Post-90s HIT Top Student Quits Job to Start Business! Spotted by the "Father of DJI," Earns 900 Million a Year from Smart Gadgets!

Many cross-border e-commerce sellers lack independent judgment. When a product category becomes popular in the market, they all rush in, blindly following others to compete for market share, making it difficult to achieve substantial profits.

Instead, it is better to proactively explore a niche track where real demand exists but few leading brands have delved into, often yielding higherofprofits.

Take the smart home renovation track as an example: giants like Xiaomi, Huawei, and Panasonic firmly occupy the whole-house integrated smart home market. Such solutions are suitable for new home decoration or whole-home renovation, with high entry barriers and overall investment costs that are also very expensive.

Image source: Google

However, in Europe, the United States, Japan, and other countries, there is a huge stock of old houses, and many old appliances are still in use. To upgrade to whole-home intelligence, it is often necessary to tear down walls and rewire, making the renovation extremely cumbersome, which prevents many old-house owners from achieving smart upgrades.

At the same time, the scale of young people renting houses is also continuously expanding. The rental environment is limited, and most do not allow large-scale renovation that damages walls.

Howwithout replacing the originalofold appliances, achieving home intelligence in a low-cost, low-barrier way, has become an urgent need for a large number of consumers.

Image source: Google

In China, a brand emerged that set its sights on the aftermarket renovation of existing appliances in rental groups and old residences. By relying on product features such as no-drilling, no-wiring, and stick-and-use, it opened up a niche track ignored by the giants.

It allows ordinary families to avoid buying a whole set of smart appliances at once; they can easily experience smart home with just a single product for tens of dollars.

It is the smart home brand from Shenzhen, GuangdongSwitchBot。

Next, let's analyze together: how SwitchBot gradually entered millions of households overseas,growing to annual revenue exceeding 900 millionof the global bestseller？

Image source: Google

A counterattack sparked by renting: Harbin Institute of Technology top student teams up to start a business

According to public data, SwitchBot was founded in 2015 and is a global overseas brand that grew up rooted in Shenzhen, focusing on low-cost retrofitted smart home and embodied home robot tracks.

Co-founder Mr. Li graduated from Harbin Institute of Technology with a bachelor's degree, later obtained a master's degree from Nanyang Technological University, and served at a technology company in Singapore.

After returning to China from Singapore, he noticed a common pain point while renting in Shenzhen: tenants have no right to alter wall switches, and many old appliances are also difficult to upgrade intelligently.

Thus, the idea arose to develop a small robot that could simulate human hand operations without requiring any home appliance modification.

In 2015, Mr. Li invited his Harbin Institute of Technology alumnus Mr. Pan to jointly establish Woan Technology, the predecessor of SwitchBot, and set a differentiated development path. Determined to avoid the highly competitive whole-home smart renovation track, they focused on existing homes and renters, creating a lightweight post-installation smart home solution.

Image source: Google

From crowdfunding hit to IPO push: What does the "Godfather of DJI" see in it?

In 2016, the brand's first-generation finger robot SwitchBox landed on the overseas crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, with the target achievement rate exceeding 2000%, initially verifying the huge demand in overseas markets and thus establishing the development strategy of prioritizing going global.

In 2017, SwitchBot officially launched the SwitchBot Bot finger robot. With its innovative form of adhesive installation and simulating human finger presses, it made ordinary wall switches, coffee machines, door locks and other devices smart with one click, quickly gaining favor from a large number of overseas consumers.

Image source: Google

In 2018, the brand received investment from "Godfather of DJI" Li Zexiang, Hillhouse Capital, and other well-known institutions. Li Zexiang and robotics expert Gao Bingqiang served as non-executive directors, and with their deep industrial accumulation in robotics and semiconductors, they continuously provided professional guidance on technology routes, product planning, and long-term development strategies.

Relying on a strong R&D team and industrial resource advantages, SwitchBot continuously improved its product layout, successively launching smart curtain robots, smart remotes, smart door locks and other smart home accessories, and extending into the fields of robot vacuums and humanoid robots.

In 2025, the brand officially submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, aiming to become "the world's first AI embodied household robot stock".

Image source: Google

Amazon + Rakuten Yahoo + independent site: the iron triangle of channels for overseas bestsellers

To date, the overseas market has always been SwitchBot's core base, with overseas revenue accounting for over 95% for a long time. Japan, Europe, and North America constitute its three core markets.

In 2024, the brand's annual revenue reached 610 million yuan; by 2025, its total annual revenue exceeded 900 million.

Behind these achievements is a mature and comprehensive global channel layout.

It is reported that SwitchBot joined Amazon as early as 2018, starting large-scale overseas sales. It used the Japan site as its core operating base, with multiple products consistently ranking high on bestseller lists in the smart home category, while also expanding to sites in the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, and other regions.

Image source: Amazon

Not only that, the brand also actively entered regional local e-commerce platforms such as Rakuten and Yahoo, and carried out distribution business through local distributors.

In order to escape the constraints of third-party platform commissions and platform rules and build private traffic for its own brand, SwitchBot also built its own independent website as a long-term strategic base.

The full product line is listed on the independent website, making it convenient for users to choose according to their needs. The brand also used it to accumulate user data, dig out consumer preferences in different regions, and feed them back into product innovation and iteration.

Image source: SwitchBot

A video with no narration raked in 5.3 million views: the "silent selling" secret on TikTok

For overseas consumers facing unfamiliar foreign brands and products, besides strong product strength and a complete channel layout, intuitive and visible real-life product demonstrations are a key to dispelling purchase concerns and driving them to complete the final order.

Social media such as TikTok, which is popular worldwide, happens to provide a vehicle for visual content dissemination, and SwitchBot has used it to reach a large number of potential customers.

1. Build an official brand account

SwitchBot first consolidated its own communication channels, using the main brand account @SwitchBot as the core window to communicate with overseas users.

Currently, the account has 50,800 followers and a total of 126,000 likes.

The content focuses on real-life product demonstrations, showcasing operations in everyday scenarios. Users only need a short video of a few dozen seconds to clearly understand the core features and efficiently obtain product information.

Image source: TikTok

2. Collaborating with vertical influencers for precise outreach

However, the official account mainly serves to educate and expose the brand. Relying on the platform's natural and broad traffic distribution, it is difficult to precisely reach target audiences with strong purchase intent.

To this end, SwitchBot adopted a second approach: partnering with vertical-domain influencers to precisely reach potential consumers through their established fan circles.

For example, @giftgecko, a tech influencer on TikTok with 581,800 followers and 8.9 million total likes, once made a promotional short video for SwitchBot.

Image source: TikTok

In the video, the influencer installed SwitchBot's smart curtain robot on the curtain track at home and preset it via phone to automatically open the curtains at 6 a.m. the next morning. The next morning, without any manual operation, the curtains opened automatically at the set time.

The entire video had no narration, simply recreating a real usage scenario. After being posted, it gained over 5.3 million views and 115,900 likes, impressing a large number of potential users.

It can be seen that content in which influencers personally test and recreate the entire real usage process is more likely to win the trust of overseas consumers and effectively improve conversion efficiency.

Image source: TikTok

Conclusion

Currently, the global smart home device market is still in a period of rapid growth, especially for retrofits and lightweight smart products. With the increasing stock of old houses and the popularity of rental culture, the potential consumer base is expanding at an unprecedented speed.

For domestic companies going overseas, the multi-platform strategy and deep social media integration validated by SwitchBot are no longer an option but a basic survival skill for entering overseas markets.

Rather than following in a crowded track, it is better to calm down and look for the next overlooked market gap.