Han Dongcheng, born in 1992, is the chairman of Easpeed Technology Co. Fan Chao, born in 1993, is the company’s general manager. Both of them were postgraduate students at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), where they even lived together as roommates. 

Now they work together at Easpeed, which researched and developed an equivalent negative refraction slab lens. The company is the only one in China that owns core technology of this kind. It has won 10 national inventions and utility model patents.

Han Dongcheng [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Han is outgoing and good at communicating with people, so he mainly takes charge of marketing. Fan mainly focuses on technology as he is more reserved. The company's Chinese name - Dongchao Keji - is a combination of their names. It can also be interpreted as “Eastern Speed”. 

The same interests and dreams they shared at university make them good partners in entrepreneurship. In 2016, they founded Anhui Easpeed Technology Co in the Hefei National High-tech Industry Development Zone, mainly for research and development of technology media as well as new materials.

They are both from rural families, and lacked enough money to support their startup, so they started their first business in the graduation season of 2016, taking photos for the graduates. They spent their 20,000 yuan ($2,895) scholarship on the drone and camera, and finally made a profit of 180,000 yuan, enough for the initial capital for their company.

In the first year of the company’s founding, they successfully promoted the auto intelligent display instrument and got a 500,000 unit order. The profit was used for research and development of new materials. In 2017, the three million yuan profit from technology media was also put into new material research. By the end of 2017, the new material equivalent negative refraction slab lens, a special glass which can show imaging in the air, was invented, extending people’s visual perception.

Han and his team [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

At the end of 2017, some team members were inclined to quit as they thought startups have large risks and are not long-term businesses. Han and Fan responded to the crisis by attracting investment to improve the company’s competitiveness. 

At a road show performance in Zhongguancun Science Park, Beijing, Easpeed Technology stood out among a dozen enterprises, and received invitations from 11 companies or development zones, including the Hefei National High-tech Industry Development Zone. “Our company is small in scale, but we got the first place and attracted investment of 8 million yuan, and the company’s valuation reached 80 million yuan,” said Han. 

The products have many applications, including the military industry, exhibitions, outdoor media and household uses. Han and Fan plan to put the equivalent negative refraction slab lens into mass production. It is expected to reach 70 million yuan of revenue in 2019 and 150 million in 2020. The partners’ larger goal is to go public in five years.