Six years later, he led the team to win 16 million orders!, Inspired by "neck choking" technology
Unable to wait for college graduation, Zhou Yongfeng eagerly embarked on an adventure - in his senior year, he chose to take a leave of absence to start his own business.
Many people are sweating for his amazing move, but this young man believes in his choice: to use hard technology to "open up" smart agriculture.
When Zhou Yongfeng was admitted to university, China had just begun to fully implement the rural revitalization strategy, and many young people turned their attention to the vast countryside. Zhou Yongfeng is also one of them. He aimed at the smart agriculture track, founded Iron Beast Technology, launched entrepreneurial projects such as precision irrigation, and blew away the "technological wind" for traditional agriculture.
Recently, Zhou Yongfeng's team's AgroX Future Distributed Precision Irrigation System Entrepreneurship Project was selected as one of the top 20 micro entrepreneurship projects for college students in 2022, and received entrepreneurial support funds. Some investment funds are also optimistic about his project and are negotiating investments.
At the launch ceremony of the 2023 KAB College Student Micro Entrepreneurship Action, Zhou Yongfeng shared his entrepreneurial journey and mentioned his initial choice, believing that college student entrepreneurship must resonate with the times.
The entrepreneurial choices of college students are aligned with the development of the country, which is a clear trend reflected in the 2022 Micro Entrepreneurship Action Project Analysis Report for College Students.
The 2022 Analysis Report on Micro Entrepreneurship Action Projects for College Students shows that 1081 entrepreneurial team members have diverse professional compositions. Through word frequency statistics and word cloud mapping of their majors, the most prominent five words are "engineering", "technology", "technology", "management", and "education".
"These college student entrepreneurs have a keen entrepreneurial insight, can better grasp the trend of the times, actively connect with major national strategies and tasks, and choose suitable and promising entrepreneurial fields." Ge Jianxin believes that such entrepreneurial processes also "help young people connect themselves with society.".
Youth are the most dynamic and creative group. Since its launch in 2015, the College Student Micro Entrepreneurship Action has reached its ninth year and has received widespread support from hundreds of venture capital institutions and thousands of universities. The theme of this year's event is "Searching for Entrepreneurship Dreams+", focusing on the fields of technological innovation, rural revitalization, and green development. The organizers of the event will invest 1.2 million yuan to support 60 micro entrepreneurship projects for college students.
Using hardcore technology to solve social pain points
Two years ago, Li Shuangyang, a 2020 doctoral student from the School of Chemical Engineering at Tianjin University who had achieved many achievements in scientific research, decided to take a bold step forward and truly benefit the people with scientific research achievements.
For a long time, the market for large-diameter artificial blood vessels in China has been dominated by foreign countries, and there are still no small-diameter artificial blood vessel products globally. This means that heart bypass patients can only remove blood vessels from the body, which is very painful.
Can patients use high-quality and affordable local products? Li Shuangyang began to invest in the research of small caliber artificial blood vessels. He established an independent biotechnology company in the school's crowdsourcing space and recruited students from multiple colleges, forming a team with interdisciplinary integration and complementary advantages.
Now, as one of the first entrepreneurial teams, his team has settled in Tiankai Higher Education Science and Technology Innovation Park, an innovation hub that has been built with the efforts of the whole city in Tianjin.
"We should closely integrate our scientific research and learning with the needs of the country and the people, and find our youth coordinates in the great journey of national rejuvenation," said Li Shuangyang.
The College Student Micro Entrepreneurship Action, with the original intention of exploring creative innovation and cultivating entrepreneurial enthusiasm, has selected "Top 20 Micro Entrepreneurship Projects" from over 1000 exhibition projects. "From these excellent entrepreneurial teams, we can discover some common traits among the younger generation of entrepreneurs," said Ge Jianxin.
After using the theme model analysis method to classify the participation projects of college students in micro entrepreneurship, seven high-frequency themes were identified, including "digital technology", "e-commerce economy", and "rural revitalization". These themes reflect the main concerns and hot topics of current college students in micro entrepreneurship.
According to Ge Jianxin's analysis, from the perspective of project team composition, the entrepreneurs of these excellent projects generally come from China's Double First Class universities, where they have won various awards such as learning and practice. Some entrepreneurs also have research papers and patented technologies. Most project teams have entrepreneurial or practical experience, with high entrepreneurial enthusiasm and strong entrepreneurial abilities. They have clear plans for their target users, market channels, marketing models, and various stages of strategic development.
The Changhai Technology team is attempting to fill the technological gap. Six years ago, Xie Hanyu, an undergraduate student at Chongqing University, was inspired by a neck locking technique that ignited his fighting spirit. Our country's deep-sea connectors mainly rely on foreign imports. He and his team hope to solve the problem of foreign companies monopolizing the underwater connector market through key core technology research and development.
After years of research and tens of thousands of experiments, they proposed a new technological route and pioneered deep-sea wireless connection solutions internationally, achieving China's creation of high-end marine equipment core technology and filling the gap in China's deep-sea connector field below 3000 meters.
