Another industry leader has opened the doors to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. On October 10, Shanghai Zhida Technology Development (02650.HK) from Shanghai's Yangpu District officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company's shares surged 183.92% on its trading debut, opening at HK$190 per share compared to its pricing of HK$66.92, reaching a total market capitalization of HK$11.3 billion.
The day before, a remarkable subscription frenzy had set the stage for Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's listing. On October 9, the company's IPO public offering recorded over 5,000 times oversubscription, freezing approximately HK$250 billion in funds, setting a new record high for new energy sector IPO subscription multiples in Hong Kong stocks for 2025.
This "hidden champion" that emerged from a university laboratory has finally taken center stage in the international capital market as an industry leader.
Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's roots are deeply embedded in the academic-industrial research ecosystem. In 2010, it spun off from a research project at Tongji University's New Energy Vehicle Laboratory in Shanghai's Yangpu District, initially just a technical exploration centered around "charging." Over more than a decade, the team has transformed laboratory achievements into global competitiveness, not only being selected as a national-level "specialized and innovative little giant," but also gradually becoming the veritable "charging pile leader."
According to Frost & Sullivan data, Shanghai Zhida Technology Development ranks first in China by sales volume and revenue of home electric vehicle charging piles during the track record period.
Since its establishment, Shanghai Zhida Technology Development has completed multiple funding rounds, attracting well-known companies and institutions including BYD, Zhongding Group, Shanghai Zhongdiantou, Chuangqi Kaiying, and Xuancheng Fund, with Zhongding Group and BYD holding 7.67% and 3.52% stakes respectively.
The dual reinforcement of technological accumulation and market validation has made Shanghai Zhida Technology Development a leading player in the household green energy sector.
What captivates the capital market is Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's hard strength in evolving "from single products to ecosystem layout." The company uses "charging" as an entry point, integrating five core competencies: products, services, digitalization, manufacturing, and branding, building four major product lines: AC piles, DC piles, green digital energy solutions, and automatic charging robots.
Its business not only covers household scenarios but also provides digital empowerment to energy companies, with global deployment extending to multiple markets.
Currently, Shanghai Zhida Technology Development is advancing its 2.0 strategy of "globalization, digitalization, and intelligence," aiming to transform "charging," a key node in the new energy chain, into a core hub connecting families with sustainable development.
The over 5,000-fold oversubscription of this IPO essentially reflects the market's optimism about the household green energy sector and recognition of Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's technological barriers. From university laboratory to Hong Kong Stock Exchange, this company's growth trajectory not only epitomizes the extension of China's new energy industry chain toward the consumer end but also validates the innovative logic of "leveraging small breakthroughs for large markets."
When Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's listing bell rang at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, it not only opened the vast world of capital markets for itself but also vividly demonstrated the spectacular transformation of Shanghai's old industrial district Yangpu from "industrial rust belt" to "innovation rainforest" through the growth trajectory of a technology company.
**Academic Excellence from Sha County Achieves IPO Success**
As Shanghai Zhida Technology Development opens the doors to capital markets, it also brings a entrepreneur from Fujian's Sha County into the spotlight.
The prospectus shows that Shanghai Zhida Technology Development founder Huang Zhiming directly holds 27.99% of shares, with employee incentive platforms Tongdu Commerce, Tongdu Intelligence, and Tongdu Technology holding 15.4%, 4.03%, and 0.28% respectively. Huang Zhiming and these entities under his control form the company's controlling shareholder group, collectively holding 47.7%.
The story begins in the summer of 1993, when exam results were announced and Huang Zhiming, a graduate of Sha County No. 1 Middle School, appeared as the top science student in Fujian's Sha County. In September of the same year, this top science student from Sha County headed north with simple luggage to enter Tongji University's Automotive Engineering Department. This choice years ago quietly laid the foundation for Huang Zhiming's lifelong connection to the automotive industry.
In 1998, Huang Zhiming obtained his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering and Automation from Tongji University and entered Shanghai Volkswagen Engine Factory with excellent grades, starting as a production workshop technician. At that time, Shanghai Volkswagen was implementing Volkswagen Group's global quality control system (VDA), and Huang Zhiming was selected to participate in the engine factory's technical breakthrough. He led the sealing test team for a year-long effort and was promoted to Technical Director.
