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Opening words

Innovation has become the core driving force for high-quality economic growth, among which gazelle enterprises are one of the most dynamic factors. The so-called gazelle enterprises mainly refer to small and medium-sized enterprises that have entered a high growth period supported by technological innovation or business model innovation. As my country's economic center city and a highland of technological innovation, Shanghai has rich innovation resources and a good entrepreneurial environment. In the past few years, it has provided fertile soil for the development of innovative entities including gazelle enterprises and unicorn enterprises, and explored and formed a series of precise and efficient enterprise service mechanisms.

Starting today, this newspaper has joined hands with the Shanghai Small and Medium Enterprise Development Service Center, Shanghai Equity Custody and Trading Center, etc. to launch a series of reports on "Shanghai's Gazelle' Innovation Leap". Reporters have visited a group of high-growth and high-tech innovation enterprises in the city, excavated their innovation stories in technology, business models, etc., and faced the ways to success and the challenges they face. We hope that through this series of reports, we can inspire more people to use technological innovation as a driving force and strive to achieve a key leap on the road to development.

Shanghai Zhangjiang

Innogrit Technology Co., Ltd., an integrated circuit company headquartered in Zhangjiang, Shanghai, has been running forward at a dazzling pace since its establishment in 2017. In 7 years, they have mass-produced 9 storage-related chips and a series of modules. Their revenue has continued to double in the past 3 years, and many of their products have become benchmarks in the high-end market.

The rapid growth of InnoGrit is closely related to the cultural identity represented by their corporate name - "InnoGrit" refers to the emphasis on talent and innovation, and "Renin" represents resilience. Since the start of its business, the team has always adhered to long-termism and promoted the "innovation marathon" at the speed of a 100-meter sprint, thus quickly becoming one of the top players in the global storage control chip industry.

The entrepreneurial dream of a chip "veteran"

Storage is an important infrastructure of the digital economy. The storage control chips that InnoGrit specializes in, and the related technologies and markets have long been controlled by multinational companies. As the country pays more attention to technological innovation and industrial chain security, a group of local companies have gradually emerged, and InnoGrit is one of the best.

The entrepreneurial team of InnoGen Technology can be described as "industry veterans". Their professional backgrounds cover chip design, software, hardware, algorithms and other fields. Many of them have studied abroad at prestigious universities and then joined top companies in Silicon Valley and other places. They have an average of more than 15 years of work experience and have handled billions of chips.

In 2017, the team founded InnoGrit in Shanghai. CEO Liu Gang said that at the time, mainstream storage technology was facing a change in track, that is, from mechanical hard disks to solid-state drives, and the data transmission interface was also switched from SATA to the higher-speed PCIe. The technological transformation weakened the traditional advantages of large companies and provided an opportunity window for startups. Equally important, China, as the world's most important storage market, provides broad space for the development of local companies. Based on this, this group of "veterans" who had led multiple "from 1 to 10" projects in large companies returned to China and took root in Zhangjiang, which is most suitable for the development of the integrated circuit industry, hoping to realize their entrepreneurial dreams from scratch.

In the past seven years, InnoGrit has demonstrated a rare "explosive growth force". They have released nine storage control chips and a series of storage module products at an impenetrable frequency and rhythm, and have won the "China Core" storage chip award for four consecutive years. Their revenue has doubled in the past three years. They even moved five times in seven years in order to find a suitable space to accommodate the rapidly expanding workforce - it is worth mentioning that R&D personnel account for as much as 70% of their employees.

Throw away opponents with repeated dashes

It is not easy for startups to gain a foothold in the chip market, especially compared with large companies, startups have many limitations in terms of funds, manpower, customers, etc. For this reason, many companies are accustomed to seeking "extreme cost-effectiveness" as a breakthrough. However, in the eyes of many industry insiders, the style of InnoGrit is different - they hope to rely on leading technology to gain performance and quality advantages, continuously come up with better technology and products than large companies, and leave their competitors behind through repeated sprints.

