Zhao Zhanbo made a speech at the Era of China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum held at Peking University on August 16, 2016.[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Zhao Zhanbo, a marketing professor at Peking University, shared his 4D model to participants at the forum.

He said those who wanted to start up their own business needed to consider "demand, data, deliver and dynamic".

"You need to think whether you can meet consumers' actual needs, whether your business generates data, whether you can deliver in time and whether you can provide dynamic communication channels," Zhao said.

Qu Erxi, vice president of Beijing Wofengshou Tech Company Limited, which owns Yuncaiyuan, a B2B platform connecting 16,000 vegetable plantations in suburbs and retail stores in city communities, told chinadaily.com.cn that his platform has been optimizing storage and logistics according to different time, based on data accumulated from production sites and consumers.

"We would predict consumption of different types of vegetables at different time in different seasons in different cities on data we already have, but we are still expanding and still at the stage of data collection, not up to the level of big data," Qu said.

"Data is not our focus now as we need to made deals first although we have plans for data in the very beginning."

Beijing Tianchen Yunnongchang Company Limited, a shareholder of Yuncaiyuan, has formed a strategic cooperation with Sugon Star&Cloud Company Limited, a tech company specializing in big data and cloud computing, to share a bottom structure on cloud computing platforms and other resources.

"Alibaba's Jack Ma, at the beginning of his career, was not doing 'data' business – he was trying to improve transaction, from which 'data' came naturally," Qu said.