The Chinese firm Huawei has announced that it will be investing $100 million in the start-up scene in several Asia Pacific countries to help create a sustainable ecosystem that will benefit the region. Under the current plans, money will flow into Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam over the next three years following on from investment that has already been poured into the start-up scene in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand.
Huawei made the announcement at its new Huawei Cloud Spark Founder Summit. Its final aim is to recruit around 1,000 start-ups into its Spark accelerator program which will see 100 of them scale up and become larger, potentially employing more people. The firm also announced the launch of its Cloud-plus-Cloud Collaboration and Joint Innovation Program where it will use its complete business portfolio to help start-ups grow.
Commenting on the news, 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.”
A key ingredient to ensuring start-ups are successful is ensuring that there’s enough talent for the businesses to recruit. To this end, Huawei announced plans to build a Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) Developer Innovation Center where it will give people the skills they need to work at these digital start-ups. It will also co-operate with 210 leading universities across the Asia Pacific region.