Zhaojiang was transferred abroad for the first time to develop overseas markets. In just two years, he sold 6 million mobile phones overseas.

In 2006, Zhu Zhaojiang became the Deputy General Manager of Waveguide. This year, mobile phone sales in the domestic market broke 100 million for the first time. However, with the advent of the 3G era, the smartphone market penetration rate exceeded 10%, and waveguide phones, which still focus on functional devices, began to lose money.

Zhu Zhaojiang felt the changing trend in the domestic market and must go outside. He thought so. As a result, he left Waveguide and went to Africa.

The selling logic of the former “top seller”

Zhu Zhaojiang, who was born in sales, is what he is best at selling goods. How to sell phones to Africa? The answer to this question is also simple: find what they want.

In August 2006, Voice Communications launched its first mobile phone in Africa. In order to adapt to prices in Africa, the price of this phone was extremely low. However, the affordable products still failed miserably.

What's the problem? Zhu Zhaojiang quickly discovered the answer. In Africa, where infrastructure is extremely scarce, a stable mobile signal is more rare than a mobile phone itself. Making a phone call not only required searching for intermittent signals everywhere, but there were too many local operators and they were not compatible with each other, and the charges for calling across communication operators were extremely high, so the spectacle of “several phones in the pocket” and “one operator card inserted into one phone” appeared at the time.

Once you've found the problem, if you can't change the environment, make yourself “three heads and six arms.” Soon, Zhu Zhaojiang brought the dual-SIM dual-standby function machine to Africa. Later, he even launched the “four-card four-card four-standby” dual-card function machine locally, which suddenly solved the biggest communication problem in the African market. Only then did transmission gain a foothold.

Zhu Zhaojiang realized that before, he “still entered the African market with a simple trade mentality” and did not have “deep insight into local needs.” Since then, he has embarked on a path of deep localization and customization.

Entering the smart phone era, Zhu Zhaojiang's most widely known new trick is the “Photograph and Beautify Black People” function introduced by Voice. Voice specifically collects facial data on African people, and has added features such as exposure compensation for black people to take pictures. The photos taken by local people using telephones can capture bright chocolate skin tones. In addition to this, he also said, “The weather in Africa is too hot, so the palms get sweaty easily, which is bad for the durability of the phone. Also, Africans love their music, so (so) we've adjusted our music service according to their tastes.”

The continent of Africa is very large, but due to slow economic development, many major international manufacturers at the time did not use Africa as their main market, let alone consider developing differentiated models adapted to the local market. In this new continent, Voice was not the first to land, but it did the most diligent work.

A win-win philosophy that crosses the ocean

Over the years that Chinese brands have gone overseas, not every company has had a smooth journey. More and more brands “went global” and only discovered that the “dissatisfaction” of Chinese companies usually lies in a very different culture. When the two parties have very different understandings of everyday life and the business world, how should the business proceed?

Zhu Zhaojiang's approach is simple; it returns to respect and win-win between people.

Within Voice, “Together We Can (Co-create, Share)” is printed on the back of everyone's business cards, from executives to ordinary employees. This is not only a value slogan, but also Zhu Zhaojiang's personal philosophy of going overseas.

Zhu Zhaojiang often said, “We are a long-distance running company, and we will never betray our future for short-term profit.” At the most important agency link in the African mobile phone market, Voice is closely tied to agents in different regions and uses a zero-based agent system at all levels to speed up cash flow. At the same time, as risk compensation, Voice also relinquished large profits to agents.

For many people, Africa is a completely unfamiliar environment. Due to its low level of social development, people who don't understand will inevitably have negative imaginations. Zhu Zhao has never been biased against Africa. He once said, “Doing business in Africa and dealing with Africans makes me particularly happy. In my opinion, Africans are simple and kind. As long as they can communicate openly and honestly, they can gain their trust, and once established, this trust will be very strong”.

Furthermore, Zhu Zhaojiang has praised Africa's youthfulness many times. “Although it has a low starting point, its population structure is young, and it is a generation that is open minded and quick to accept new things.”

The purpose of going out to sea is to take root and blossom. After years of working silently, the “unknown” voice in China is probably one of the signs of its successful localization. In the smartphone era, Zhu Zhaojiang is still exploring and gradually entering the fields of consumer finance and intelligent ecology. What kind of future can Chinese business wisdom and foreign cultural soil cultivate? We need to wait for the flowers to bloom.