Zhou Yuxiang, founder and CEO of Shanghai-based Black Lake Technologies, recruited more than 420 former food delivery riders to sell artificial intelligence automation software to China's family-run factories. The sales strategy pushed the company to 35,000 factory clients, 95 percent of which are small and medium-sized enterprises. The International Data Corporation ranks Black Lake as mainland China's top provider of cloud-based production management software.
Zhou put the recruits through a gruelling five-day boot camp on how to articulate AI's role in solving specific manufacturing pain points. He told the South China Morning Post that delivery workers held a clear edge over university graduates. "Good college graduates are often thin-skinned. They linger in front of a factory and can't get in," he said. "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."
Scaling through street-smart distribution
The company, founded in 2016, built its sales force across multiple industrial cities. The delivery riders' ability to navigate gatekeepers and reach factory owners directly turned a distribution bottleneck into a competitive advantage. Black Lake now serves tens of thousands of factories with its AI for Operations software, covering production scheduling, quality control and equipment monitoring.
Hong Kong expansion on the table
In the same interview, Zhou described Hong Kong as "very attractive" for the company's next step. No timeline or specific plans were disclosed, but the interest signals an ambition to take the model beyond mainland China's industrial belts.
Why this matters for Executives and Strategy
Black Lake's rise demonstrates that distribution, not just product capability, often determines whether industrial AI adoption takes hold. For leaders shaping AI for Executives & Strategy, the lesson is direct: hiring against conventional profiles can unlock segments that polished sales teams leave untouched. The delivery riders' local knowledge and persistence turned security gates into welcome mats-a reminder that who sells the technology can matter as much as what the technology does.
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