IoT platform IngDan opens China’s supply chain to world
Linking hard-ware start-ups with sources in China and global investors
AS CHINA plans to transform its manufacturing from making smart products not only “in China” but “by China”, experts see IngDan could play a major role in helping accomplish that transformation.
Founded in 2013, IngDan, a leading Internet of Things (IoT) innovation platform, aims to facilitate hardware start-ups with supply chain resources in China and connect them with investors.
It is a subsidiary of Hong Kong-listed Cogobuy Group, a leading e-commerce platform for electronic components.
Believing in the “sharing economy” concept of development, Jeffrey Kang, founder, chairman, and chief executive of Cogobuy and IngDan, is using the Internet platform to link global innovators with China’s manufacturing base, open and available to everyone.
In the past two years, IngDan has been used as an international platform to connect global IoT innovators and entrepreneurs with Shenzhen-based manufacturing resources, Kang said during the China Insights Forum last week.
The forum themed Implications of China’s Economic Restructuring: From “Made in China” to “Made by China”, was organised by the China Daily and co-hosted by IngDan and held in Shenzhen IngDan Space.
“We convert crazy ideas [of all young innovators and entrepreneurs across the world] into real products,” he said.
So far, IngDan has attracted over 10,000 IoT projects, roughly 80 per cent are from China and the rest are from overseas, including Silicon Valley, Kang said.
IngDan has formed a large supply chain-based open ecosystem through strategic collaborations with influential partners like Baidu, JD, WeChat, 360, Microsoft, Intel, Broadcom and Freescale.
As one of the business models under the intelligent hardware ecosystem, INGDAN.com participated in the establishment of the IoT fund and acted as one of the fund managers to provide project recommendations, data consultancy, project management, and so on.
Kang said one of the biggest achievements in China in past decades was having developed and completed the most efficient manufacturing ecosystem in Shenzhen.
"You can find more than one-million smaller or larger manufacturers, which produce everything from smart phones to electric vehicles - everything you can imagine,” Kang said.
“But in the past, only multinational companies like Google, Cisco and Apple can use the rich resources here. My dream is to open this scale of manufacturing resources to millions of young innovators and entrepreneurs across the world,” he said.
“We want to become the ‘Uber of the manufacturing industry’,” he vowed.
Kang plans to expand his innovative platform to South Korea, Tokyo, and is scheduled to open a centre in Singapore this year.
At the forum, Xu Hongcai, director of economic research at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said he was satisfied that IngDan would play a vital role in helping mass innovative entrepreneurs.
“[For] future development of our country we need to come up with high end technology. Building up IngDan will be a good platform for Chinese manufacturing to go global,” he said.
IngDan is a good platform to value trends, added Wang Zhile, research fellow of the Chinese Academy of International Trade & Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce and director-general of Beijing New Century Academy on Transnational Corporations.
He said China should use companies like IngDan to help entrepreneurs innovate in the global market without fear, and offer them good services.
He suggested IngDan go global by establishing experience centres in other cities and provide this platform.
“Using ‘Made by China’ plus the Internet is a good way to go,” he said.
Last weekend, IngDan took a crucial step on its road map for globalisation by opening the Hong Kong Experience Centre as an effort to connect with the hardware innovation scene on the island.
Kang said the launch of the IngDan HK centre represented a key milestone for INGDAN.com toward its strategy of globalisation.
HK centre is the first centre launched overseas after Beijing and Shenzhen. IngDan has already set up offices in the Silicon Valley in the US, as well as in Italy and Israel.
Located in Cyberport, a government-funded industry park on Hong Kong Island, the HK centre boasts a 600 square metres multi-function experience hall open to the public.
The experience hall showcases the most innovative IoT products, ranging from health and wellness, smart homes, intelligent transportation, virtual reality, drones, 3-D printing, and more.
The centre allows visitors to experience evolving technology personally, along with workshops and seminars organised regularly.
In addition, the centre provides a platform for innovators to promote their products, as well as assisting resource matchups between the enterprises located mid-stream and own-stream as well as itself.
