Most entrepreneurs in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles revere machines that can fly high. Contrary to the wishes of many, Garcia United Technology Co. aims to forcibly land or destroy drones that fly in protected areas.
With Wang Lihong as its chairman, Garcia has developed a low-altitude defense system with three major hardware facilities — low-level radar devices, optoelectronic equipment and video surveillance.
The system can set up a directional jam around a region, creating an electronic fence that blocks unmanned aerial devices. When the radar, which has a range of five kilometers, detects that a drone has entered, it can initiate a forced landing or shoot down the UAV to protect the vital area from unmanned aerial vehicles.
Wang Lihong first showed concern about the dangers of low-altitude flight was in 2013 when she was on a study tour to Stanford University. When she came back to China in 2014, she began to investigate the domestic low-altitude defense market and set up Garcia with her friends in 2015.
“With spears, there is a need for shields,” she said. Unfettered drone flight poses a serious threat to aviation safety.
Wang Lihong raised USD295,000 (CNY2 million) from angel investor Wang Lijie, the founder of the PreAngel Fund, but “it has been spent already.” Wang Lijie helped Garcia complete another round of financing and said he is ready to participate in the next round.
Garcia has 14 full-time employees. Most of them are technology talents in Beijing, where wages are high. Wang Lihong said that since PhD-holding science and technology workers in the city expect an annual salary of CNY400,000, she has considered relocating to Chengdu, where the company might only need to pay a monthly salary of ten or twenty thousand yuan.
Garcia and the Chengdu University of Science and Technology have cooperated, and Garcia keeps tabs on local schools and technological talent reserves.
If drones and low-altitude defense systems are like spears and shields, Wang Lijie is wielding one of each. PreAngel Fund, Gimpo Investment, GGV Capital and others backed the unmanned aircraft firm Ehang in its USD42 million B-round of financing in August 2015.
The consumer UAV market is dominated by Da-Jiang Innovations Science and Technology Co. (DJI), so new players don’t have a big chance, Wang Lijie said. Ehang has started to shift its research and development focus to manned drones.
Source: yicaiglobal.com
