At 9:30 am, the train with 40 containers left the station from Xiamen Free Trade Zone carrying goods worth $363,000 including granite, lighting supplies, artificial flowers and shoes for Moscow.

A single trip on the 10,920-km route takes 13 to 14 days. Without the direct train service, it used to take at least 25 days to transport goods.

The train route connects the eastern and northeastern Chinese cities of Nanchang, Nanjing, Jinan and Jinzhou, and crosses the border via Manzhouli Port in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

Jiang Jingdong, assistant general manager of Xiamen Haicang Free Trade Port Zone Investment and Construction Management Co Ltd, said the service is still in trial operations with three trips from Xiamen to Moscow per month. The freight train service will be normalized in the second half of this year.

Huang Changhong, manager of Trans-China Logistics Co Ltd, said that trade between Xiamen and Russia is complementary. Xiamen and its surrounding cities are export-oriented with machinery equipment and shoemaking industries, while it imports wood, paper pulp and vegetable oil from Russia.

Lin Jiangfan, an official with Xiamen Haicang Free Trade Port Zone, said that as the host city of the 2017 BRICS Summit slated for September, Xiamen welcomes a closer partnership with Russia, one of the BRICS countries. The Xiamen-Moscow freight train service could also strengthen the Belt and Road Initiative, driving trade in Xiamen.

In 2016, exports from Xiamen to Russia reached more than 5 billion yuan ($727 million), and imports from Russia totaled 1.9 billion yuan.

Under the deal, the two sides will enhance cooperation in product development, sales, marketing and customer services, connecting the sales platform and brand to offer clients better services.

Hu Shengli, president of JD.com Inc's 3C business department, said the two companies aimed to offer high-quality products and services to meet clients' changing needs.

"Instead of simply copying the offline experiences, we will focus on industry exploration and networking. Supported by JD's technology capability and platform, it will be a win-win game."

"We two will especially work together to provide customer services, which will help reduce the cost and offer better user experiences."

With the help of JD.com's big data technology, HP Inc will be able to better target the enterprise market, introducing more customized products and industry solutions accordingly, the company said.

According to a report released by market research company IDC in April, HP Inc took back the top spot in the global PC market by shipment for the first quarter this year, followed by its rival Lenovo.

Zhuang Zhengsong, president of HP Greater China Region, said HP will take JD.com as its priority sales platform and will work with JD.com to bring more products for corporate clients.

The minister added that the construction of a third joint power plant with Russia, with the capacity of 1,400 MW, has already begun.

Last year, the Iranian vice president and head of the country’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi talked about the plans to construct two new nuclear units in cooperation with Russia. He stressed that the process could take up to ten years and would cost $10 billion.

Earlier this year, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said Moscow wanted to finalize the agreement with Iran and help the country build more power plants.

Moscow and Tehran have been deepening ties in a number of sectors, including oil, defense, and fisheries.

Following a decade of total economic isolation energy-hungry Iran is eager to start building power plants and update its energy infrastructure. Russian companies are likely to be among the preferred bidders.

Russian energy major Gazprom has sealed a cooperation agreement with its Iranian counterpart for the development of local gas deposits.

During his visit to Moscow last month, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani highlighted the importance of the energy sector in bilateral relations and the possible creation of a free trade zone between Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union that includes Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.

The customers who used to head to greenhouses in the rural areas to get fresh vegetables and fruits in different varieties, are now able to buy these products with a tag ‘locally-made’ in supermarkets and grocery stores of Ulaanbaatar.

“Chandmani” Agro-park, with an aim to provide fresh and organic products to the population of Ulaanbaatar, is planning to supply its products to military units in the future.

Mongolia is aiming to establish domestic factories interconnected with each other as an Industrial Technological Park following the example of countries with highly developed industry.

The agricultural and technological “Chandmani” Agro-park is working to establish shopping centers and factories to manufacture final products of milk, meat, fruits and berries and vegetables on its 80 hectares of land in Bayanchandmani soum within the framework of “Food Production” project. The Agro-park owns a total of 1900 hectares of land.

One reason for this is that some problems that startups aim to solve are common to the region. A business model or product that addresses such a challenge has a large, ready-made market at hand, potentially creating the next Asian unicorn.

Philippine startup Salt is a great example. Salt -- short for "sustainable alternative lighting" -- found itself in the spotlight when co-founder Aisa Mijeno shared the stage with former U.S. President Barack Obama and Alibaba Group Holding Chairman Jack Ma Yun at the 2015 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Manila.

The company makes lamps that use saltwater as the catalyst for a fuel cell, instead of the kerosene that fuels lamps across Southeast Asia in areas without electricity. Mijeno came up with the idea for a saltwater lamp after living with a remote tribe in Kalinga, in the northern Philippines. During her monthlong stay with the Butbut, Mijeno learned that people had to walk at least six hours to the nearest town to buy kerosene.

Enter Salt's lamp, which, the company says, can last six months when used eight hours a day and maintained properly.

"We were trying to determine what the staple items in every household in the Philippines were, and we found out that there are actually three staple items: salt, water and rice. That's the main reason we used salt water as the catalyst ... to generate electricity," Mijeno told the Nikkei Asian Review in an interview last year.

The company was founded in 2014 when it joined Ideaspace Foundation, an incubator that helps fund and develop innovations with commercial potential. Salt was selected by Ideaspace as one of the year's top-10 projects and used its prize money to start working on a prototype. It has since delivered over a thousand lamps to remote communities in the Philippines, and partnered with a local manufacturer to begin mass production.

Fashion for the faithful

For Diajeng Lestari in Indonesia, the "problem" that needed addressing was helping Muslim women express their fashion sense while maintaining their modesty. This led her to create Hijup in 2011, a pioneering Islamic fashion website. The online shopping mall offers clothing and accessories aimed mainly at Muslim women.

Hijup is short for "hijab-up," as in make up or dress up. The hijab is the headscarf worn by some Muslim women.