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China's start-ups find support everywhere
Building a dream: Locals and visitors get excited with promotional activities at the Inno Way in Beijing
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Building a dream: Locals and visitors get excited with promotional activities at the Inno Way in Beijing. The 300-meter street area has become a base-camp for many new start-ups, a place for entrepreneurs to exchange their ideas and innovations.(JP/Khoirul Amin) (JP/Khoirul Amin)
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span class="inline inline-center">Building a dream: Locals and visitors get excited with promotional activities at the Inno Way in Beijing. The 300-meter street area has become a base-camp for many new start-ups, a place for entrepreneurs to exchange their ideas and innovations.(JP/Khoirul Amin)
For many fresh graduates and IT enthusiasts in Beijing, building a giant business from scratch is no longer a fanciful daydream because they now have a perfect nest in which to grow their potential. That nest is a street called the Innovation Way, better known as Inno Way.
Located in Haidian district where many software and technology companies are based, Inno Way has become a haven for hundreds of start-ups to brainstorm their ideas or seek funding from venture capitalists.
The 300-meter street was formerly full of bookstores and small restaurants, but local authorities have transformed it into a place for cafes, media companies, venture capital and mini-incubators for growing start-ups in the country.
'There are around 40 new start-ups born in Inno Way each month, taking advantage from the support of both the government and tech giants,' says Rong Shang, Microsoft's Asia-Pacific Research senior director for public affairs & operations.
With the help of local authorities, start-ups can now quickly complete the business registration process and find affordable office space in a relatively short time, Shang informed The Jakarta Post during a Microsoft Asia Innovation Tour in June.
A number of local media outlets have previously reported that the Haidian administration spent 200 million yuan (US$32.2 million) to acquire and renovate houses in the street and turn the area into Inno Way or China's so-called 'Silicon Valley' in June 2014.
Frances Du, the director of Microsoft Ventures in the Greater China Region, said that now was a great time for start-up founders as government policy and the investment climate worked in favor of company development.
'I think this year, start-ups will get more support as our country [China] is going in a new direction to support innovation,' she said.
Earlier in March, China's Premier Li Keqiang introduced the 'Internet Plus' strategy in his 2015 Government Work Report.
'Internet Plus' entails the integration of mobile Internet, cloud computing, big data and the Internet with modern manufacturing to foster new industries and business development, including e-commerce, industrial Internet and Internet finance.
With the support of the government, Du said that there were around 1,600 start-up accelerators active in the country and roughly 1.2 million new companies were registered in the first four months of this year.
She went on to say that total venture capital investment in China hit $12.7 billion last year, with half of the amount going to Beijing-based companies.
China's technology giants Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (BAT), meanwhile, invested twice as much as that amount, or around $25 billion, according to Du.
Growing support for start-ups from both government and global investors has changed the way many fresh Chinese graduates think about ideal jobs. Becoming a start-up founder has become a dream for many.
In support of the big new wave of start-ups in China, Microsoft has been operating as an accelerator for startups across mainland China and the Asia-Pacific region through its Beijing-based Microsoft Ventures, where Du holds director position.
Microsoft Ventures, which was launched in 2012, is an additional portfolio of the tech giant's other five ventures in Bangalore, Tel Aviv, Berlin, London, Paris and Redmond, Washington, DC.
'We try to leave an impact and help local companies become globally successful,' Du said, adding that the Beijing-based accelerator had so far incubated some 106 portfolio companies during its first six batches.
The portfolio companies have collectively netted 300 million consumers and have reached a valuation of $2.5 billion, according to Microsoft's data.
One Microsoft-backed start-up, MyHero Ltd., is getting even bigger, having raised $10 million in funds from Chinese firms Kleiner Perlins Caufield Byers China (KPCB China) and IPV Capital.
MyHero, which develops the virtual stock trading application TradeHero, already had around 4 million users as of May this year, with 70 percent of users coming from China and the remaining 30 percent coming from countries like the US, Singapore, India and Indonesia.
'We're aiming to have around 7 to 8 million users by the end of this year,' said MyHero CEO and co-founder Dinesh Bhatia.
Originally established in Singapore, MyHero was accepted into the Microsoft accelerator program in Beijing in 2013. It then launched its first office in Shanghai in May of last year.
