Ha Nan founded Beijing Liushanmen Technology, an internet-based catering startup, in 2014 after graduating from the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.

"Starting my own business was a very natural thing for me," the 24-year-old said. "I love eating food. We thought opening a restaurant would be very costly while starting online catering seemed to be a better idea."

As well as offering meals for individual and group clients, his company also offers complete catering supply chain solutions and intelligent hosting services for restaurant chains and cafes.

"So far, we have raised 10 million yuan ($1.45 million) in investment," said Ha.

Liu Yang, 28, is a graduate student at Peking University and founder of Mars Club, a Beijing-based startup devoted to education.

"I founded Mars Club after I took a break from studying in August 2014," Liu said.

"The inspiration came from my experience as a part-time tutor. I found that most Chinese students learnt scientific knowledge just from textbooks, whereas I wanted to guide them from a very young age to develop a scientific temper."

He says his team has developed science classes for children aged 6 to 12 taking in physical electronics, robotics, 3D printing and astronomical science and expects annual revenue for 2016 of around 20 million yuan.

Beijing T-cair Technology is an air purification company founded by Zhao Long, 31, a PHD student in Tsinghua University.

"In 2013, I took two entrepreneurship courses and met my partners, two other Tsinghua students," Zhao said. "We thought it would be a good idea to develop new air purifiers due to the deterioration in our nation's air quality. We established the company in 2015 and got the patent."

Unlike traditional filtration air purifiers, Beijing T-cair Technology has patented a system that uses a method of simulating rain to purify smog or air contamination.

"That's our advantage," said Zhao.

"Since the end of November we've sold around 650 air purifiers with sales reaching around 1.3 million yuan."