Huawei to invest $100m in Asia-Pacific startup ecosystem over 3 yrs

Huawei Technologies Co on Tuesday announced its plan to invest $100 million to support startups over the next three years, as the Chinese tech heavyweight aims to help build a sustainable startup ecosystem for the Asia-Pacific region.

The plan was unveiled at the inaugural Huawei Cloud Spark Founders Summit, which took place simultaneously in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Huawei said the investment would go toward its Spark Program in the Asia-Pacific region, which aims to build a sustainable startup ecosystem for the region over the next three years.

According to the company, it has been helping Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand build their startup hubs. At the summit, Huawei also announced that this program would focus its efforts on developing four additional startup hubs – in Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam – with the overarching aim of recruiting a total of 1,000 startups into the Spark accelerator program and shaping 100 of them into scaled-up businesses.

Catherine Chen, senior vice-president and board member of Huawei, said "Startups and small and medium-sized enterprises are the innovators, disruptors and pioneers of our times. Thirty-four years ago, Huawei was a startup with just $5,000 of registered capital. Recently, we have been thinking: How can we leverage our experience and resources to help more startups address their challenges? Doing so would allow them to seize the opportunities posed by digital transformation, achieve business success, and develop more innovative products and solutions for the world."

At the summit, Huawei also unveiled a plan to build an HMS (Huawei Mobile Service) Developer Innovation Center. Through this center, Huawei aims to cultivate future talent in cooperation with 210 leading universities across the Asia-Pacific region.