The world is full of hardware innovators who are eager to use their ideas and technologies to change the world and make it better
[Sponsored Article] Many cities aspire to become a paradise for such hardware innovators for their region, but Shenzhen may be the only one that started out as the world's factory – and a global capital for innovation, especially consumer electronics.
[Sponsored Article]
Many cities aspire to become a paradise for such hardware innovators for their region, but Shenzhen may be the only one that started out as the world's factory – and a global capital for innovation, especially consumer electronics.
Each day, various consumer products are made in Shenzhen, developed and perfected alongside factories and supply chain managers, with the flexibility, creativity and speed of the city’s manufacturing system.
All it needs is a bridge to link global innovators and start-ups with Shenzhen’s and even China’s manufacturing prowess. Ingdan.com, China’s largest interactive online platform for intelligent hardware, might be the perfect passageway for it.
Established in 2013, Shenzhen-based Ingdan.com aims to forge a one-stop supply chain platform that links technology start-ups and entrepreneurs across the world with contract electronics manufacturing partners in the mainland to help design and build their products for the global market. It is owned by Hong Kong-listed Cogobuy Group, a leading e-commerce platform for electronic components.
Three years later, Ingdan.com now is on its way to become another tech unicorn to be the world’s largest platform for companies developing so-called internet of things (IoT) devices.
As of this month, more than 10,000 start-ups and 8,000 hardware manufacturing suppliers had registered accounts on Ingdan’s online platform, which had about eight million registered followers.
It is seeing more start-ups and established hardware enterprises join the platform, which also serves as a matchmaker to help solve funding and other problems, focusing on several fields including an-conditioning systems, toys, routing, smart homes, smart vehicle, top-up systems, healthcare and wearables.
Ingdan’s ambition is based on China, which has the world’s most extensive and well-established manufacturing ecosystem – a deep network of suppliers, a large skilled labor force, and a well-developed logistics infrastructure.
According to recent study by the McKinsey & Company, China has more than 140,000 machinery suppliers, 75,000 manufacturers and suppliers in communications, computer, and other electronic equipment industries, and 104,000 companies in the transportation equipment sector. This is over five times the size of the supplier base in Japan.
Ingdan.com makes these Chinese manufacturers approachable for companies – overseas or domestic - to move into production quickly and helps them respond to changing customer needs, by finding new or lower-cost components, especially in IoT in manufacturing.
Growing tech start-ups from Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Italy and the United States are joining hands with Ingdan.com to build up their physical products in the mainland.
The company sees the US market as a crucial part of its overseas strategy, with a total investment of $35 million to grow the IoT ecosystem and its footprint in the United States.
Late last year, Ingdan held its first IoT Innovation contest "Start Your Hardware Startup" across a number of cities in the United States, which was designed to identify new intelligent hardware designs ideas that can link to the company’s platform.
A total of 265 entrepreneurs submitted their projects across five countries. Three emerged as the final winners: PicassoBot, an open source, Arduino-compatible robotic drawing arm designed to teach children about basic concepts in engineering and computer science; Alfrid Home A.I, an Artificial Intelligence device designed to be at the center of the smart home offering affordable voice recognition technology, and with an open API and plug-and-play functionality that will allow seamless connections with all the leading smart home devices; and HAIZE, the elegantly designed navigation device acts like a compass, pointing the rider in the direction of their destination, but leaves them to work out the route. It can be easily mounted on the handlebars of any bike.
IngDan will help these three startups moving their projects to the mass- production ready level. They can also leverage INGDAN's strong network in mainland market in promoting & selling their devices.
Ingdan is also introducing tech unicorn Mobileye, one of the best Israeli IoT Startups to into the mainland market, while the company currently values at $10 billion but the mainland market and drivers haven’t noticed it yet.
Mobileye, which is developing key components for Tesla's automatic driving system Autopilot, provides unique collision avoidance system that helps drivers by acting as a third eye constantly monitoring the road in front of the vehicle. It identifies potentially dangerous situations and provides audio and visual alerts to assist the driver in preventing or mitigating a collision.
Drawing on INGDAN.com's core strengths in online marketing and offline service systems, the platform will begin selling Mobileye's products to retail consumers, travel services agencies, and automotive before- and after-market companies.
Under the strategic cooperation, INGDAN.com will also match Mobileye with potential clients from across multiple industries, such as the taxi and public transport industries, in various Chinese cities to help Mobileye grow its presence in the Chinese market, and to ultimately build a safe, intelligent travel system for consumers.
Meanwhile, more than a dozen small and medium-sized technology companies from South Korea had linked up with mainland contract electronics manufacturers through the Ingdan online platform, manufacturing of so-called intelligent toys, human traffic monitoring devices and commercial unmanned aerial vehicles, popularly known as drones.
One of these start-ups has closed their initial round of corporate financing in Seoul”, presumably helped by having a prototype of their product built by Chinese contractors.
On April 28 (Thursday), a total of 30 South Korean technology start-ups are being enticed to attend Sino-Korea APEC Innovation Exchange Forum in Shenzhen.
Growing overseas start-ups start to be newcomers to the mainland market. Ingdan.com is perfect help for their first step.
