A machinery enthusiast in Wenzhou village, East China's Zhejiang province, has made a fortune selling his own food-delivery robot on the Taobao e-commerce platform, through which the product has tapped markets in Beijing and Shanghai.

Though Yang Yunlai stopped his education after graduating from junior high school, the 35-year-old always had a passion for machinery. He has worked as a mechanic, run computer and cellphone shops and even invented a robot able to slice dough.

Even without family support at the very beginning, Yang managed to make a robot to serve meals. He spent two years figuring out how to fulfill the project, including exterior design, circuit outlines, material processing and product tests, which cost him hundreds of thousands of yuan. Last year, Yang finally finished.

Yang's robot is priced 20 to 30 percent lower than its counterparts on Taobao. "Now my main focus is making robots, and I make other machines as well, which earns me 5,000 to 6,000 yuan ($726.26 to $870.38) each month," he said.