How Did ELEHEAR Achieve Over 10x Revenue Growth in a Year and Top the Amazon Category Charts?

[Ebrun Original] When a serial entrepreneur deeply involved in B2B algorithm services pivots to create consumer hardware products directly for end-users, what kind of results can be expected?

In the recent "2026 Forbes China Next-Generation Cross-Border E-commerce 30" list jointly released by Amazon Global Selling and Forbes China, Miao Jianzhang, founder of Tingxiang Technology, provided a case study of a product innovation-driven development path.

In 2021, recognizing the lingering opportunities in the global hearing aid industry, Miao Jianzhang began planning to leverage his accumulated expertise in AI acoustics to enter this field.

In September 2023, the hearing aid brand he founded, ELEHEAR, launched its first-generation product, ALPHA, by independently building its hardware environment.

A year later, the second-generation product, Beyond, was released, incorporating self-developed algorithms. As ELEHEAR's flagship model for overseas markets, Beyond was launched on Amazon in 2025. Within just one year, it achieved over 10x revenue growth, with global sales surpassing ten million USD, rapidly climbing to become the number one product in Amazon's OTC hearing aid category.

Starting from scratch and transforming into a new force in the hearing aid market, these enviable results were actually achieved by founder Miao Jianzhang and his team through a 'slow' approach—four years of deep, full-stack in-house R&D, culminating in a concentrated market breakthrough.

What exactly did ELEHEAR do right to break through from a 'slow' start and achieve 'fast' results?

01 Finding the Third Possibility in the Hearing Aid Industry

The philosophy of finding what truly matters and dedicating all efforts to it supported Miao Jianzhang on his 'slow' journey. But how does one find what truly matters? Fundamental human needs that remain constant in the short term can serve as a breakthrough point. For Miao Jianzhang, 'hearing clearly and being able to communicate' is such a timeless and important need.

According to data from the World Health Organization, in 2021, over 1.5 billion people globally were affected by hearing loss. By 2050, approximately 2.5 billion people are projected to have some degree of hearing loss, with at least 700 million requiring rehabilitation services. Hearing technologies like hearing aids are one of the means of assistive treatment. However, despite this seemingly vast potential user base, very few actually access hearing services, with the global hearing aid adoption rate being less than 10%. This unmet demand and the slow pace of product iteration presented Miao Jianzhang with a entrepreneurial opportunity.

The United States, as the largest single market for hearing aids, was chosen by Miao Jianzhang as the first global market due to its relatively mature consumer product awareness. Concurrently, ELEHEAR's product development serendipitously coincided with a policy-driven industry tailwind: the U.S. FDA's Over-the-Counter (OTC) Hearing Aid Act, which took effect in 2022. This allows consumers to purchase OTC hearing aids from offline or online stores without the involvement of a licensed healthcare professional. This undoubtedly opened up a new blue ocean for the online hearing aid market and consumer electronics sellers.

FDA website description of OTC hearing aids.

Image source: FDA website

However, as a new entrant, Miao Jianzhang needed to consider how to expand the possibilities for his product and achieve differentiated competition. Two established paths lay before him: one was to follow the traditional model, focusing on offline services and replicating the development of high-end, European/American-positioned hearing aids. The other was to follow the path of e-commerce sellers who market sound amplifiers as hearing aids, prioritizing rapid development and a low-price route. But both paths had shortcomings: the former was expensive, limiting affordability, while the latter offered poor quality, unlikely to provide positive, sustainable intervention for hearing loss.

'The biggest pain point in this industry is that 80-90% of people who need them still can't access them,' Miao Jianzhang hypothesized. 'For people with hearing impairment without physical damage, could there be a more efficient, accessible way online for them to purchase equally high-performance products?' Following this line of thinking, a development plan gradually took shape: while ensuring the product meets the performance standards of traditional hearing aids, use new DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) channels to reach users, thereby combining the advantages of the two existing choices.

The idea was valuable, but its feasibility was equally important. Having accumulated experience in the consumer electronics industry from his previous ventures, Miao Jianzhang chose to build a new R&D team from the ground up for this startup, launching the proprietary brand ELEHEAR. His past technical accumulation gave him a deeper understanding of acoustic algorithms and consumer electronics. However, the higher demands of hearing aids for low power consumption, low latency, and low signal-to-noise ratio meant the new team needed to start from the ground up, redeveloping core algorithms and product systems for this entirely new category.

By identifying market gaps and leveraging existing strengths, ELEHEAR innovatively carved out its own third path: using AI as the technological foundation, conducting full-stack in-house R&D to define a new generation of hearing aids.

This new generation of hearing aids is no longer just a medical device but an 'earphone' applicable to scenarios like phone calls and watching videos. Miao Jianzhang stated, 'We prefer to define it as a smart earphone with special hearing enhancement functions for a broad user base.'

