WHEN Wang Jialiang, a postgraduate of Jiao Tong University, decided to quit his job as a program manager for Microsoft in 2008 and venture into smart-phone technology on his own, his parents were dismayed. Like most Chinese parents, they wanted their son to stick to a stable job, with a big-name company, decent pay and a regular schedule.

Wang, however, was not to be dissuaded from pursuing his dream, even though that meant risks. Looking back on it so far, his parents have no cause for concern.

He started up his own firm, CooTeck Co. Ltd, and, one year later, the company was the first in China to win the GSMA Mobile Innovation Global Award that honors excellence and innovation in the mobile communications industry.

CooTeck now employs more than 60 staff, and its annual revenue has passed the 10 million yuan (US$1.54 million) mark. It operates out of Minhang's Zizhu Science Park.

The company's TouchPal product supports more than 60 languages, and its peak daily download volume ranges between 50,000 and 60,000. The company has cooperative ties with several big mobile phone makers, including Sony Ericsson and China's Huawei.

Wang majored in electronic engineering but chose a different path from most of his university classmates, who preferred the safety of working for big companies or studying further overseas.

The story of how his dream became a reality all began with a bet at a party.

In 2007, when the first iPhone was released, Wang bought one. He showed off the phone to friends at a party, but drew scorn. One of his friends commented that the phone's input system was a weak point, and the friend boasted that he could create a solution to the problem in a week. If he did, Wang said he would quit his job and found a company to promote the product. CooTek was born.

Wang was right about one hunch. The smart-phone was destined to become one of the biggest new devices on the market, creating a huge potential for software innovation.

"I believed the touch screen would be a big trend and a profitable market," Wang said.

Wang and three of his former Microsoft colleagues raised 500,000 yuan in initial investment capital from the Shanghai Science Commission and the Zizhu Start-Up Fund to establish CooTeck. The first version of their TouchPal product was English input.

Wang and his team visited overseas online forums to discuss the problems of input methods of touchscreen cell phones and learn about what consumers wanted.

Although there is an abundance of input software on the market, most products aren't particularly user-friendly, they found. The competition was focused mainly on updating the stock of vocabulary or changing the screen backgrounds to make them more attractive. What users really wanted, they found, was practical usage and speed of operation.

"We needed to ensure users that they could type as correctly as possible in the shortest time," he said.

The buttons of touchscreen cell phones are small, making typing errors commonplace. Wang said his first challenge was a smart typing-correction system.

TouchPal input suite brings a whole new input experience to smartphones. Users no longer have to worry about typos. If they type the wrong letters, the system corrects them.

Wang said users are able to save 60 percent of their key strokes with TouchPal's next-generation version and are also able to swipe over letters using the latest TouchPal curve technology, or predictive sliding.

The keyboard can be equipped on Android and iPhone devices.

Overseas customers were targeted first because CooTeck started off with English input software.

One of the initial problems facing the young company was marketing its product overseas.

He tried "hunger marketing," raising the expectations of potential users in online forums by dangling the prospect of a "different experience" before the product launch. At first, the company charged US$10 for each download, but now they are free for end users. Wang earns profits mainly from product authorization.

TouchPal attracted about 300,000 downloads in the first month it was launched.

Once the overseas market was penetrated, CooTeck turned its attention to the Chinese market. The company will soon launch a version in Shanghai dialect, targeting at younger users.

Like so many technology innovators, Wang's start-up company is constantly looking over its shoulder for copycats prowling in their wake.

"The only way to solve that problem is keeping our speed of innovation faster than their speed of copying," he said.

Wang said the company would probably be even more profitable if more money were invested in marketing. However, at this stage, he said, he prefers to allocate resources primarily to research and development.

That's not to say Wang isn't interested in spreading the word about CooTeck. To do that, the website holds competitions for netizens to see who can input the most words in the shortest time.

Low-cost advertising, he calls it.

Turning a start-up company into a more established market player has been hard work for Wang. He was fortunate to attract the attention of overseas companies at technology trade fairs he attended. CooTek has started designing customer-tailored mobile phone device software for companies.

"For me, success is piling up opportunities," Wang said. "But you always need to be prepared."

Start-ups aren't for the faint of heart, Wang admits. You have to be willing to accept disappointment, overcome frustrations and keep a clear vision of your goals.

For Wang, the slog toward success meant sleeping only four or five hours a day, and saving money by taking buses and eating in. He was happy to roll with the punches.

"I wasn't sure at first whether I would succeed," he confessed. "But I have passion and persistence."

His dream is that one day, when people around the world refer to Chinese products, they will say "innovated in China," not "made in China."