In 2014, Derrick co-founded EHang with Mr. Huazhi HU in Guangzhou, aiming to provide both mass consumers and industry clients with unique drone products & solutions that are easy to use, smart, safe and efficient. With rich experiences in overseas marketing and sharp insight of the smart hardware industry, Derrick quickly launched and promoted EHang GHOSTDRONE, the world’s first APP control-based smart drone, across domestic, U.S. and European markets, refreshing the record of overseas crowdfunding amount of Chinese technology products.
In CES 2016 in Las Vegas, Derrick led the team to unveil a game-changing innovative product that embodied years of R&D efforts by the company — EHang Autonomous Aerial Vehicle (AAV). The vehicle amazed the world instantly, blazing the trail and leading the way in the exploration and development of urban air mobility globally. Since then, Derrick has been actively pushing forward business cooperation and commercialization and application of EHang AAV, such as the collaboration with UTHR, a Nasdaq-listed biotechnology company, to jointly develop the Manufactured Organ Transportation Helicopter (MOTH) system. Thus, EHang was named as one of the “Most Innovative Companies 2016” by Fast Company, a renowned U.S. business magazine, and edged itself into the top 3 of global drone industry.
Meanwhile, Derrick has also been actively engaged in developing new businesses for EHang. He has been continuously practicing and exploring more commercial applications as well as business models of drones. For instance, Derrick founded and chaired EHang Tianyu Co., Ltd to develop and provide drone delivery solutions that integrate hardware, software, operation services of delivery drones, and established the China’s first urban drone delivery supermarket in partnership with Yonghui and the China’s first urban drone delivery airline certified by the authority.
Before co-founding EHang, Derrick spent 9 years abroad as a student and an entrepreneur. At 16 years old, Derrick was selected into a government-funded overseas education program and entered Nanyang Technological University in Singapore as an Electronic and Electrical Engineering major. Later, Derrick became president of NTY Student Union, and began his entrepreneur career by establishing the first Chinese Groupon website in Singapore. In 2012, Derrick entered Fuqua Business School of Duke University, US. During his postgraduate years, Derrick’s startup project, a social networking APP for lovers called “chapter”, was selected as DUKE SIP incubation program, earning him the opportunity to incubate the project in RocketSpace, a top makerspace in Silicon Valley, US. After graduation, Derrick continued his series-entrepreneur career by establishing an image recognition software company in Singapore, which later won funding support from the Singaporean government, and founding HardMake, a community of smart hardware, in US.