Xie Hanyu and his team chose to "overtake by changing lanes", abandoning the original oil sealed deep-sea connector structure in the industry, and for the first time achieving wireless connection between electricity and information in deep-sea environments. They overcame the three major technical problems of low connection times, low connection efficiency, and unstable connection in China's deep-sea connectors, and solved the "bottleneck" problem of China's marine equipment.
At present, Changhai Technology has reached strategic cooperation with industry leading enterprises such as China National Offshore Oil Service and China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, and has received orders of 16 million yuan.
Ge Jianxin, who has been engaged in research on college student entrepreneurship for a long time, noticed that a few years ago, many college student entrepreneurship projects were still service oriented. "Nowadays, most good projects are based on hard technology and have the characteristic of interdisciplinary integration.".
It is worth noting that most of these outstanding young college student entrepreneurs focus on the "pain points" and "difficulties" in the development of the country and society, based on innovative technology to achieve breakthroughs in problems, or provide more accurate and convenient solutions for a certain problem.
Becoming young people in the field of agriculture, rural areas, and farmers
The "New Battlefield" of Innovation and Entrepreneurship
The future distributed precision irrigation system of Zhou Yongfeng's team is actually to create intelligent "planting experts" in micro, medium and large farms. They transform the planting experience of human "planting experts" into standard and reliable data and execution logic; Monitor the real-time growth of crops, form a high-quality irrigation algorithm model for crops, and provide full cycle irrigation services for farms.
It is reported that this system can save water and fertilizer by up to 40% for planting enterprises, save labor costs by 20% -30%, and increase average income per mu by more than 8.5%. Since the official R&D investment of 6 months, it has been applied on more than 1200 acres of farmland.
Zhang Bowei and his team from Northwest A&F University have developed a smart grape planting robot. They proposed a grape planting field management solution, which includes robots and integrated grape planting water and fertilizer devices, and constructed a new intelligent management format of "information perception information processing intelligent operation". In the future, the prevention and control of grape diseases and pests, automatic weeding, pruning and cutting of branches and leaves, starting and burying of vines, and even fruit picking can all be completed by robots.
"Our main profit points come from renting and selling core products, providing technical guidance and consulting services, and commissioning customized planting requirements." Zhang Bowei believes that this technological innovation integration can go beyond traditional agricultural machinery and make planting simple.
From the selection of entrepreneurial projects for college students, a clear trend can be seen - the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy is driving the field of agriculture, rural areas, and farmers to become a new battlefield for college students to innovate and start businesses. On the one hand, the national strategy provides more channels and opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship among college students. On the other hand, innovation and entrepreneurship among college students also provide talent protection and inject fresh vitality into the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy.
The 10 outstanding entrepreneurial projects supported in the field of "rural revitalization" this time involve crop cultivation, processing and sales, intangible cultural heritage, rural tourism, rural elderly care, ecological protection, etc.
Terms such as "rural", "employment", and "agricultural products" have repeatedly appeared in the social value of projects, indicating that micro entrepreneurship projects focus on conducting business in rural areas, creating employment opportunities, and valuing the development of the agricultural product industry.
College students who focus on entrepreneurship in rural areas of China come from different universities and professional backgrounds both domestically and internationally. Ge Jianxin noticed that these college students are well aware of the need to propose targeted innovative ideas tailored to local conditions as much as possible. They often rely on their own technology or local cultural resources, delve deeply into a specific niche field, and strive to solve some "agriculture, rural areas, and farmers" problems solidly. "Many entrepreneurial projects have already achieved some results, which can see the real changes in rural areas and farmers."
Zhang Boai, a student at Guangdong University of Technology, is currently in his senior year. His hometown, Lianjiang City, Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province, is the hometown of red oranges in China. Starting from his sophomore year, this clever young man began to think about helping his parents and fellow villagers sell their products.
During his university years, he studied agricultural soil management and conditioning with his supervisor. He found that some farmers often report that fruits are not growing as well as they are growing year after year.
After rooted in rural areas and communicating with over a thousand households, Zhang Boai's team decided to explore a new technological path using their professional knowledge. The reserves of potassium ore in our country are very abundant, but they are all insoluble potassium ore, making it difficult to commercialize. Through their scientific research and research, they have achieved the transformation of insoluble potassium ore into soluble potassium material, using potassium ore as raw material to produce soil conditioners, which can be effectively used for soil conditioning and improvement.
Having gone through countless hardships along the way, what he deeply understands is that "the most important thing in rural revitalization is practice.". He doesn't want scientific research to only stay in the laboratory. "I think real scientific research and technological breakthroughs must give farmers a sense of achievement."
At present, Zhang Boai and his team have visited 5 provinces across the country, and their developed mineral soil conditioning products have helped 2112 farmers, achieving profits of over 50 million yuan. "Rural revitalization really has great potential!" said Zhang Boai.
More and more young people are struggling on the vast rural land of our motherland. The Liu Yichen team, which uses AI to identify pests and diseases, has the largest open-source civilian pest and disease database in the country. The team has built 312 pest and disease databases and has as many as 20 million pest and disease images.
