{"slug": "black-lake-ceos-strategy-to-sell-ai-solutions-to-factories-turn-to-food-couriers", "title": "Black Lake CEO’s strategy to sell AI solutions to factories: turn to food couriers", "summary": "Black Lake CEO Zhou Yuxiang hires food delivery workers as salespeople to sell AI automation solutions to family-run factories in China, a strategy that has helped the company serve 35,000 factory clients, 95% of which are SMEs, and become mainland China's top provider of cloud-based production management software, according to the International Data Corporation.", "body_md": "# Black Lake CEO’s strategy to sell AI solutions to factories: turn to food couriers\n\nTech company founder Zhou Yuxiang sits down with the South China Morning Post for his first interview with a Hong Kong media outlet\n\n[artificial intelligence (AI)](https://www.scmp.com/topics/artificial-intelligence?module=inline&pgtype=article)automation solutions to millions of family-run factories across China, he came up with an unconventional strategy: hiring food delivery workers to make sales.\n\nHis entire sales team, hired from various industrial cities, survived a gruelling five-day boot camp on articulating how AI can solve specific manufacturing pain points.\n\n“They are very street-smart,” the 36-year-old said in an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post. “Good college graduates are often thin-skinned. They linger in front of a factory and can’t get in.\n\n“But for food delivery guys, they just give a cigarette to the security guard and get in … They can also bypass guard dogs, or find a back door to get into a factory to meet the owner because they deliver food.”\n\nWith a sales force of more than 420 delivery workers, Black Lake, established in 2016, has grown to serve 35,000 factory clients, 95 per cent of which are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).\n\nThe International Data Corporation also ranks it as mainland China’s top provider of cloud-based production management software.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/black-lake-ceos-strategy-to-sell-ai-solutions-to-factories-turn-to-food-couriers", "canonical_source": "https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/3361910/black-lake-ceos-strategy-sell-ai-solutions-factories-turn-food-couriers?utm_source=rss_feed", "published_at": "2026-07-27 02:00:15+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-27 02:26:56.721429+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-startups", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Black Lake", "Zhou Yuxiang", "South China Morning Post", "International Data Corporation"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/black-lake-ceos-strategy-to-sell-ai-solutions-to-factories-turn-to-food-couriers", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/black-lake-ceos-strategy-to-sell-ai-solutions-to-factories-turn-to-food-couriers.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/black-lake-ceos-strategy-to-sell-ai-solutions-to-factories-turn-to-food-couriers.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/black-lake-ceos-strategy-to-sell-ai-solutions-to-factories-turn-to-food-couriers.jsonld"}}