Since it was established three years ago, Zhongguancun Inno Way has incubated 1,900 startups, or 1.7 per day, in collaboration with organizations which have moved in. Among the startups, 222 were set up by overseas returnees and foreign teams. Nearly 40% of all the startups have raised funds, totaling RMB 9.104 billion. Startups at Inno Way are offering high-end services to domestic markets and pooling global resources for innovation.
From Inno Way to China
Three years ago, when Chen Benfeng and his team settled in at the southern end of Inno Way, they could not have imagined what would happen to their startup.
Chen quitted Microsoft’s core IE R&D team in the US headquarters and returned China to start his own business in 2012, at a time when companies and governments around the world were having trouble with their websites, which “look OK on the computer screen, but disproportionate or incomplete on the cellphone”.
“The first response of many people was to make an App. In fact, it can be done with nothing more than a mobile browser, or something like a WeChat official account, which is still all the rage today. However, they did not know that three years ago,” recalled Chen.
The beginning of frontier research is never easy. Fortunately, Inno Way is lined with China’s best entrepreneurial service agencies. The exchange meetings organized by 36Kr, 3W, and Dark Horse Club connected Chen and his startup, AllMobilize, to a growing number of technical talents, clients and resources.
It later turned out that with the help of an insert, a line of code from AllMobilize, websites will be perfectly readable on mobile devices. Over the past few years, AllMobilize has maintained an annual growth of 300%. In the coming months, all the 200,000 functionaries in a province will start using the Redcore browser with a kernel indigenously developed by the company. Compared to mainstream browsers with imported kernels, Redcore can be a great boost for China’s cyber security.
A poster child of Inno Way, AllMobilize is setting eyes on Jing-Jin-Ji cluster, among other domestic markets. The company’s indigenous innovation capacity is a perfect fit for the “HTML5 talent cultivation program”, a local high-end technical talent development project co-sponsored by Wuqing Business District, Tianjin. So far, AllMobilize has an office building bearing its name there.
AllMobilize is but one example of the funded startups at Inno Way. Two of them have grown into unicorns worth over USD 1 billion.
Pooling international resources for entrepreneurship and innovation
Answer some math questions, and the AI system will automatically identify your weak points and give you a targeted exam. Helping kids learn math with ease and fun is the aim of VITRUV, a Korean AI-based education startup which was incubated at 5F, Building 6, Inno Way.
After two months of incubation, VITRUV decided to launch its China business in early 2017. Kim is one of the founding members.
“Foreign tech companies like VITRUV are as keen on Chinese markets as unfamiliar with local markets and policies. By the agency of Inno Way, we have partnered with Chinese educational establishments and conglomerates and gained access to all kinds of resources. Now we are full of confidence,” claimed Kim.
As of the end of 2017, the China businesses of VITRUV and another incubated Korean company will have been ready to take off.
VITRUV is among the four overseas innovation projects recently incubated online or on-site by Inno Way; the other three are iNETPLUS from Canada, I’m Cloud from Korea, and TNDN from Korea. An embryonic international quarter is taking shape.
“I hope Inno Way will become a jumping-off point for foreign entrepreneurial and innovative teams to land in China,” said Nie Lixia, General Manager of Inno Way Operation Company. In the coming three years, Inno Way will strive to be a global hub of entrepreneurship and innovation, pooling enough resources to accommodate 5,000 innovative startups from all over the world.
Global recruitment for industrial innovation
Inno Way is more than an incubator for SMEs; it is an enabler for restructuring and upgrading of larger-sized companies.
Inno Way has lately released the global recruitment plans on behalf of conglomerates. “We are looking for O2O resources with respect to the household ecosystems of food, bathroom, health, education, entertainment and security,” reads the plan of Hai’er, a household appliance tycoon.
So are CNOOC and FESCO seeking internal open resources and innovation solutions online or offline. Inno Way is poised to be a platform where incubated domestic and international startups can engage with central enterprises and conglomerates.
Inno Way is an epitome of the huge waves of entrepreneurship and innovation in Beijing. According to Yu Jun, Haidian District Governor, the projects of national science and technology innovation center and “one city three streets” are going through a fresh stage. In the future, government organs, startups and enterprises of all sizes will play a greater role in collaborative innovation in Haidian.
(Source: Beijing Daily)
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