If the solid-state drive used for storage is likened to a parking lot, then in order to make the "traffic" of data find parking spaces and park properly in an orderly and efficient manner, high-level command and dispatch are indispensable. The storage control chip developed by InnoGrit plays the role of a dispatch center. With the replacement of storage technology, the amount of data continues to rise, and the traffic in the "parking lot" is getting bigger and bigger. For this reason, the "dispatching" ability of the control chip must be greatly improved. Some companies rely on simply and crudely stacking computing power in chips, that is, using "human sea tactics" to cope with the sharp increase in scheduling pressure, but the cost is that the power consumption of chips has risen sharply, which may eventually overwhelm the equipment. InnoGrit has developed an original architecture and algorithm that allows chips to achieve higher performance while maintaining low power consumption. With its technology empowerment, large data centers with thousands of racks can save thousands of watts of power per rack.

In addition, InnoGrit is well-known in the industry for its forward-looking technology route. In particular, in the process of the evolution of the PCIe standard storage interface from the 3rd generation to the 4th generation and the 5th generation, they always took the lead and were the first in China to release and mass-produce related storage chips, and then became a heavyweight supplier in the enterprise storage and high-end consumer electronics market with the characteristics of high security, high reliability, high capacity, high performance, low power consumption and low latency.

Don't cry over spilt milk

Starting a business is never smooth sailing, and the growth of InnoGrit is far more bumpy than it seems. In fact, the integrated circuit industry itself has been iterating at a high speed. Once any company slows down, it may "miss the opportunity" when a new wave of technology takes off, and thus be left behind. The team at InnoGrit is certainly well aware of this.

As for the high-end memory chip market segment, there is generally a time lag between new technologies and terminal market demand. For InnoGrit, the chips that have been successfully developed with huge investments will experience a slow climb after their first launch. Only after a sufficiently long incubation period will they usher in exponential growth and obtain large orders from customers. The memory chips that allowed them to capture the high-end consumer market in 2021 were actually released in 2019; the products that helped them gain a foothold in the enterprise market last year were born in 2021. The two-year time lag is filled with uncertainty between the present and the future. Startups must be forward-looking enough to plan for the future, and at the same time have enough resilience to handle the present.

Liu Gang admitted that in the seven years since its founding, while the company has been growing rapidly, the team has been facing various challenges, from the risk of product delays to difficulties in customer expansion, and even many "black swan" events that were far beyond expectations. Every time, everyone supported each other and kept looking forward. "We believe in a saying: Don't cry over spilled milk. This is the mentality that entrepreneurs should maintain."

InnoGrit has strong confidence in the future, because with the development of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and robots, the world's demand for data is increasing day by day, requiring the storage industry to continuously provide bigger, faster, and better products. Moreover, as data throughput increases, storage devices may change from "parking lots" for data to "airports", and the control chips responsible for scheduling may usher in more profound technological changes, which also allows innovators to see more opportunities. Even in the near future, they have enough reasons to be optimistic, because according to the "time difference law" of innovation, the new technologies and new products currently launched by InnoGrit will continue to win customers in the next two years.

However, Liu Gang admitted that so far, they have never felt at ease - in the integrated circuit industry, this lingering "sense of insecurity" can better hone and spur the team.

The Gazelle Question

ask:If an enterprise could obtain a policy support now, what would it most want?

answer:The development of chips and storage hardware is a long-term undertaking, which is not only oriented to the world's technological frontiers, but also to the main economic battlefield and major national needs. Currently, InnoGrit is in a stage of rapid business growth and hopes to receive more patient capital support to promote the promotion and application of independent research products and iterative upgrades, so that more scientific and technological achievements can be transformed from samples into products and industries, so as to better undertake the task of R&D and promotion of domestic storage solutions.

ask:What is the biggest difficulty or bottleneck your company has encountered since its development?

answer:R&D, technology and products have never been bottlenecks or difficulties for InnoGrit. In recent years, we have gradually become a technology leader in the industry, but the storage field where InnoGrit products are located is highly monopolized by overseas brands. Facing direct competition with mature overseas brands, we need longer-term market cultivation opportunities and more product application opportunities in downstream fields to improve product maturity and expand brand reputation faster.

ask:If there is one good experience you can share with those who come after you, what is it?

answer:Market and industry cycles are inevitable. The key to achieving sustainable and healthy development in the hard technology industry is to continuously pursue leading technology levels, efficient product iterations and a stable R&D success rate.

Author: Zhang Yi

Text: Zhang Yi Photo: Fan Jiale Editor: Fu Lu

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