IngDan Announces Winners in US "Start Your Hardware Startup" Competition

First Place Goes to PicassoBot, Robotic Drawing Arm to Help Children Learn STEM Concepts


SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Apr 5, 2016) - IngDan, China's largest IoT Hardware Online to Offline supply chain platform, today announced the winners of its US "Start Your Hardware Startup" competition. Developed in collaboration with Hackster.io, the Challenge was created to celebrate IngDan's U.S. launch last December and recognizes the best new ideas for IoT hardware products.

Winners were chosen from among 265 entries from entrepreneurs from five countries. The top three will receive free design, evaluation and prototyping services worth $6,000, $4,000 and $2,000 respectively, and an awards ceremony to honor them will be held on April 6, 6 p.m., at the Joel B. Garzoli Fine Art Gallery, 706 Sansome St., San Francisco. IngDan's competition winners are as follows:

1. First Place -- PicassoBot: A robotic drawing arm, PicassoBot is designed to teach children about basic concepts in engineering and computer science. Taking only two hours to build, children can easily apply the concepts learned in the classroom into practice and start creating sketches with robot, pen and pencil.

2. Second Place -- Alfrid Home A.I.: An Artificial Intelligence device designed to be at the center of the smart home, Alfrid provides affordable voice recognition technology in every room. It is designed with an open API and plug-and-play functionality that allow seamless connections with all leading smart home devices. Users can activate lights, secure, control and even converse with their home.

3. Third Place -- Haize: Designed by UK Startup Onom, Haize is a smart navigation device for the urban cyclist. It acts like a minimalistic compass, pointing the rider in the direction of their destination, but leaves them to work out the route. The elegantly designed device can be easily mounted on the handlebars of any bike, to make navigating the city safer, more convenient and more fun.

"IngDan received a tremendous response to our first U.S. competition. We are really pleased with both the quality of the technologies being developed and the caliber of the entrepreneurs," said Jeffrey Kang, CEO of IngDan. "These firms are definitely 'ones to watch' in the coming months. Our team looks forward to providing our wide array of one-stop shop support services to help them take flight."

IngDan's vision is to democratize IoT innovation by lowering the barriers to entry by giving entrepreneurs the same advantage and potential success previously enjoyed only by well-funded companies. "In partnering with IngDan and by gaining access to our extensive supply chain platform, anyone with the dream and drive to build, ship and market smart devices can," Kang added.

About IngDan
Founded in 2013, IngDan is the one-stop IoT Hardware innovation platform and subsidiary of Cogobuy Group, a Hong Kong-listed company operating China's largest supplier platform. It empowers entrepreneurs to outsource to the right suppliers at the right time, giving them the same advantage and potential success previously enjoyed only by well-funded companies. Leveraging over 6,000 suppliers, IngDan enables entrepreneurs to capitalize world-class hardware manufacturers at an affordable cost.

IngDan's millions of followers also provide entrepreneurs an unprecedented critical mass and platform for consumer testing and feedback, accelerating brand recognition and product adoption among Chinese consumers. IngDan has a US office in San Francisco and a growing number of US clients. The Santa Clara office will be open this July. IngDan currently has three Experience Centers in China and one in Hong Kong, and the first US location will be open this July in Silicon Valley. en.ingdan.com

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