Analysis | Drone maker DJI’s success inspires hundreds of Chinese start-ups to try and fly high

John Ma and two friends arrived in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen last July with a dream. Four months later they had produced 70 small drones and put them on sale on retail platform Taobao.com at 468 yuan (US$75) each.

Ma’s venture, and hundreds of others like it, have been lured to Shenzhen by the runaway success of drone maker DJI Technology, which has gone from start-up in 2006 to the world’s No 1 maker of the devices in less than a decade.

“DJI inspires many Chinese with talent in technology. If it could grow from 50 employees to 1,500 in three years and from three million to 3 billion yuan (sales), then maybe so can we,” said Ma, a 22-year old graduate student, referring to rapid business expansion and sales growth of DJI in recent years. 

There’s no official statistics but industry insiders estimate that several hundred companies are trying to emulate DJI in the consumer and small commercial drones market. On the official websites of many of these companies, they all say they are aiming at being next leading brand in the industry.

But the market is on the side of the newcomers. The US-based Consumer Electronics Association forecasts the global market for consumer drones will approach US$300 million by 2018.