Nowadays, their services have entered agricultural bases across the country. Liu Yichen said that the company has established 62 offline agricultural technology service centers through cooperation with multiple township governments in Hengyang, Hunan. In addition, online agricultural input shopping malls and offline agricultural technology service centers have been launched to provide agricultural input products, truly benefiting farmers.
A large number of young makers
On the vast social stage
Glow and shine
Zhang Zhijie, a student at Xi'an Jiaotong University, always has a sense of urgency to be pushed forward by the times. In his view, the new era has put forward higher requirements for young people. As young science and technology workers, we not only need to make breakthroughs in scientific research, but also strive to implement and root scientific research achievements. "Entrepreneurship is a very good way," he said
They focus on the new issue in today's society - how to effectively handle retired batteries. The project team has invented a distributed live dismantling and waste heat recovery integrated system for lithium batteries. Through nitrogen circulation, the energy generated during the live dismantling process of batteries can be transferred to the waste heat recovery device and converted. This not only avoids a series of environmental problems such as large amounts of wastewater and electrolyte leakage caused by traditional pre discharge processes, but also achieves the recycling and utilization of residual energy from waste batteries, meeting the standards for settling in industrial parks.
This project can bring significant social effects. Because their technology enables the live dismantling of retired power lithium batteries, a single production line can reduce the discharge of 200000 tons of high concentration saline water annually. Moreover, through self-developed high-efficiency adsorbents and advanced wastewater treatment processes, the annual cost of pollution control can be reduced by over one million yuan.
At the same time, the system's built-in waste heat recovery system can recover residual battery energy, reducing the annual combustion of over 10000 tons of standard coal and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by over 40000 tons. In addition, through the efficient recycling process of polar powder, the recovery rate of positive and negative polar powder reaches 98%, and the recovery rate of copper and aluminum reaches over 98%.
At present, their production line can achieve non-selective cracking and recycling of all commercially available lithium-ion battery models. Multiple intelligent device suppliers have reached cooperation with this team and will soon be put into large-scale production and use.
In entrepreneurial projects, many people choose entrepreneurial directions that are closely related to people's daily lives and national macro policies, such as "green environmental protection" and "social services". This also reflects to some extent that contemporary youth have a stronger sense of social service and social responsibility.
The young R&D team of "AI Baby" has innovatively applied image restoration technology and developed three core technologies that can repair particularly blurry photos. At first, they were full of confidence in technology and participated in the 2021 Internet plus National Competition, but the results were not ideal.
At the suggestion of their mentor, they decided to reorganize their direction and devote themselves wholeheartedly to public welfare. They have launched a social family search model, sending successfully repaired clear photos to public security organs, public welfare organizations, charitable organizations, and news media, etc., to "encourage the whole society to participate in family search public welfare.". The team also developed "family search tape", which prints repaired photos on courier tape at low cost and high efficiency. Once it was launched, it became popular nationwide.
Over the past three years, they have recovered a total of nine children who have been missing for many years. The team gradually formed a volunteer service team of over 300 people from the initial few technical personnel. "We will turn the impossible into possible." Project leader Sheng Jianzhong turned entrepreneurship into a belief, and those eyes that yearn for family reunion made them firm in their entrepreneurial choices - illuminating the way home with love, and making finding loved ones no longer lonely.
Cultivate a group of entrepreneurs who are integrated into the times
Cultivating a group of entrepreneurs who are integrated into the era is precisely the original intention of organizing the micro entrepreneurship action for college students. In the past 9 years, the college student micro entrepreneurship action has covered thousands of universities, with tens of thousands of college student projects participating in online entrepreneurship project exhibitions. Through a series of activities such as lecture halls, micro entrepreneurship camps, and project support, we continuously cultivate a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship among college students, serve their innovation and entrepreneurship practices, and inspire young people to dare to dream, pursue their dreams, and work hard to fulfill their dreams.
Through word frequency analysis of the text data of 1081 micro entrepreneurship projects presented in the special topic, we found that vocabulary such as "technology", "service", "consumer", and "digitalization" became key factors reflecting project innovation. All images in this group were provided by Professor Ge Jianxin's research team at Central University of Finance and Economics
The person in charge of China Youth Daily, one of the initiators of the event, introduced that for the past 9 years, the micro entrepreneurship action for college students has had a profound impact among college entrepreneurs. The KAB entrepreneurship education project is an important tool for China Youth Daily to guide, connect, and serve the growth of young people. As of now, a total of 11700 KAB entrepreneurship education teachers from over 1840 universities have been trained, and KAB entrepreneurship clubs for college students have been established in over 430 universities. Every year, millions of college students participate in entrepreneurial learning and practice.
Youth is often new, and youth is also the most capable of being new.
According to the organizers of the event, this year's college student micro entrepreneurship action will continue to promote and support innovation and entrepreneurship among college students, and actively build a roadshow display platform for connecting college student entrepreneurship with venture capital institutions. The main contents of the activities include: soliciting and rewarding micro entrepreneurship projects for college students, organizing three micro entrepreneurship camps for college students around the themes of "technological innovation", "rural revitalization", and "green development", a college student micro entrepreneurship ecological meeting, project roadshows, and investment institution docking, and a series of activities.