02 Four Years of Full-Stack In-House R&D: Navigating the Hardware Transformation

Creating a new generation of AI hearing aids meant ELEHEAR had to master every step from 0 to 1. Algorithm, hardware, production, service—through full-stack in-house R&D, ELEHEAR could potentially build its own moat, but it was also destined to be a lengthy process. Originally providing B2B algorithm services, how could they excel at hardware? Could their existing AI acoustic technology advantages be smoothly integrated into a tiny hearing aid? These were the problems Miao Jianzhang needed to solve.

Starting with algorithms and transitioning to hardware, achieving compatibility between the two was ELEHEAR's first major step. In this regard, they established a 'two-step' strategy: First, leverage China's powerful consumer electronics supply chain to re-integrate upstream and downstream resources, achieving full in-house R&D for the product's hardware direction—the launch of ALPHA validated the viability of the hardware environment. Building on this foundation, they would then explore how to integrate self-developed algorithms.

As a low-power product, achieving low signal-to-noise ratio and imperceptibly low latency for the human body in everyday conversation pickup scenarios is often a difficult trade-off with power consumption. Pursuing high sound quality requires powerful algorithm resources, which inevitably increases power consumption, making it challenging to keep the hearing aid's size and weight within comfortable wearing limits. ELEHEAR's solution was to spend four years collaborating with upstream chip partners to develop a closed-loop system, breaking through this 'impossible triangle.'

Ultimately, ELEHEAR's VOCCLEAR? AI acoustic algorithm was born, enabling the hearing aid to perform complex judgments within a low-power device, achieving 450 million operations per second and 500 environmental analyses per second, improving voice clarity by 30%, and delivering ultra-low latency processing. Through the trial and error with ALPHA and the integration of self-developed algorithms, the subsequent iteration, Beyond, was able to become a hit upon release.

ELEHEAR founder Miao Jianzhang sharing his entrepreneurial story

ELEHEAR's success story also provides a blueprint for entrepreneurs starting from zero: even the best ideas must be executed step by step over time to achieve a breakthrough. Starting from zero does not mean proceeding blindly empty-handed; it means identifying and filling gaps after clearly understanding one's own advantages.

The reconstruction of the R&D-production closed loop and the sales chain gave ELEHEAR the confidence to participate in price competition, allowing them to significantly reduce costs while maintaining the same high-quality, medical-grade performance. 'Feedback from ELEHEAR's early seed users indicated they felt there was almost no performance difference between ELEHEAR's device and high-end products priced at $4,000,' Miao noted. In the absence of a mid-price reference point, ELEHEAR allows users to enjoy a comparable experience at one-tenth the price of high-end hearing aids.

03 Proactively Listening to Needs: User Co-creation Drives Product Iteration

Identifying consumer needs is a prerequisite for product development. For Miao Jianzhang, whose previous work involved providing standard answers to clients' predefined problems, the task now shifted from merely answering questions to proactively seeking out the questions themselves. By finding directions for product improvement within the real needs of users, this product mindset—rejecting insular development—allowed ELEHEAR to reap the compound benefits of being on the right track.

R&D personnel lacked personal experience using hearing aids, and questionnaire surveys couldn't capture subtle needs. Only by proactively engaging with users could they truly understand the challenges faced by the hearing-impaired community. Therefore, ELEHEAR's engineers stepped out of the office and immersed themselves in hearing aid stores frequented by users with hearing loss. Difficulties in changing button batteries, lack of Bluetooth functionality, and the psychological pressure of wearing a conspicuous device—these issues were uncovered through face-to-face conversations with users. They also gathered first-hand user information by selling on Amazon to gain insights into overseas user needs.

Listening to user voices is not a one-time task before R&D; it needs to extend into every moment of sales, service, and iteration. ALPHA served both as the initial attempt to build the hardware environment and as a test product for collecting market feedback. Through this, ELEHEAR launched a Health Ambassador program, inviting real users to share pain points for product co-creation. They also utilized Amazon's seller growth services to analyze vast amounts of user data, cross-validating genuine needs to iteratively produce the 'right product' that users wanted.

In a consumer electronics sector that often emphasizes low after-sales support and low return rates, ELEHEAR is going against the grain, treating excellent after-sales service as a form of user research. When a product demonstrates genuine care for the consumer, it naturally earns the consumer's patience. 'The product might not be perfect at first, but they believe the functionality can be continuously optimized through iterations'—this was the answer users gave Miao Jianzhang. The subsequent market explosion of the Beyond product and a return rate half the industry average validated the effectiveness of this user-centric approach.

Identifying market gaps and category opportunities, conducting full-stack in-house R&D from algorithms to hardware, and incorporating user feedback into a co-creation mechanism—ELEHEAR established a rapidly iterating system through a multi-faceted, integrated strategy, achieving fast results through a slow process. While timing and opportunity certainly played a role, the core reason ELEHEAR could stand out amidst the same industry tailwinds was its willingness to invest time in meticulously refining the product.

Producing a market-ready product from 0 to 1 is only a small step in ELEHEAR's journey towards the global market. As ELEHEAR begins to expand beyond the United States, the questions of how to maintain its current achievements and whether it can successfully manage the scaling process from 1 to 100 remain to be seen.