Look into Asia’s tech start-up scene

Some may want to start a tech venture that takes advantage of the growing consumer market, or the abundance of technical talent. Others may want to establish a foothold as a service provider within the tech start-up ecosystems across the region. Either way, it helps to understand the local culture and customs and how the markets and start-up environments differ from city to city.

The opportunities and approaches vary from one country to the next, but there’s plenty of room to participate in.

Singapore

Among Asian start-up hubs, Singapore has the most welcoming government policies. Singapore’s top-down government initiatives have turned the island city into Southeast Asia’s financial and commercial centre, and it is using the same approach to cultivate its local tech start-up environment.

The government has created a variety of incubation schemes, which provide fledgling tech businesses with office facilities, training and mentoring, and even seed funding and grants. There is the Action Community for Entrepreneurship (or ACE Start-ups), which provides entrepreneurs with mentors, networks, and seed funding. The Technology Enterprise Commercialisation Scheme (TECS), sponsored by SPRING Singapore, a government agency under the Ministry of Trade and Industry, helps fund science and technology projects and pays for qualifying R&D expenditures. And the Interactive Digital Media Programme Office (or IDM), an inter-agency outfit that coordinates strategic efforts by several government bodies, offers the Jump-start and Mentor (or i.JAM) programme, which nurtures start-ups with breakthrough ideas that can be developed into innovative products and services. All this support is helping create a healthy start-up ecosystem, bubbling with activity – from grass-root social events to larger venture-related conferences. At Startup Asia Singapore and Techventure, for example, entrepreneurs can network with investors, have their business plans critiqued by mentors and piers, and compete for dollar prizes to help fund their business.

Culturally, though, Singapore is more conservative and risk averse, and many of its brightest young people still prefer a traditional corporate job over entrepreneurship. Those who start tech ventures in Singapore have the reputation of setting lower goals, aimed at “making things work better” rather than transforming people’s lives. Many also appear to lack the killer instincts of their counterparts in Beijing or Shanghai. The number of start-ups and the amounts of venture capital in Singapore are still small compared to China, and many ambitious entrepreneurs and venture capitalists get lured away to China’s larger start-up scene.

South Korea

South Korea has the most developed internet and mobile infrastructure in the region, but its tech start-up scene is still nascent. The tech space—and the job market for talented engineers—is dominated by giants, including Samsung and SK Telecom. Venture capital penetration is low, and angel investors are few and far between. Here, as in Singapore, people tend to be more risk averse, and tech entrepreneurship is not generally considered a promising pursuit for a young graduate. However, there are successes, such as mobile messaging company Kakao, which was founded in 2006 by Brian Kim, and in early 2012 sold a 14% equity stake to China’s Tencent for $61m.

Hong Kong and Taiwan

The tech start-up communities in Hong Kong and Taiwan are just beginning to gather momentum. Both cities are leveraging their strong legacies as global high-tech manufacturing hubs, and nurturing local entrepreneurs with grass-root incubator programs and government-sponsored science and technology parks, such as Hsinchu Science Park, dubbed Taiwan’s Silicon Valley.

Vietnam

Vietnam is the new frontier, and its tech start-up revolution is following the path China travelled—only two decades later. Vietnam’s entrepreneurs are a mixture of local self-made techies and enterprising, culturally savvy expatriates. One success story is Jonah Levey. He left his job at an executive search firm in New York in 2002 and moved to Ho Chi Minh City to establish Navigos Search, which today is Vietnam’s leading executive search firm.

Source:https://globalconnections.hsbc.com