Over the next decade, Huang Zhiming's career at Shanghai Volkswagen became increasingly distinguished. In 2004, when Volkswagen and SAIC Group planned to establish Shanghai Volkswagen Powertrain Co., Ltd. to produce Volkswagen's then-most advanced turbo direct injection engine (TSI) globally, Huang Zhiming was selected by the Shanghai Volkswagen Engine Factory director as a member of the new company's preparation team.
During his tenure at Shanghai Volkswagen Powertrain Co., Ltd., Huang Zhiming grew alongside the new company, serving as director of both the Planning Department and Logistics Department, accumulating deep knowledge of the automotive industry chain on the TSI production line.
Huang Zhiming worked at Volkswagen until 2010, the year he founded Shanghai Zhida Technology Development.
Returning to 2010, China was experiencing a surge in new energy vehicle development, with the "overtaking on curves" concept being proposed - rapidly developing China's new energy vehicles when traditional vehicles couldn't be surpassed. Having worked at Volkswagen for over a decade, Huang Zhiming clearly sensed the major trend. At that time, he was eager to break through his own bottlenecks and those of the entire traditional automotive industry.
Thus, 36-year-old Huang Zhiming decided to step out of his comfort zone and choose the entrepreneurial path in the new energy vehicle field.
To better prepare for entrepreneurship, Huang Zhiming participated in projects including Ganzhou's new energy vehicle development planning, Dalian's green urban area planning, and Fujian's vehicle factory transformation, gradually clarifying the technical implementation roadmap through consulting and system development.
In November 2010, Shanghai Zhida Technology Development was established in Shanghai.
Looking back now, Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's initial business was somewhat "cross-industry" - providing new energy vehicle industry planning for governments, developing connected vehicle systems for foreign automakers, and designing smart grid solutions for power companies. However, these accumulations that seemed unrelated to "charging piles" actually laid crucial groundwork for later penetrating household charging scenarios - understanding of industrial ecosystems and insights into user needs were all accumulated during these projects.
The real turning point occurred at the end of 2013. That year, Tesla, which was launching its China market layout, was looking everywhere for charging service partners in China. Shanghai Zhida Technology Development, with its accumulated technical solutions and system development capabilities, became one of its first "professional private charging service providers."
This cooperation not only validated Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's technical strength in the charging field but also helped it understand the real needs of the household charging market.
Over the next decade, Shanghai Zhida Technology Development raced along the path of "technology foundation, model innovation," independently developing IoT intelligent hardware, building connected platforms, and constructing charging service systems.
Today's Shanghai Zhida Technology Development, starting with providing intelligent home electric vehicle charging piles to automobile manufacturers and users, has developed a "trinity" electric vehicle home charging solution consisting of products, services, and digital platforms.
According to Frost & Sullivan data, Shanghai Zhida Technology Development ranks first in China by sales volume and revenue of home electric vehicle charging piles during the track record period. During the track record period, by home electric vehicle charging pile sales volume, Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's China market share reached 13.6%, with a global market share of 9.0%. By China home electric vehicle charging pile revenue, Shanghai Zhida Technology Development ranked third with approximately 6.6% market share. By 2024 global home electric vehicle charging pile revenue, Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's market share was approximately 3.9%.
Now, Huang Zhiming, with over twenty years of rich experience in the automotive industry, has reached his first IPO milestone. This academic achiever from Fujian's Sha County is clearly not satisfied with merely becoming the "charging pile leader." How Shanghai Zhida Technology Development will develop under his leadership in the future has become a market focus.
**Multiple Funding Rounds with Jia Yueting as Former Shareholder**
Behind Shanghai Zhida Technology Development, this global home charging pile leader, stands not only technically-oriented founder Huang Zhiming but also a once star-studded shareholder lineup - from early bets on the new energy vehicle sector by LeEco Auto to multiple rounds of institutional and industrial investors, forming important footnotes in Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's growth story.
While Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's story began in 2010, it didn't start its first funding round until 2015. That year, LeEco Auto (Beijing) Co., Ltd. (then named Faraday (Beijing) Network Technology Co., Ltd.) invested 15 million yuan, becoming an important early shareholder of Shanghai Zhida Technology Development.
LeEco's investment was not just financial but also implied expectations of ecosystem synergy. After all, since Jia Yueting first revealed the LeEco SEE plan on December 9, 2014, he had invested too much in his car-making dream. Besides investing in Shanghai Zhida Technology Development, he also intensively invested in companies like Ling Pai Le Xiang and Yidao across the automotive industry value chain. Among these, Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's home charging solutions perfectly complemented LeEco Auto's "electrification + intelligence" ecosystem.
