Looking back at the entrepreneurial process, Hu Liqiang, Chairman and General Manager of Jingfeng Mingyuan, said calmly, "For me, entrepreneurship is something I can do within my capacity. If I fail, I can still become an engineer."

With a calm mindset, Hu Liqiang completed his transformation from an engineer to a founder, leading the company to conquer the LED lighting driver chip market. "Focusing on customer value is the key to the success of Jingfeng Mingyuan, and not being confined to others' business paths is a specific skill." He said that Jingfeng Mingyuan has adopted a strategy of "surrounding cities from rural areas" in the LED market, surpassing its overseas competitors in the same industry through independent research and continuous iterative innovation.

Looking into the future, the intelligent lighting market is booming. Hu Liqiang told reporters that the LED industry is showing new growth potential and greater prospects, and intelligent lighting has become a new driving force for the development of LED. Based on the accumulation of LED technology, the company has entered the field of power management chips, and has mastered constant current and constant voltage technologies. As a result, Jingfeng Mingyuan's power management chips have a broader application market.

Surrounding the City from the Countryside and Creating a Sky

In the eyes of many people, entrepreneurship is a "life or death" thing, but in Hu Liqiang's case, entrepreneurship is just a "job".

"At that time, I had some unverified technologies, and a friend advised me to start a business like this. If I failed, I would go back to work as a research and development engineer." When it came to founding Jingfeng Mingyuan, Hu Liqiang smiled and said that his entrepreneurial journey was not as "tragic". In 2007, the LED lighting industry was booming, and I happened to be developing driver chips for LED lighting. After accompanying a friend who is an investor to see several projects, he was persuaded to start a business.

In October 2008, Jingfeng Mingyuan was founded, and Hu Liqiang led a team to quickly develop the first chip. How to sell the product once it is available? "In the 2009 Canton Fair, I brought 100 sets of demos (samples) to scan customers and won the first dealer," said Hu Liqiang, who integrated technology and sales at the time and even worked as a driver when visiting customers.

"At that time, Jingfeng Mingyuan only had 4 employees, and my dealer immediately recruited 9 employees to sell my chips." Hu Liqiang told reporters that it was during this trip to the Canton Fair that, following the dealer's vision, he saw the huge market potential and opportunities of LED and began to think about how to quickly penetrate this market.

"Surrounding cities from rural areas." This is the market strategy set by Hu Liqiang. In 2009, despite traveling through mountains and rivers, Hu Liqiang discovered his biggest customer in a place that even taxis could not reach. The company's sales accelerated, and in just three years, the company's sales quickly increased from 1 million yuan to 100 million yuan.

Then, Hu Liqiang began to think about how to make the work of distributors simpler. He began to put effort into the "system" and gradually integrated the peripheral components such as capacitors, bridges, and freewheeling diodes of the chip with the driving chip. This not only reduced the cost of the entire solution, but also improved product yield and sales efficiency for distributors. At the same time, in order to increase technical support for dealers, Jingfeng Mingyuan has established a technical support team of over 100 people to fully assist dealers in developing solutions.

It can be said that the growth history of Jingfeng Mingyuan is the history of China's LED lighting from its inception to popularization. On this golden track, the "altruistic" concept of helping customers, partners, and employees has become the core of Jingfeng Mingyuan's corporate culture.

Intelligent lighting "illuminates" new kinetic energy

Entering the Jingfeng Mingyuan Building, one can immediately see the uniqueness of this company: there are no traditional LED lights on the ceiling, but sparkling "small fans" hanging.

"These small fans are actually smart lights that use the Jingfeng Mingyuan intelligent LED driver chip. In addition to dimming and color adjustment, the rotating fan blades can also purify the air." Seeing the reporter's curious gaze, Hu Liqiang joked that with this light installed at home, you don't have to worry about someone smoking.

The industrial transformation is unfolding. After general lighting gradually became a "red ocean", the LED market has ushered in a new round of "wind", especially intelligent lighting has brought new imaginative space to the industry.

"The development speed of intelligent lighting is very fast, and it is expected to replicate the development path of general lighting." Hu Liqiang said that with the improvement of people's living standards and their yearning for a better life, people are more concerned about the appearance, color, and intelligence of lighting products when choosing them. Intelligent lighting products are at the right time. Especially after the rise of smart homes, people can control smart lights more conveniently and quickly through mobile apps or smart speakers, and the good user experience has driven the explosion of the industry.

