We're preparing for a time when financial markets will be more open, transparent, and available for a greater influx of foreign capital and entrepreneurship. That is what we believe truly the near-future of China holds in store, for those who have recently arrived and those building up the courage to take the plunge.
In recent years, China's business ecosystem has been so fertile that it has continuously attracted many thousands of international talents and entrepreneurs, all looking to ride a wave of change in the burgeoning local markets.
The attractiveness is bolstered by China's stable and tens-of-years long double-digit economic growth figures. Nowadays, as well as being home to the latest generation of demanding consumers, Chinese first-tier cities are vast meeting points for foreign startups and VCs. Building upon this bold vision, EqualOcean and EO Intelligence are proud to present "30 Foreign Entrepreneurs in China 2019" list.
Our aims with this list are not trivial. We want to predict some of China's most significant foreign-owned companies before they scale up. If you pay attention to the candidates here, you might well run across a giant success story of tomorrow.
The main criteria for being listed are as follows:
Having an ongoing business in China with foreign C-suite members.
Being an early-stage initiative with a high-growth prospectus and willing to raise money from Chinese VCs.
We're giving the priority to high-tech companies. The company must have a tech-driven service and/or product, together with a solid vision of social responsibility, i.e. the company must serve for the "Tech for Equal" mission.
The selected 30 selected entrepreneurs shall be announced at the World Innovators Meet (WIM) on December 6-8, 2019. They will also be the distinguished guests of the event.
The First Batch of Candidates
Amit Chatterjee, Partner of Shadow Factory
Shadow Factory is a B2B virtual, augmented, and mixed reality production services company headquartered in Hong Kong.
Alvaro Montoya, Co-founder of Akkadu
Akkadu is building a platform that enables live translated streaming by combining human and AI to interpret events, seminars, workshops, and podcasts. The company is warming-up in China's brutally competitive translation field.
Andrew Shewbart, Executive VP of ALO7
ALO7 is one of the largest K12 digital English Language Teaching (ELT) content producer and solutions provider in China. China is the biggest market for English education, and ALO7 has to survive among the giants, including VIPKid. Yet, so far, the firm fared well.
Benjamin Claeys, Founder of QRzebra
QRzebra allows customers to generate customized QR codes. The company claims to get 30% more scans than any other classic black and white QR code. QR codes are essential for any brand these days, and the company could efficiently serve thousands of small-enterprise.
Biman Liyanage, Cofounder of Wonder Technology
Through analysing 8 seconds (or more) of audio data, the company's technology can detect more than 231 human emotions, revealing true intentions, desire and abilities beyond human speech.
Christian Piechnick, CEO of Wandelbots
Wandelbots is a German startup that enables non-programmers to teach industrial robots faster and cheaper using smart clothing. Based on sensors attached to clothes, the Wandelbots software backend tracks human motion to live-control industrial robots. Operators can teach automation tasks by demonstration. The software backend builds a machine learning model based on several demonstrations and generates automation workflows.
Claudia Masueger, Founder and CEO of Cheers Wines
Cheers Wines is a Chinese wine import company headquartered in Beijing. The company is tartgeting China rising middle-class.
Colin Bogar, CEO of Property Passbook
The Property Passbook data algorithms use thousands of unique data points to help investors invest with the same research and data tools as major Wall Street investment firms. The data system allows investors to identify which markets and projects are most undervalued and offer the best growth potential for long term appreciation. Finally, Property Passbook offers seamless end to end support, including 24/7 customer service, financing assistance, and web-accessible real-time asset management through its mobile app.
Giuseppe Tomasello, Founder of edugo.ai
edugo.ai is an APP for Chinese language learning where you can have both a teacher and content. With edugo.ai, one can have an advanced AI technology to study the content that is personalised to his/her needs.
Eric L.Schmidt, CEO and Co-founder of Eventbank
EventBank is a cloud-based engagement management technology company that provides chambers of commerce, associations, event organisers, marketers, and businesses with solutions designed to streamline operations and eliminate engagement challenges.
Erik Walenza-Slabe, CEO, IoT One
IoT ONE helps companies understand and act by providing research, innovation and implementation services in IoT.
Fabian Von Heimberg, Co-founder of Hotnest Technology
Hotnest Technology is a big-data integrated online advertisement start-up with a strong management team.