However, as LeEco's funding chain crisis erupted, Jia Yueting's car-making dream came to an abrupt halt. In June 2019, LeEco Auto transferred all its 8.0625% stake to Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's employee incentive platform Tongdu Intelligence for approximately 17.35 million yuan, completely exiting Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's shareholder roster.
While this investment exit didn't generate excessive returns for Jia Yueting, as one of Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's first-round investors, it held different significance for the latter.
After starting its first funding round in 2015, Shanghai Zhida Technology Development continued to secure multiple funding rounds over subsequent years, backed by powerful well-known companies and investment institutions including BYD, Zhongding Group, Shanghai Zhongdiantou, Chuangqi Kaiying, and Xuancheng Fund.
However, despite wearing the crown of "global home charging pile sales leader," Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's financial data reveals the hardships of the industry's early stages. Since beginning operations in 2010, the company has been continuously loss-making. Data shows the company had net losses of 25.147 million yuan in 2022, expanding to 58.116 million yuan in 2023, and further losing 236 million yuan in 2024. As of March 2025, single-quarter losses still reached 17.08 million yuan.
The main cause of losses is deeply tied to the new energy vehicle industry's growth trajectory. Before 2020, China's electric vehicle penetration rate was only 6.2%, with small market size and strong bargaining power by automakers. Although Shanghai Zhida Technology Development was tied to multiple leading automakers, it fell into "increasing revenue without increasing profit" due to insufficient order volumes and high costs.
While the industry accelerated after 2021, overcapacity and price wars starting mid-2023 transmitted pressure upstream - average electric vehicle prices fell from 184,000 yuan in 2023 to 171,000 yuan in 2024. Automakers transferred cost pressure to charging pile suppliers, causing Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's average charging pile prices to automakers to drop from 711.6 yuan in 2022 to 697.9 yuan in 2024, with service prices plummeting 29.4%.
Another pressure source was rising costs. To maintain market share, Shanghai Zhida Technology Development had to increase R&D investment, expand retail and overseas markets, while team expansion pushed up management expenses. These investments, while temporarily reducing profits, laid groundwork for long-term competitiveness - for example, the charging robot launched in 2024 has over 50% gross margin, with Q1 2025 revenue reaching 1.9 million yuan, up 217% year-over-year; EMS solutions, while not yet generating revenue, are projected to have approximately 30% global gross margins and are viewed as key future profit engines.
Facing losses, Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's breakthrough strategy is "technology + ecosystem" dual-wheel drive. Its business model has long surpassed single charging pile sales, building a "product + service + digital platform" closed loop.
On the product side, besides cumulative shipments of 1.3 million home charging piles, high-margin charging robots and EMS solutions are becoming new growth engines. On the service side, installation and after-sales networks covering 360 cities not only support hardware sales but optimize efficiency through digital platforms. On the digital platform side, as part of integrated energy management solutions connecting Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's products and services, the company has built a digital platform.
Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's platform achieves digitalized management of installation and after-sales networks, supporting the company's shared charging services.
In the future, as electric vehicle penetration rates rise, household charging demand explodes, and high-margin products achieve scaled deployment, Shanghai Zhida Technology Development, this enterprise that once "burned money to build roads," will exchange losses for space and investment for barriers, waiting to welcome its profit tide in the blue ocean of household green energy management.
**From Shanghai's Yangpu District**
When Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's listing bell rang at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, it not only opened vast capital market prospects for itself but also vividly demonstrated the spectacular transformation of Shanghai's old industrial district Yangpu from technological innovation through a technology company's growth trajectory.
Rooted in Yangpu, Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's growth trajectory has always been inseparably connected to this land's nourishment. Tracing back to 2014, when Tesla first delivered Model S to Chinese car owners and consumer new energy vehicles were still novel, Yangpu District, with keen judgment, firmly supported Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's investment in new energy charging pile R&D and production, specially setting aside dedicated parking spaces in the Dachuangzhi Park to provide display space for its technical achievements.
Even years later, Shanghai Zhida Technology Development's management still can't hide their emotion when discussing this matter: "This was absolutely a forward-looking and even bold move at the time."