The Forward Industry Research Institute predicts that by 2022, the market size of China's intelligent lighting industry will reach 43.1 billion yuan, with an annual growth rate of about 23%, indicating huge market potential.

Compared with general LED driver chips, the research and development difficulty of intelligent LED driver chips is higher. Hu Liqiang told reporters that for universal LED lights, the driver chip needs constant current protection. But in smart LED lights, to achieve functions such as dimming, color adjustment, wireless control, voice control, interaction, and continuous power supply, it is necessary to connect a series of chips such as MCU and auxiliary power management chip, and also achieve low power consumption, which greatly increases the difficulty of the overall solution.

"The low standby power consumption technology mastered by Jingfeng Mingyuan can achieve a standby power consumption of 1 milliwatt for intelligent single hot wire panels, leading the world." Hu Liqiang said that due to the increase in chip complexity, there are fewer participants in the smart LED driver chip market, and the gross profit margin of the chip is significantly higher than that of general LED driver chips.

"In the future, true smart lights can be automatically adjusted by sensing the environment, scene, and everyone, rather than through apps or voice portals." Regarding the ultimate development path of LED lights, Hu Liqiang smiled and said that there is still a long way to go for smart lights. According to the 2020 annual report of Jingfeng Mingyuan, the company has developed multiple internationally leading smart LED driver chips, widely serving well-known customers such as Xiaomi and Tuya.

Entering the Power Management Chip Market

After establishing a leading advantage in the field of LED lighting driver chips, Jingfeng Mingyuan has embarked on the development of multiple product lines, advancing towards more widely used power management chips (ACDC).

"The company's intelligent LED driver chip is a power management chip with a constant voltage of 3.3V and integrated with intelligent modules such as WiFi, Bluetooth, and infrared, which has achieved large-scale sales." Hu Liqiang introduced that fundamentally, LED driver chips are also a type of power management chip, which converts alternating current (AC) into direct current (DC) with a constant current. On this basis, combined with low-power technologies, the company has developed a constant voltage smart home power management chip, which is a natural thing.

What is the market outlook for power management chips? According to data from Semiconductors and other institutions, the global power management chip market grew from $19.1 billion to $25 billion from 2015 to 2018, and is expected to reach $56.5 billion by 2026; The Chinese power management chip market accounts for approximately 50% of the global market.

"After landing on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, the company's capital strength has become stronger, providing more opportunities to develop power management chips and enabling the company to attract more outstanding talents." Hu Liqiang excitedly told reporters that after Jingfeng Mingyuan went public, it acquired 100% equity of Shanghai Laishi Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd. and 51% equity of Shanghai Xinfei Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd., enriching the variety of LED lighting driver products and adding external AC/DC power chip products. The company has also invested in 8 companies and funds through equity investments, with businesses involving semiconductor fields such as MCU and signal chain chips, gradually establishing a product "moat".

"The LED lighting driver chip adopts constant current technology, and the power management chip adopts constant voltage technology. We have mastered both technologies, and can develop both constant current and constant voltage chips. Next, the product can be expanded to more application fields such as mobile phones and computers." Hu Liqiang said that the power management chip for fast charging is a typical constant current and constant voltage chip, and the company has completed the pre research work of the fast charging power management chip. The first external AC/DC power chip applied in fast charging scenarios has been sent as a sample.

What excites Hu Liqiang is that in the new pattern of international trade, domestic substitution has provided more growth opportunities for Chinese chip companies. "In the past, if an air conditioner cost several thousand yuan, manufacturers wouldn't risk using domestic power management chips for a few yuan. Now, it's different. As long as downstream customers give domestic chips the opportunity, domestic chips can slowly grow."

"Next, we will continue to focus on LED and power management chips, focusing on areas that have not yet achieved localization." Hu Liqiang said that when choosing the track, Jingfeng Mingyuan only chose areas where the top three are all foreign companies, and is also continuously monitoring the progress and opportunities in areas such as DCDC (Direct Current Voltage Management System).

When it comes to expectations for the Science and Technology Innovation Board, Hu Liqiang believes that as long as the board adheres to its positioning as a science and technology innovation board, gives science and technology innovation companies a certain degree of tolerance, and constructs a mechanism to ensure survival of the fittest, the Science and Technology Innovation Board can develop into a leading global capital market.