‘Magic’ diaper device just one invention helping to put Chengdu on innovative start-up map
Number of start-up incubators soared on mainland last year
When Li Zhuodong’s friends took to social media to share stories about the difficulty of caring for babies, the 28-year-old technology entrepreneur sensed a business opportunity.
“They said they had to get up constantly in the evening to check if the baby’s diaper was full of urine so that they could change diapers in time,” said Li, who doesn’t have children himself. “This task affects their sleep and it’s a challenge for them since my friends need to go to work during the day time.
“Then I started thinking whether I could invent some smart product to give people an alert when the diapers are full.”
Nowadays, with so much support from the government, the threshold for entrepreneurship is lowered
His 20-strong team at Fanmi Technology in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, had been making and selling medical sensing equipment for several years and soon produced a “baby caring magic tool” – a small gadget containing an electronic chip that could be stuck on the outside of a diaper to monitor what was going on inside. It sends information on urine volume, timing and bacteria intensity to parents’ mobile phones.
More than 2,000 of the 269 yuan (HK$318) gadgets have been sold since they were launched at the end of last year and the company is now working on a new model with more functions.
Fanmi is one of millions of small start-ups which the central government hopes will help boost the mainland economy through innovation and entrepreneurship as it seeks to abandon the investment- and debt-fuelled model that drove a three-decade-long economic boom.
