Some leaders of the 12 teams incubated at Space 36Kr between May and August last year. Eleven teams secured their first investment at Space 36Kr, totaling 50 million yuan. (Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn)
There are at least 130 makerspaces in China clustered in Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai but also in a wide swath of second tier, inland cities.
As one of the earliest and most successful makerspaces in Beijing, Cheku's business model has been copied in other cities. Nanjing-based 321 Chuangzhi Cafe, Beehive Cafe in Dongguan, South China's Guangdong are all of this type with a focus on forming an open community.
"Cheku is where you find your partner," said co-founder Liu Hui. "It's like forming a band. You have a singer, a drummer and need a guitarist. This is where you find one. "
Ren Xiaoqian, a designer, and programmer Huang Guangming, started working at Cheku when it was first established. It was there that they met their future investor, founder and president of Zendai Group, who also offered business advice. They finally came up with a new type of mobile Internet product called MomentCam, which allows users to easily create and share customized, animated caricatures of people.
MomentCam might be one of the most successful products generated in Cheku. The app has been downloaded more than 200 million times globally and was crowned by Facebook as winner of its FB Start competition, a contest that sought to identify the best apps in the world.
A large number of people working in Cheku are technicians from traditional manufacturing industries who are transforming traditional wares into smart ones. Some target the niche market of smart home devices, with a competitive edge in projects too small to appeal to big tech companies.
Hu Liangcai, an electromechanical professional for 12 years from East China's Jiangxi, came to Cheku last year with a plan to make a water-filled heater that can be connected to Wi-Fi and operated by mobile phone via an app. Although knowing nothing about how to connect his heaters to the Internet, Hu met some computer engineers and tech fans who helped him select multi-chip modules and create the app.
The cafe put Hu in touch with many free services, including the Smart Cloud, cloud computing support from JD, one of China's top brands and largest e-tailer. The service usually costs individual users 50,000 yuan a year.
Naturally, at the other end of the spectrum, Internet specialists are also grabbing a slice of the start-up pie through more exclusive incubators. Most of these more "elite" innovators are middle- or high-level employees at China's leading Internet firms who have quit their jobs to try their luck in their own ventures.
Such innovators are seen as technology experts, and can attract a powerful team from within their networks. What they lack are capital and knowledge of starting a company, and this is where a different kind of makerspace comes in.
3W Coffee in Beijing, which Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited in May in a gesture of government support for startups, and Innovation Works by Kai-Fu Lee, the founding president of Google China and Binggo Café are examples of investment-oriented, professional incubators.
