Incubators to scale up operations
Business incubators from China are planning to take advantage of the burgeoning entrepreneurship environment in the country to scale up their operations, Shen Quanhong, incubation director of Tus-Holdings Co, said during a session at the 32nd World Conference of International Association of Science Parks and Areas of Innovation hosted by the Zhongguancun Science Park on Wednesday.
Tus-Holdings, which is responsible for developing, constructing, operating and managing TusPark - also known as Tsinghua University Science Park - has over 21 years of experience in incubating companies in China.
Till date, TusPark has incubated about 2,000 enterprises, and provided angel investment for 300 companies.
Incubators in China are generally of six types: those that are led by big businesses, or are angel investors, or office space providers, those that are established by media companies, those that are set up by real estate and industry-specific platforms, said Shen.
Thanks to the development of technology like mobile Internet, the threshold for entrepreneurship in China has considerably lowered. However, the survival rate of startups is not high, making incubators necessary for the entrepreneurship market.
According to a report by ChinaVenture Group, by the end of 2014, the number of incubation firms in China had exceeded 1,500.
"Even as an incubator, we still need a business model and we are eligible for making profits," said Shen.
Going global is not something that only large companies would take into consideration now.
"Many small companies have already developed the international vision from the moment they were established," said Shen.
"All of our high-tech companies are thinking international from day one, because that's the reality," said Kulle Tarnov, head of the Business Development Department with Tallinn Science Park Tehnopol in Estonia, which provides startups in different development stages services to help them grow.
Speaking about the trends in China's incubator industry, Shen offered a glimpse into the prospective existence of incubators. He said, for instance, it will be more virtual, meaning that the brick-and-mortar space will play a smaller role in the incubator's development.
There will also be more interaction between domestic and overseas incubators. Incubators could also be set up using the Internet and crowdfunding, he said.
huangying@chinadaily.com.cn
(China Daily 09/24/2015 page15)
