A famous Chinese saying goes, "Like a boat sailing against the current and drops of water wearing through a stone, we should never slow down our efforts on the way to achieve something." Now the task of coordinating epidemic prevention and control with economic and social development remains arduous. Sci-tech content has become Shanghai's confidence in maintaining its economic resilience. To further enhance its confidence, Shanghai needs to keep strengthening innovation--the primary driving force for Shanghai's economy.

Enterprises are fresh forces for innovation and creation. Now enterprises are endeavoring to help themselves out, the government is offering strong support…all sides are working together to create a better "innovation ecosystem", to make small & medium-sized enterprises effective forces of stabilizing and strengthening chains, make more sophisticated and distinctive enterprises stand out in all walks of life, make all fields grow stronger, and provide strong support for high-quality economic development.

Not only delicious lunches are delivered after the park resumes operation

Crisp fried drumettes, scrambled eggs with tomatoes, shredded pork with celery, sautéed vegetables…at 10 AM, the canteen of USST National Science Park was permeated with the fragrance of food. The canteen staff, armed to teeth, packed food fresh from woks for the upcoming lunch peak. In June, the park resumed operation. For the sake of epidemic prevention, the canteen rejected eat-in, and enterprises might order set meals one day early and send staff for pickup the next day.

"Who's that speaking?" "This is Tingshu Technology, five meals to pick up." At 11 AM on a recent day, a staff member of Shanghai Tingshu Technology Co., Ltd. (Tingshu Technology) came to pick up meals. Located in Building 1 of the park, this enterprise focusing on intelligent manufacturing has operated for three years.

All the staff of Tingshu Technology is now on duty with epidemic prevention measures in place. The laboratory full of small industrial equipment finally reopened. Every day the staff went on duty with 72-hour negative nucleic acid test reports and scanned the place code before entering the office. As there is a regular nucleic acid sampling point in USST National Science Park, it is convenient to make a little time for a nucleic acid test.

During the epidemic outbreak, Tingshu Technology had a dozen staff members work from home, urgently suspended some of its business outside Shanghai and machine tool tests, worked out a scheme, realized a self bail-out and reduced losses. "We made a lot of temporary adjustments: for example, we pushed training courses to new recruits to develop their business capacity at home; we duly transferred some business outside Shanghai to Shanghai and coordinated with some local customers; our R&D department did file work earlier and put behind field experiment work," said Yang Aijun, General Manager of Tingshu Technology. "So overall we've reduced the impact of the epidemic to the minimum."

In late May, Yangpu formulated the Plan of Yangpu District for Going All Out to Accelerate Economic Recovery and Rejuvenation, releasing 30 measures for reduction, exemption and subsidization of house rents, taxes and epidemic prevention expenditures, to enhance enterprise satisfaction. As a micro and small enterprise, Tingshu Technology is among the service targets. As of June, they may enjoy house rent exemption for six months.

"To enjoy the house rent exemption policy, we submitted application materials at the earliest possible time and are now going through a process," said Yang. "To us high-tech enterprises, house rent and human cost account for the largest proportion of our costs. In terms of loans, the government has released some relevant policies. We are working on credit extension and application so that we can file timely applications when our future projects need substantial funds. In this way, we can shorten the period of fund arrival and respond to project demand in time."

Now the park exempts micro & small enterprises and individual businesses in the park from house rents for six months, and plans to fulfill the policy at the end of this year. The total amount of rent exemption and reduction is expected to be about 8 million yuan. "Besides, we'll push and specifically explain bail-out policies to enterprises," said Ren Xiaolin, Vice Manager of the Enterprise Service Department of USST National Science Park. "We've recently assisted enterprises in applying for Zhangjiang Special Funds, and so far declared four projects of three enterprises. Yesterday, the first fund has arrived at our account.

There are currently a total of 101 enterprises in the park and 85 percent of them have been back on track

Infusing technologies into the DNA of the enterprise, making "last-three-kilometer delivery" smoother

Now the online all-channel development and digital transformation of retail has become a consensus among retail enterprises. Particularly, as offline consumption is restricted during the epidemic, offline retail is switching to local instant retail all the time, and consumers prefer familiar and trustworthy local merchants due to long-distance deliveries in traditional e-commerce. Instant retail featuring "online ordering, store dispatch and one-hour delivery" is becoming one of the most promising growth points of retail. Additionally, with the development of instant retail, consumers have higher requirements for commodity quality and timely deliveries in the last three kilometers.

When a new era has come for retailing, Dada Group rooted in Yangpu has infused technologies into its DNA: "Whatever can be done by technology does not need to be done by manually; whatever can be turned into products should be commercialized."

In 2017, Dada released the strategy of "retail empowerment";

In 2018, Dada upgraded its strategy to "traffic, performance, commodity, customer and store empowerment", to help physical stores achieve breakthroughs in online business and realize digitalization;

In 2019, Dada launched Hiboos System and Dada Now's daily orders peaked at nearly 10 million;

In 2020, Dada launched the Monica platform to support brand marketing through user behavior studies, goods innovations and integrated operations;

In 2021, Dada launched Dada Sorting, Dada Unmanned Delivery Open Platform and Dada Smart Delivery SaaS System successively;

In 2022, the elderly-oriented and barrier-free upgrading project of JDDJ APP was accepted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to help the aged enjoy the convenience of digitalization…

During years of technology R&D, Dada has kept upgrading its digital product solutions to meet the ever-growing demand of retailers and brands for connecting online and offline marketing and acquiring new channels. 

