Startup ecosystem set to boost high-tech in APAC

Governments and businesses in the Asia-Pacific region are ramping up efforts in building a startup ecosystem, which officials and industry leaders believe is crucial for pushing forward innovation and technology development of the area.

"For sustainable growth of startups, apart from the government, participance of the business community and academia is of equal importance," said Hong Kong's Secretary for Innovation and Technology Alfred Sit Wing-hang.

The ecosystem for Hong Kong startups has become increasingly vibrant over the past few years, Sit said at the first Huawei Cloud Spark Founders Summit, which was held simultaneously in Hong Kong and Singapore on Tuesday.

"With strong support from the government and all cooperative efforts from different stakeholders, we are seeing phenomenal growth in research and development in recent years."

Over the past four years, the Hong Kong government has invested more than HK$100 billion ($12.8 billion) to support innovation and technology development in the city and the number of startups has grown from roughly 1,000 in 2014 to 3,300 last year, he said.

The government will introduce more measures to promote the sector and enhance Hong Kong's status as an international innovation and technology hub, Sit said.

Simon Loong, chief executive officer and founder of WeLab, a Hong Kong-grown fintech unicorn which debuted in July 2020, said Hong Kong is a good test bed for ideas.

"The government plays an important part. If you look at when we first started our business in 2012, 2013 versus today, you can obviously see a huge difference in the ecosystem in Hong Kong over the years as the government participates more," he said.

Catherine Chen, senior vice-president and board member of Huawei, said startups play an important role in social advancement and the company hopes to leverage its experience and resources to help startups grow and enable them to develop more innovative products and solutions for the world.

The tech giant announced at the summit that it will invest $100 million in the next three years to support startups and help build a sustainable startup ecosystem in the Asia-Pacific region. The investment will go toward its Spark Program, an accelerator initiative launched in 2020 for tech startups that operate business in the Asia-Pacific region.

The program currently has a portfolio of about 40 startups running in Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and Malaysia. Huawei said it would expand the program to four additional markets－Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam－with the aim of registering a total of 1,000 startups into the program and shaping 100 of them into scaleups.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said scaleups refer to companies with an average annualized growth of at least 20 percent over three years and with 10 or more employees.

Leo Jiang, chief digital officer at Huawei Cloud Asia-Pacific, said a solid research foundation supporting startups could accelerate industrial upgrade and economic recovery.

"Startups can have a prominent effect on industries and enable them to transform from being labor-intensive to knowledge-based, service-centric industries," Jiang said. "In particular, those high-growth ones can stimulate job creation to drive economic recovery and growth in today's pandemic-stricken landscape."