Asia Pacific is a compelling region for start-ups as it houses a large population of young, digital natives. The varying levels of development of countries in the region also present opportunities for the adoption of new technologies and business models.

However, Asia Pacific’s diversity and fragmentation – especially in terms of culture, business norms and laws – make it challenging to enter and navigate the different markets. This is why start-ups like HeyHi, DaoCloud and SafeTruck find incubator and accelerator programmes, such as Huawei Spark, crucial to their business growth.

“Huawei Spark is designed to help early-stage start-ups in the pre-seed and seed stages to become the next scale-ups. It provides a structured programme to coach start-ups, which includes mentorship, training resources as well as financial, technical and go-to-market support,” says Leo Jiang, chief digital officer of Huawei Cloud Apac and founder of the Spark programme. He was speaking at a media briefing on the sidelines of an industry summit in Shanghai recently.

At the same media briefing, Glenn Low, co-founder and COO of Heyhi – an educational technology start-up based in Singapore – cited networking opportunities and knowledge exchange as the major benefits the company has gained from Huawei Spark. “We are looking at several markets to expand our footprint, which includes China. However, the China market operates differently from Southeast Asia, and we don’t have a deep understanding of it. So, we needed a soft landing with a good partner to understand the ecosystem and how to do business in China. Huawei has helped us with that, and connected us to other start-up founders in China to learn from them,” he states.   

Cloud-native innovator DaoCloud has also tapped onto Huawei Spark to expand its presence beyond China. “While we already have a strong presence in mainland China, we realised we needed to work with partners like Huawei to accelerate our business expansion and gain mindshare globally,” claims Roby Chen, the start-up’s CEO and founder.

He also commends Huawei’s approach to ensuring that its solutions are open. By not locking in customers, organisations can use solutions that best suit their needs to gain the flexibility and agility they need to address ever-changing business requirements.  

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Similarly, SafeTruck – an AI-integrated fleet management system provider based in Malaysia – attributed Huawei Spark as one of the keys to its growth. “We saw a 160% growth this year, and one of the projects we undertook with Huawei under the programme contributed to this,” shares the company’s chief technology officer Low Yin Yin.  

She continues: “Earlier this year, we conducted proof-of-concepts to use computer vision for passenger counting and facial recognition at safety sites. Huawei helped to connect us to the right technology suppliers and partners in China so that we can leverage those technologies for our projects in Malaysia and Indonesia. This is important in bridging the technology gap between China and Southeast Asia.”  

Huawei Spark has incubated 150 start-ups across Asia Pacific since its inception in 2020. It is interested in start-ups with core competencies in artificial intelligence, 5G, edge computing, software-as-a-service, and data analytics. Those start-ups should also offer solutions targeting the banking and financial services, education, media and gaming, internet and transport sectors.

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