12 tech entrepreneurs under 30 making awesome stuff in China

Inspired by a Forbes list of 30 entrepreneurs in China, we decided to pick out the most exciting-sounding and promising tech and web startups run by young entrepreneurs in the country.

Compared to our list last year, we see fewer young entrepreneurs tackling ecommerce. There must be more out there, but it’s undeniable that China’s mature ecommerce market – estimated to be worth US$275 billion in 2014 – is pretty much sown up by existing players in that sector.

While there is great diversity on display in these businesses – across gadgets, social media, enterprise IT, app-based services – it’s a pity that it’s still all so male-dominated. There’s one female founder on the list. One interesting trend is a lot more hardware startups this year. Here’s our dynamic dozen:

1. Chai Ke @ Dayima

Tech category: Social media

Age: 27

The startup behind the Daiyima app is called Yoloho. What it has created is a very niche social network mobile app for women focused on health and lifestyle. It incorporates a mestruation calendar. The site and app have 40 million registered users.

Although it’s focused on women, the firm’s founder is male. Daiyima investors include Sequoia, Bertelsmann, and ZhenFund. Yoloho’s series B last September raised an unspecified sum said to be well over US$10 million.

2. Chen Fangyi @ MeetYou

Tech category: Social media

Age: 27

Surprisingly, MeetYou is in the exact same area as Dayima – and yet it’s run by another dude. Upon launching in April last year, MeetYou was simply a menstruation tracker and calendar, but then the company introduced social elements in September. That’s when it began to see strong traction. It has two million daily active users in total, 1.2 million daily active users of its social network, and over 800,000 daily posts.

MeetYou got $15 million in series B funding from Matrix Partners at the start of this year.

3. Peter Zhang @ Refone

Tech category: Green

Age: 26

4. George Zhu @ Zhima

5. Karby Li @ Meike CRM

6. Li Peiliang @ FocalPrice

7. Hank Liao @ Hex Airbot

8. Jared Psigoda @ R2Games

9. Jamie Wang @ iCarsClub

10. Ye Kai @ Playcrab

11. Evan Yue @ MyFriday

12. Nelson Zhang @ Wearhaus

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