By the end of 2017, over 200 unmanned store startups were launched in China, which attracted more than US$620 million investment just during that year. However, after the hype faded, only a few companies survived from the fierce competitions, and Citybox is one of them.

Citybox started their business on a totally different path. As a result, their smart vending machine solution can be flexibly deployed in different scenarios which allows them to find the right channels for distribution. In 2017 and 2018, Citybox raised Series A and B from top VCs, like GGV, ZhenFund and SIG China.

Our guest today, Neo Lv, is one of the company’s co-founders and today’s COO. He will take us back to the initial stage of the company and share how Citybox decided to take a very different playbook in terms of business strategy, coming from a deep understanding of the industry and a very lean startup technology approach. Instead of spending their funding on business development and developing hardware, Citybox concentrated their efforts to automate their operations. Today, Citybox is also a great marketing tool for brands to test and launch new products thanks to the data they can collect from a very loyal customer base.