Purdue Technology allows employees to "graduate", and the founder once scolded employees to receive only red envelopes and do not like it.

Radar Finance | Meng Shuai editor | Deep Sea

The wind of layoffs scraped the commercial robot industry.

On July 5th, Zhang Tao, the founder and CEO of Purdue Technology, issued an internal letter saying, "For the sake of the company, we have to make a difficult decision after a long discussion and make a slimming on the company's business and team." "Let some colleagues graduate from the company and go to other outstanding companies outside to glow and heat."

According to Zhang Tao, the company has experienced several periods of financial difficulties since its entrepreneurship. At that time, there were sound optimizations internally and outside, but they did not agree. Even in 2020, when the epidemic had just occurred, the company relied on all the staff to reduce the food for half of the salary, and eventually survived the difficulties. During this period, no employee left.

Zhang Tao further explained the reasons for layoffs in the letter. He said that he was not uncomfortable with employees, but the company was helpless. After the company's management team, the company's management team decided to adjust the business goals of the next six months to return to the essence of business, improve operating efficiency, and strive to become the first commercial robot company to achieve profitable.

Radar Finance noticed that the layoffs of Purdue Technology had previously bred a sign. As early as last year, Purdue Technology had the news of layoffs. According to media reports, due to the decision -making errors in the company's management, Purdue Technology has expanded on a large scale, and the number of employees has increased from 300 earlier to 3,000 in November last year. After a problem, the company began to lay off layoffs. The scope of layoffs included new employees who were in the probation period and just two months before.

At that time, there were also employees of Purdue Technology's departure that the layoffs involved more than 20 cities, and more than 800 people have now left. The total number of rides is expected to exceed 1,000, accounting for 1/3 of the company's total.

It is understood that Purdue Technology was established in Shenzhen in 2016. The company's main business is the R & D, design, production, and sales of commercial service robots. According to the company's official website data, Purdue Technology currently has hundreds of service outlets worldwide, and its business spreads in more than 60 countries and more than 600 cities, with cumulative sales of tens of thousands of units.

Radar Finance noticed that Purdue Technology was once the darling of capital. Tianyancha shows that from June 2016 to September 2021, Purdue Technology has received a total of 7 rounds of financing, of which the scale of the two rounds of financing has been around 500 million yuan. It is worth mentioning that the investors behind Purdue Technology behind multiple rounds of financing have many star institutions such as Sequoia China, Tencent Investment, and Meituan Strategic Investment Department.

According to Zhang Tao in this internal letter, the commercial robot industry has germinated from around 2016, and has undergone PMF verification from 2016 to 2019. By 2020 In the first echelon company of 100 million to 1 billion yuan, and dozens of second -echelon companies with sales from 20 million to 100 million yuan, the sales of the entire industry have maintained a few times of a few times a year -on -year high growth. Essence At the same time, under the blessing of capital, the valuation of companies in the commercial robot industry has also risen, and a number of unicorn companies with a valuation of $ 1 billion to $ 2 billion have appeared.

However, Zhang Tao also reluctantly said that the current commercial robot industry has not achieved profitability. From the perspective of commercial nature, the entire industry has not reached the pass line. When the capital market is good, the problem of not making money in commercial robot companies in the industry can be covered up, but when the capital market encounters a trough, the number and amount of domestic equity financing pens and amounts have fallen. Capital recovers. Only by achieving profit and sustainable operations as soon as possible can we support the traversal cycle of commercial robot companies and live in the cold winter.

Radar Finance noticed that in May of this year, Purdue Technology was included in the operation of the operation of Nanshan Bureau by Nanshan Bureau of the Shenzhen Market and Quality Supervision and Management Committee due to failure to publicize the 2021 annual report at the prescribed period.

It is worth mentioning that Purdue Technology also caused controversy due to the inappropriate remarks of the founder Zhang Tao. In February this year, Zhang Tao, CEO of Purdue Technology, scolded the employees to receive a red envelope. At that time, Zhang Tao posted a corporate promotional video in the company's internal group, and sent red envelopes in the group to ask employees to like the video after receiving the red envelope, but the number of follow -up likes was far less than expected. So Zhang Tao yelled at the employees who had not liked the red envelope in the company's group, and asked the employees who did not like to return the red envelope.

Follow -up, after the group chat screenshot was sent to the Internet further, Zhang Tao released an open letter apologize, saying that during the period of repeated epidemic, the company's product sales were severely blocked, but the company still needs to support hundreds of employees. Therefore, the promotion of new products is very anxious. Use a strong wording to express the dissatisfaction with the phenomenon of only the phenomenon of only a red envelope.

At that time, Zhang Tao also promised that as long as the income reached the company's goal in the next three years, 50%of the salary of his salary of the year would be issued to employees in the form of red envelopes. To the present, Zhang Tao's beautiful vision for employees has not been realized, but Purdue Technology is facing the embarrassing status quo of "graduation" of employees.

It is reported that Zhang Tao, the founder of Purdue Technology, graduated from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and has founded Leifeng.com and served as the first editor -in -chief and CEO.Tianyancha shows that Zhang Tao is the actual controller and the ultimate beneficiary of Purdue Technology. His shareholding in Shenzhen Purdue Technology Co., Ltd. is about 22.88%, and the ultimate benefit shares are 38.12%.According to media reports, Zhang Tao also publicly degraded friends in the group for interviewing friends because of employees.At the end of the internal letter, Zhang Tao hopes that through this adjustment "crisis" as "machine", whether Purdue Technology can be as wishful as Zhang Tao, radar finance will continue to pay attention.

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