Take the "delivery" business for example, Dada innovatively launched the model of "crowd-sourcing picking" integrated with the Picking Assistant of Hiboos System, to help retailers digitalize and commercialize goods picking and management. Based on Dada's years of experience in digital management, Dada Picking can systematically recruit and train crowd-sourcing pickers to improve the service efficiency of stores. Crowd-sourcing pickers serve supermarkets, malls and stores by completing all-channel order-based picking, packaging and order deliveries.

Since its launch in July 2021, Dada Picking has been recognized by merchants for improving picking efficiency. By late March 2022, it had covered all Wal-Mart stores in China.

How to improve delivery efficiency and ensure contract performance in the scenarios of scattered demand, complex types, highly fluctuating order peaks and mass places of origin?

Dada has leveraged technologies such as big data, AI and operation optimization, as well as its long-accumulated experience in instant delivery data analysis and processing, to independently develop Ark Monitoring System, Star Warning System and Simulation System. Based on mass data, these systems can support the optimal matching of transport capacity, order volume estimation, automatic order distribution and combination, the real-time intelligent planning of delivery paths and other features. They have become important underlying supporting systems for Dada's instant logistics delivery service, and can realize unified access and efficient processing of all-channel orders.

Since last year, Dada has made great efforts to develop unmanned delivery. Dada Unmanned Delivery Open Platform has provided instant delivery order and operation tools to accessing partners, to realize the regular application of unmanned delivery. In the scenarios of harsh weather, business peak and night delivery, facing the demand for contactless delivery in the post-epidemic era, unmanned delivery has shown its prominent advantage as a supplement and an important means of transport.

Openness and collaboration is a main trend of the instant delivery industry and technologies play a core role in this process. We learned that Dada Unmanned Delivery Open Platform had partnered with JD Express and White Rhino to innovatively create an unmanned delivery ecosystem for supermarkets and malls, and was entering into a stage of massive development.

Filling in the last piece of the puzzle for the digital transformation of the catering industry, creating a "take-out delicacy map"

The scale of China's take-out delivery market hit 934 billion yuan in 2021. The huge market calls for the upgrading of the industry through improved delivery service. According to authoritative data, Shanghai leads China in the number of high-grade restaurants, and public demand for take-out food has been growing from stomach filling to enjoyment.

"One ranking per city": According to citizens' dining experiences, upon assessment and recommendation by famous chefs, food researchers and other experts, the top 300 local catering brands are selected…On June 16, Meituan Takeout released China's first "Must-ordered Restaurant Ranking" in Shanghai.

Restaurants were handpicked to create this "take-out delicacy map".

Meituan Takeout will first select a number of restaurants according to consumers' dining experiences, taste, comments and quality of take-out food, and then a review committee made up of 30 local experts, including chefs of time-honored restaurants, cooking masters and foodies, will taste the selected food on an anonymous basis, assess from dimensions such as flavor and delivery service, and make comments. "The taste process, under a fair and impartial principle, will be subject to user supervision," said a head of Meituan Takeout.

Following assessment, the 300 top-scoring brands will be submitted to the review board for a final review. The review board is made up of Sun Xiaochun, an international cooking master and Chairman of the Famous Chef Special Committee of China Cuisine Association; Shi Wanrong, one of China's top 10 famous chefs and Chairman of the Famous Chef Special Committee of China Hospitality Association, to make the selection fair, professional and scientific.

Unlike traditional food rankings only for viewing, Meituan Takeout's "Must-ordered Restaurant Ranking" provides direct access to restaurants so that foodies can order desired food online directly. Besides, the platform will lift delivery range restrictions on the ranked merchants, allowing them to provide delivery service as far as 25 kilometers to all parts of the city.

We noticed that there are top restaurants in Shanghai with per capita spending of more than 1,000 yuan in the ranking, including Pujiang Essence and Amazing Chinese Cuisine. Considering the small amount of take-out food, these restaurants have introduced "single meals" to make cost-effective food accessible to consumers.

The ranking also contains more than 100 foreign premier restaurants that serve a dozen foreign cuisines, including French cuisine, Japanese cuisine and Mexican cuisine. Foodies can choose desired restaurants in the ranking to order according to their food pictures and scores, as well as consumers' comments.

In recent years, catering enterprises specialized in eat-in or take-out have been decreasing, and more have resorted to "online + offline" operation and delivered take-out food as good as food served in restaurants. The online and digital operation of premier restaurants is becoming a trend, which is the last piece of the puzzle for the digital transformation of the catering industry, said Jin Peihua, Deputy Secretary General of the Shanghai Restaurants Cuisine Association. This will help improve the resilience of premier restaurants and their ability to resist risks, he added.

In the future, Meituan Takeout will release the ranking in other key Chinese cities. "Our Must-ordered Restaurant Ranking will define authoritative standards of quality take-out food along with industrial experts and foodies, and establish some model brands to effectively popularize these standards, thereby promoting the high-level development of the take-out industry," said Wang Puzhong, Senior Vice President of Meituan and President of At-home Business Group of Meituan.