Hojjat Azadbakht, CEO of AINOSTICS
AINOSTICS is a Medical AI company that is targeting to thrive in the Chinese market. The company is located in a perfect environment and could learn from the more prominent Chinese companies, such as Yitu.
James Lalonde, Co-founder of Yodo1 Games
Yodo1 is committed to discovering and promoting high-quality games, both in China and on a global front.
Joseph Horton, Co-founder and CPO of Nusic
Nusic is a gamified social music platform for making mashups and remixes. Their mission is to empower everyone with musical creativity & give creators unlimited expressive freedom.
Julien Reincke, China Director of Dashmote
Through artificial intelligence and computer vision, Dashmote decodes the visual web and extracts valuable insights from images. The company helps brands to understand and predict consumer trends based on where, when, and what people are posting on social media. We enable brands to get a clear picture of customers at an individual level.
Matt Conger, CEO of Cadence
The company provides investment research and language services to the global business and investment community. It is a venture-backed company whose investors include 500 Startups, the founder of Dianping (大众点评), and several luminaries from the interpretation industry.
Matthew Scott, CTO, and Co-founder of Malong Technologies
Malong Technologies is an award-winning AI company whose mission is to empower developers and businesses with the most accurate visual product recognition technologies available on the market. The company is the maker of ProductAI®, which offers visual product recognition at human-like performance to any customer via a public cloud platform (productai.com), private cloud, or embedded module hardware for IoT scenarios.
Matthias Hub, CTO of Dasudian
Dasudian's products harness data and generate real-time predictions with robust big data infrastructure and AI algorithms, enabling industries and businesses to work better and create much more value.
Michael Simonet, Founder of Qingdao Alea E-Commerce
Qingdao Alea E-Commerce Ltd. is specialised in operating Chinese Marketplaces like JD.com, Tmall, Taobao, Xiaohongshu, suning.com etc. for its clients.
Nathan Siy, Founder and CEO of Evoke Electric Motorcycles
Evoke Electric Motorcycles design, manufacture and engineer the latest in smart motorcycles which are safer, environmentally friendly all the while being easily accessible to those with a desire to ride regardless of skill level.
Paddy Robertson, Founder of Smart Air
Smart Air is a social enterprise that promotes DIY air purifiers as a low-cost solution to indoor particulate air pollution in China, India, and other countries where air pollution is causing health problems.
Rich Bishop, CEO of AppInChina
AppInChina is a Beijing-based tech company that helps its clients to maximise the performance of their apps in China. Its core services are localisation, distribution, promotion, and monetisation.
Richard Cowards, CEO of China Admissions
China Admissions is an education platform that connects overseas talent to China. The company is supported and trained directly by Chinese universities, cooperating and liaising on a daily basis.
Ruslan Dautov, CEO of HPCD Lab
HPCD Lab is a multi-cloud SaaS platform which helps to save money on the cloud (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud). The company's platform is analyzing businesses bills and cloud infrastructure usage in SaaS or in private self-hosted version.
Sarah Keenlyside, CEO of The Bespoke Travel Company
Bespoke Travel Company makes it easier than ever before to customize immersive and authentic trips in countries such as China.
Sebastian Gaudin, CEO and Co-founder of The CareVoice
The CareVoice is a Shanghai-based health insurtech. It provides a mobile-based data-driven SaaS platform to empower insurers to digitise the healthcare and insurance experience of their members, and reach the cutting edge of innovation, engage with their members, drive efficiencies up & cost down.
Sotiris Stasinopoulos, Founder and CEO of Popular Robotics
Popular Robotics aims to make robotics accessible to everyone, mainly targeting teenagers and young adults and to empower the robotics community. Through its online, engaging and real-world task-based educational material, beginners to advanced users can gain knowledge about how to assemble and program robots that can be used in real-life situations.
Stuart Oda, Founder and CEO of Alesca
Alesca Life is an agricultural technology company that builds indoor vertical farms and farm management software to make food production more localised and data-driven. Alesca's vision is to democratize access to fresh and nutritious food by democratizing the means and knowledge of production.
Yvonne Yu, Founder of Politech
Politech is a consultancy company, helping companies and local governments make informed decisions.
The latest results of "30 Foreign Entrepreneurs in China 2019" will be announced on December 6-8, 2019.
For the inquiries, please contact Yusuf@EqualOcean.com