Once upon a time, Yangpu District epitomized Shanghai's traditional industry - the roar of textile factories, sparks from machinery plants, and weathered old factory buildings formed this land's memory backdrop. But in recent years, this area carrying a century of industrial genes has been breaking through with "innovation-driven" development.
Yangpu's confidence stems from deep exploitation of university resources. In 2003, the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and Government made the major decision to build Yangpu Knowledge Innovation Zone. Leveraging university innovation source advantages, the "Stanford-Silicon Valley" model evolved locally into the "Fudan/Tongji-Yangpu" model, with Yangpu District transitioning from "Industrial Yangpu" to "Knowledge Yangpu," then advancing toward "Innovation Yangpu."
Subsequently, the former old industrial area began transformation. The light bulb factory on Huangxing Road became Roman Lighting, China Textile Machinery Factory transformed into Changyang Valley. Functional zones like "Dachuangzhi" and "Dachuanggu" built around universities like Fudan and Tongji gradually became incubation beds for technology companies, attracting well-known enterprises like IBM and Bilibili while cultivating industry leaders like UCloud and Agora.
Leveraging intellectual resources from universities like Tongji and Fudan within the district, Yangpu pioneered the "university campus, technology park, public community" three-zone linkage model, transforming laboratory research results into industrial momentum. Through specialized support policies, technology innovation service platforms, and optimized business environments, it attracted numerous high-growth technology companies to take root and grow.
Today's Yangpu has transformed from an "industrial powerhouse" to a "technology innovation stronghold," cultivating clusters in emerging industries like artificial intelligence, green energy, and digital economy, becoming one of the innovation sources in Shanghai and the Yangtze River Delta.
Sustained innovation requires dual nourishment from capital and policy. In April 2024, Yangpu District was approved as one of Shanghai's first equity investment cluster zones. The District Science and Economy Committee formulated the "Yangpu District Equity Investment Cluster Zone Construction Plan," actively building "north-south coordination, differentiated development" technology finance cluster zones and university finance innovation zones, fully utilizing green channels for fund establishment in equity investment cluster zones, establishing efficient professional equity investment institution service mechanisms, and providing comprehensive policy support and quality services.
As one of Shanghai's first equity investment cluster zones, Yangpu is actively promoting technology finance empowerment for technology innovation and industrial innovation development, formulating and publishing several measures to promote high-quality development of technology finance, building an innovation ecosystem integrating "finance-technology-industry."
To fully leverage state-owned fund roles and improve market-oriented operational efficiency, Yangpu District supports strategic emerging industries and future industries through "mother fund + equity participation + direct investment" methods. Related policies mention leveraging government guidance fund leadership and driving effects on social capital, encouraging state-owned capital to collaborate with social capital in investing in original technology innovation, achievement transformation, and "high-precision" industry cultivation projects, accelerating construction of a full lifecycle capital support service system covering "grants-seed-angel-venture-industrial investment-M&A."
Among these, Yangpu Venture Capital, as the technology finance service investment and financing platform under the Technology Innovation Group, focuses on the "Dachuangzhi" and "Dachuanggu" functional zones and over ten university technology parks' carriers and industrial clusters under the Technology Innovation Group, primarily operating mother fund investments. Through investment-recruitment linkage, it strengthens industrial investment attraction, assists park development transformation and upgrading, stimulates regional economic innovation vitality, and provides strong support for Yangpu's construction as an "important bearer of the technology innovation center."
As enterprises mature, Yangpu builds bridges to international capital markets. At this year's August "Yangpu-Hong Kong Stock Exchange Listing Guidance Exchange Meeting," Hong Kong Stock Exchange experts detailed "18A," "18C," and "Technology Enterprise Express" rules, while institutions like Shanghai Technology Innovation Bank and Technology Exchange solved equity restructuring and valuation challenges on-site. They stated that in the future, Yangpu will continue partnering with financial institutions to promote more enterprises' access to various capital markets, achieving further development enhancement and providing financial support for building Yangpu's new quality development innovation zone.
As we can see, traditional industrial areas are rejuvenating in the new era by activating innovation momentum and cultivating industrial ecosystems, becoming fertile ground for nurturing technology leaders and guiding industrial upgrades.
After Shanghai Zhida Technology Development, Sunmi Technology, also from Yangpu District, continues its Hong Kong Stock Exchange IPO process. In the future, Yangpu District will undoubtedly produce more unicorns and IPOs.
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