With China’s economic development stepping into the new normal, “mass entrepreneurship and innovation” has become the strategic thrust of the comprehensive development of a city. The unique entrepreneurial climate and pragmatic innovative spirit have made Hangzhou one of the leading cities in innovation and entrepreneurship nationwide, according to a recent index.
Welian, a ZJU-SOM alumni company and an online space for modern investor and entrepreneurs, recently released the “2018 Hangzhou Index of Innovation and Entrepreneurship”. Zhejiang University Technology Venture Program (ZTVP), founded by Dr. ZHENG Gang, associate professor in ZJUs School of management, provided academic guidance for the index.
The index reflects the relative changes in the ecological environment of innovation and entrepreneurship in Hangzhou, fostering the tracking of the city’s entrepreneurs, aggregate financing, invention patents, and concentration of entrepreneurial resources in the long-term. According to the index, as a city of innovation and cutting-edge technologies, Hangzhou is now heading for a fast-changing future with maturity and inclusiveness.
-Sustained acceleration of innovation
With entrepreneurship becoming a new normal nationwide, the development of Hangzhou’s innovation and entrepreneurship has been accelerating. In 2017, Hangzhou achieved a growth rate of 4.09% in entrepreneurship projects, ranking first in China for the fourth consecutive year. 249 startups received a new round of financing, amounting to 31.1 billion yuan. Enterprise service and e-commerce were still the two most popular fields of entrepreneurship in Hangzhou. Unicorns such as Cainiao, Caocao, Dt Dream, and 51Credit have attained maturity, working at the forefront of national innovation.
-The focus on new investment fields
Investment institutions of Hangzhou have always been a significant impetus for enhancing the city’s ecological environment of entrepreneurship, demonstrating their philosophy of inclusiveness to the world.
In 2017, 401 investment projects conducted by local investment institutions landed in success. Alibaba, Toutoushidao Foundation, and Vision+ Capital were the top three local investment institutions on the number of investment projects.
Local investment institutions kept a keen sense of technological advancement with reason and extended their fields of investment. From 2014 to 2017, the proportion of investment towards Series B financing or later showed an upward trend, taking up 22% of the overall investment. Consumption upgrade and the rise of artificial intelligence are drawing the great attention of capital. These two fields are expected to keep abreast of e-commerce and enterprise service in the near future.
-A favorable environment for talents
In 2017, Hangzhou led the ranking in terms of talent inflow rate and net inflow rate of returned overseas Chinese. Hangzhou was also the third most attractive Chinese city for foreign talents.
By the end of 2017, more than 200 national and municipal incubators and hackerspaces had been built with a total area of three million square meters, including 32 national incubators and 55 national hackerspaces.
With the founding of institutions like “Turing town”, Zhejiang Lab, iFlytek Research Center, and Westlake Institute for Advanced Study, Hangzhou has become the cradle of cutting-edge technologies. More and more favorable policies on “mass entrepreneurship and innovation” were launched specifically to increase the support for hackerspaces. The municipal government is also working hard to attract foreign experts and internationalize the domestic talent pool.
