ChinaBang Awards, the brainchild of TechNode which honors the best in China’s startups, is now in its fourth year. After two months of nominations, online voting and result reviews, the winners were finally announced at our annual ChinaBang event. Congratulations to all award winners who stood out from over 1,000 nominations this year.
Hardware
ANTVR built a universal wireless virtual reality gaming headset. The Beijing-based company has released several products, including the ANTVR headset, ANTVR camera and Jitao, a VR goggles set which is smartphone compatible.
Taihuoniao: an innovative hardware incubator
XGIMI is a portable projector that can stream videos, photos or other media content from your Android or iOS device onto any surface through WiFi. The company raised US$16 million of funding in 2014.
The One is a smart piano designed to help you learn the instrument faster. The LED lights atop the keyboard guide the players through a more interactive experience. The piano combines with its app to offer one-on-one tutoring to help improve your skills.
Ehang is a drone developer. Ghost drone, their flagship product, can be controlled via mobile app (iOS or Android). Ghost is targeting both Chinese and U.S. markets. The company closed US$10M of Series A funding last year.
Software Design
Zuimeichuangyi (“Beautiful Innovations” in Chinese) is an app that integrates interesting short videos like innovative advertisements, gaming, and so on.
Mono is a content integration platform that recommends premium articles or video clips on fashion, design, lifestyle, and so on. The company has received angel investments from China Renaissance K2 Ventures and Bertelsmann Asia Investments.
Jianshu: a content sharing community.
MIX Filter Master: a photo filter app developed by Camera360.
Yiwen, a TechNode production, is a mobile app which recommends one Chinese interesting startup per day.
Hardware Design
Nokee: a smart glass manufacturer.
Meizu: an upstart Chinese smartphone manufacturer.
Teemo is a GPS tracker for kids that also aims to form a more effective communication channel between children and their parents. The product is created by Chinese software developer Sogou.
Phantom is a smart home solution provider primarily focusing on smart illumination and surveillance. The company reportedly secured US$1.5 million of pre-A investment last year.
AirNut is a pair of smart indoor and outdoor weather stations developed by Moji, aka MoWeather, one of the most popular weather apps in China.
Popular Female Product & Service
Helijia, translated as “beaver’s home”, is a startup that provides on-demand manicure services.
RoseOnly is a high-tier online flower store. The site also launched offline expansion with the opening of bricks-and mortar stores. The company received millions of yuan in Series A financing from Trends Group and tens of million dollars in Series B funding from Tencent in 2013.
Miyabaobei: a Chinese site that sells formula, clothes, and other items for babies and toddlers.
in is an online mobile photo-sharing and social networking service for girls. It enables its users to take pictures and share them with friends.
Meipai is a video clip capturing and editing app by Meitu, China’s leading photo app developer. Eight months after launch, Meipai announced 100 million users in January 2015, with 30 million monthly active and 5 million daily active users.
Medical & Healthcare
Kungfu Bear is a massage booking service that offers full-body, head and neck massages that you can enjoy at home or at the office.
iCareNewlife is a paired handheld ultrasound and smartphone app which track an unborn baby’s heartbeat and lets parents-to-be share the fetal data on social media.
CupTime is a smart cup that gives users health advice while drinking water.
Ledongli is a step counter app that quantifies your life and makes health data fun and useful.
DNurse is a smartphone accessory that helps users to monitor their hypoglycemic index.
Education
TAL Education (Tomorrow Advancing Life) is a leading K-12 after-school tutoring services provider in China.
17zuoye (“homework together”) is an online study platform targeting the Chinese K-12 market.
Yuantiku provides a test practice system and question database. Founded by former NetEase executive Li Yong, the company behind Yuantiku pivoted from Fenbi, a social service for students and teachers. Yuantiku recently raised US$60 million of Series D funding at a valuation of US$360 million.
51talk is an oral English training service providing one-to-one courses. The company has acquired its major rival 91Waijiao earlier this year.
Jike Xueyuan (“geek college” in Chinese) is an online education portal which teaches IT career skills with all course content generated by an in-house development team.
Cloud/Enterprise Service
LeanCloud, previously known as AVOS Cloud, is a BaaS (backend as a service) solution provider.
FIR.im (short for ‘Fly It Remotely’) provides free, fast and safe beta app distribution services.
Teambition is a software as a service (SaaS) platform that provides products and services to foster team collaboration and project management.
QingCloud is a cloud computing platform that provides IaaS-based (infrastructure as a service) flexible cloud services, supporting private networks, comprehensive monitoring, and multiple real time copy security policy.
Testin focuses on the service quality of mobile internet applications, offering mobile app development and service providers testing services in professional mobile internet development, automated prototypes and automatic adaptation, and also app quality monitoring services.
Overseas Market Exploration
APUS, Xiaomi, Cheetah Mobile, Camera360, OnePlus
Marketing
Qiniu is a cloud-based storage solutions provider in China, offering one-stop data management services to enterprises.
UCloud: a Chinese cloud service provider.
AAyongche: a car renting and ride-sharing platform.
Baozou Manhua (rage comics): comics with internet humor and everyday life, combining image and text humorously and distributing them through a wide variety of communication tools.
Getui is a Beijing-based third-party push notification service provider.
Startup of The Year in Hangzhou
Yangche Diandian is a car maintenance platform.
Startup of The Year in Chengdu
Startup of The Year in Hong Kong
Notey is a discovery platform that helps you find the best blogs on over 500,000 topics.
EventExtra helps event organizations, whether corporate or government, to simplify the process and make the event create more of an impact for attendees.
Snapask offers affordable and personalized tuition to students through a mobile app that allows them to post questions and instantly connect to tutors for 1-to-1 real-time study.
Startup of The Year in Taiwan
FLiPER is a popular online publication based in Taipei.
HyXen Technology is a location-based service provider.
Writepath is a site for multilingual editing and online translation services.
Startup of The Year 2015
Didi Dache & Kuaidi Dache, Smartisan Technology, DJI, Ele.me, Meituan Maoyan (a mobile app for movie tickets)
Popularity Award
WiWide, CHINAC, Mailtime, Easemob, Boxfish, Ledongli, Helijia, Phantom, Chuye, OneBoard
Young Entrepreneur
Yin Sang from Karaoke App 17Chang
Female Entrepreneur
Li Hui from Entrepriese Software Mike CRM
Entrepreneur of The Year 2015
Ma Delong from Tech Recruitment Site Lagou
Editing by Mike Cormack (@bucketoftongues)