Last month, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the third batch of "small giant" enterprises list. Six companies based in Quzhou were honored on the list. So far, the city has eight "small giant" enterprises, including four key "small giant" enterprises, namely Zhejiang Pengfu Long New Materials Company Zhejiang Hechuan Technology Company, Zhejiang Tianji Mutual Transformer Company and Zhejiang Rixin Electric Company. Since the time when Zhejiang Tianji Mutual Transformer Company was first picked as one of the "small giant" enterprises, the number of enterprises listed in our city this year has been the highest ever.

On September 18, the competent personnel from the Municipal Bureau of Economic and Information Technology told us that the criteria for "small giant" include four aspects, namely "specialized, professional, special and new". "Specialized" means focused, that is, enterprises should focus on specific niche areas, engaged in specific market segments for 3 years or more; its main business income accounted for more than 70% of the enterprise's business income; its products have competitive edges with its leading products in the market share ranking the top in the country or ranking top 3 in the province. The company should also have specialized development strategy, such as long-term and in-depth engagement in a certain part of the industry chain or a certain product, providing key parts, components and supporting products for large enterprises, large projects, or has its own highly-competitive brand products directly to the market.

"Professional" means fine management: the enterprise should have its own brand. It should have obtained relevant management system certification, or its products are manufactured in accordance with international, domestic and industrial standards, or its products have passed product certification in developed countries and regions (International Standards Association industry certification). "Special" means special features: the company should be engaged in specific market segments, focusing on the key areas listed in the "Four Foundations" Development Catalogue for Industry, the ten key industrial areas specified in the strategy for a strong manufacturing country, key links and key areas of the industrial supply chain innovative products that "make up for the disadvantages", "enhance the advantages" and "fill in the gaps", and the deep integration of new generation information technology with the real economy. "New" means innovation: in terms of patents, enterprises should have 2 valid invention patents (including the exclusive right of integrated circuit layout design, the same below) or 5 or more utility model patents, design patents and software copyrights; in terms of R&D institutions, they should be able to have their own or jointly-established R&D institutions with universities or research institutions; they should have their own technology research institutes, technology center, engineering centre, academician expert workstation and post-doctoral workstation, etc. In terms of information technology, they should at least have one core business adoption information system to support their development in R&D, design, manufacturing and supply chain management. In terms of economic output, the average growth rate of main business income or net profit in the past 2 years up to the end of the previous year should reach 5% or more, and the enterprise's gearing ratio is not higher than 70%. With the respect to R&D investment, for the companies with revenue of 100 million yuan or above, the proportion of R&D expenditure to revenue in the past two years is not less than 3%; for companies with revenue of 50 million yuan to 100 million yuan, the proportion of R&D expenditure to revenue in the past two years is not less than 6%; for the companies with revenue of less than 50 million yuan, the amount of new equity financing (paid-in) should be more than 80 million yuan in the past two years, their R&D investment accounting for more than 30 million yuan, and R&D personnel accounting for more than 50% of the total number of employees of the enterprise.

"In order to encourage enterprises to follow in the direction of specialization and innovation, Zhejiang province has carried out an evaluation of 'invisible champion' enterprises while declaring 'small giant' enterprises. Four of these enterprises, 'Zhejiang Tianji', 'Rixin Electric', 'Hechuan Technology' and 'Bell Orbit', have picked up this title. We’re informed that the provincial "invisible champion" enterprise declaration conditions are as follows: first of all, the listed enterprises should be operating in compliance with the law and the rules. And there should no major safety production, quality, environmental protection accidents and no bad integrity records in the past three years; the industry to which the enterprise should be within the key industries that the country and the province encourage to develop, such as the 11 types of key development industries specified in the "Made in China 2025 Zhejiang Action Platform" or the Zhejiang Province "traditional manufacturing transformation and upgrading" key industries list.

More specifically, the criteria for "Invisible Champion" title include a company’s product market share, innovation level technological level, continuous innovation ability and enterprise infrastructure and bonus points in terms of its time of duration and the length of time of its incubation.