The already robust startup scene in the region just received a major boost as China tech giant Huawei has just announced its plan to invest RM400 million to support the ecosystem.
Huawei made the commitment during the inaugural Huawei Could Spark Founders Summit, the investment would go towards its Spark Program in the Asia Pacific region, which aims to build a sustainable startup ecosystem for the region over the next three years. The company already has programs in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand, currently helping these countries in their efforts to build startup hubs. This will now be expanded to developing four additional startup hubs – in Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam – with the aim of recruiting a total of 1,000 startups into the Spark accelerator program and shaping 100 of them into scaleups.
The event saw three additional initiatives launched, the Spark Developer Program, which aims to nurture a developer ecosystem, the Spark Pitstop Program, designed to onboard and support startups in order to accelerate product development; and the Spark Innovation Program (SIP), focused on facilitating enterprise innovation through the Spark startup ecosystem. Huawei cloud will be made available for these fledglings as they focus on development and deployment.
Huawei Senior Vice President and Board Member Catherine Chen said “Startups and SMEs are the innovators, disruptors, and pioneers of our times. 34 years ago, Huawei was a startup with just 5,000 dollars 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.”
To support the startup ecosystem, Huawei Cloud has four new initiatives aimed at cloud-plus-cloud collaboration, continuous tech innovation, global and local services, and high-quality business ecosystems.
Jeffery Liu, President for Asia Pacific Region of Huawei, concluded “For the past two decades, we have remained committed to being ‘In Asia Pacific, For Asia Pacific’.
