Two distinguished guest speakers addressed at the Division of Business and Management’s (DBM) high table dinner on 29 October 2019. Vice President of Alibaba Group and Executive Director as well as CEO of Intime Retail Group, Mr Xiaodong Chen, provided insights into the Chinese 'new retail’ industry. In addition, Vice Chairman and President of Xpeng Motors, Dr Hongdi Gu, spoke of the smart electric vehicle industry.

Xiaodong Chen: Internet will free the decision-making time for its users

Mr Chen has more than 10 years of experience in financial management and capital markets. His speech was themed Digital Upgrade of Traditional Physical Retail.

Mr Chen shares his experience in business

As one of the Best CEO in China Retail Industry (by Institutional Investor worldwide in 2016), Mr Xiaodong Chen has been leading the Intime Retail Group since 2009. After Intime was privatised by Alibaba Group in 2017, he focused on the ‘new retail’ strategy, which is a strategy that welcomes the digital restructuring of department stores.

Intime wants its traditional stores to have new brains. It has equipped itself with big data technology and successfully found a new breakthrough in the reform of traditional retail industry. Mr Xiaodong Chen said, “Customers can get access to information online pretty easily nowadays, and they won’t need any experts to tell them what to buy.” 

Q&A session

Last year’s 11.11 shopping festival, the quickest order only took 8 minutes to arrive at the customer’s door. As the Vice President of Alibaba Group, Xiaodong Chen said that the infrastructure construction and the big data analysis contributed to the achievements of Alibaba’s ‘mini goal’. With the new technologies, they can now locate the customers precisely even before they place an order.

Other than that, developers dedicated their time during the shopping carnival. During the Q&A session, Xiaodong Chen teased that he had to turn his office into a software engineers’ bedroom because they stayed up late at the company.

Hongdi Gu: Focusing on the future and what interests you

Dr Hongdi Gu predicted the development tendencies of the smart electric vehicles and shared the technology Xpeng developed, which was tailored for China’s challenging driving conditions.

What makes a vehicle truly "smart"? It needs to achieve the following three things: deep learning, automation, and being able to update by itself, says Gu. In the future 10 years, smart vehicles can free our hands from driving in certain environments.

Dr Gu talks about the develoopment of electric vehicle industry

Dr Gu joined Xpeng Motors in March 2018. He is responsible for Xpeng's strategy, financing, fundraising, investment and international partnerships. Prior to that, Dr Gu was the Chairman of the Asia Pacific Investment Banking at J.P. Morgan, and a member of the J.P. Morgan’s Global Strategic Advisory Council. Dr Gu holds an MBA from Yale University, a PhD in Biochemistry from the Medical School at the University of Washington, and a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Oregon.

From doing academic research, to working on Wall Street, and now to electric vehicle industry, Dr Gu has made important contributions in numerous fields. He said to the students “If you want to change the world, focus on your interests, and look into the future.”

Other high table guests who attended the dinner included UIC Vice President (Academic Affairs) Prof Zhi Chen, Associate Vice President Prof George Chuxiong Wei, Academic Registrar Prof Jianhui Li, Dean of DBM Prof Stella Cho, and Associate Deans of DBM Prof Wilson Li as well as Dr Donna Chan.

(from left) Prof Wilson Li, Prof George Wei, Dr Hongdi Gu, Prof Zhi Chen, Mr Xiaodong Chen, Prof Stella Cho, Prof Jianhui Li and Dr Donna Chan 

Chairperson of the high table dinner Prof Stella Cho introduces the guests

Erhu and piano performance 'Horse race' by Year 1 BA's Wenjin Cao and Year 2 ACCT's Qike Fu

Singing performance 'Santa Lucia' by Year 1 ACCT student Zihan Ye

Year 4 ACCT student Xushan Li gives a closing remark

Reporter: Covee Wang
Photographers: Covee Wang, Bowen Deng(Y2 IJ)
Editors: Samuel Burgess, Deen He, Lauren Richardson
(from MPRO)