About us
LaunchOn (Zhi-Qi) draws wisdom from I-Ching. We guide enterprises through critical milestones: strategic due diligence, initiating Hong Kong setup, and establishing lasting local presence.
Know the moment, launch to establish.
The name
Zhi comes from knowing the arrival and knowing the end. It reads a project's critical milestones, the risks and the path. It is the early strategic reading, and it corresponds to On: being in place, being present.
Qi corresponds to Launch. It starts the project and opens the Hong Kong setup. It is the work of carrying that out.
Read the critical milestones, then start. It begins with the reading and ends in a foothold. The chain has three parts: reading the milestones, starting the setup, and taking root locally.
The source line
《周易·乾卦·文言》：知至至之，可与几也；知终终之，可与存义也。
The idea
LaunchOn.ai takes the Qian reading of knowing the first signs. Matters strip back and return. First tell the milestones apart and clear what is in the way. Then put the form in place, open the work in Hong Kong, and set a base that lasts.
LaunchOn.ai is a Hong Kong-based advisory firm founded in 2017. Its founding team includes executives from Fortune 500 companies' Hong Kong offices, licensed financial institutions and FinTech founders. It helps institutional clients establish in Hong Kong and, using Hong Kong as a node, expand into mainland China and global markets.
HKCAS was registered in Hong Kong as a non-profit in 2019. Its controlling member is China Zhongzi Chanrong (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of the central state-owned enterprise China International Engineering Consulting Corporation. See www.hkcas.org
LaunchOn.ai and HKCAS teams work closely together, providing industry advisory and matching investment for foreign enterprises entering the Chinese market.
From Quanzhou to Hong Kong: a trade route a thousand years old
LaunchOn.ai's founder comes from Fujian, China. A thousand years ago Quanzhou was China's largest port of foreign trade. Through the Song and Yuan dynasties, Arab and Persian merchants settled there, traded there and raised families there. Quanzhou still keeps the Qingjing Mosque of 1009, the Islamic tombs traditionally held to be those of companions of the Prophet, and Cao'an in Jinjiang, the only surviving Manichaean temple in the world, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2021 with the wider Quanzhou site.
That history stayed in the local commercial character. The genealogy of the Ding clan of Chendai, Jinjiang, records its ancestor as the Yuan-dynasty statesman Sayyid Ajall Shams al-Din; the same family later founded Anta. The province also produced Zhang Yiming of ByteDance (TikTok), Robin Zeng of CATL, Cao Dewang of Fuyao Glass and Wang Xing of Meituan (Keeta). Fujianese merchants carry more than a thousand years of seafaring trade in their DNA: they are long-term players, tolerant and cohesive by nature, and they work in good faith with their partners to grow together.
A thousand years ago our forebears traded in the same harbour. We are simply reconnecting the route.
The founder has carried one ambition: to make that route run both ways again, matching Chinese companies and companies around the world entering each other's markets, and getting the business done together. We are based in Hong Kong because it is the practical place for this work: licences, capital, talent and the two-way channel between the mainland and the world all meet here.
Licensed services are delivered by the provider, and you contract with and pay the provider directly. We compare the options and match the provider. We do not collect payment and take no markup. The scope of work is confirmed between you and the provider.