City links dots between investors and innovators

Xi'an Pioneering Park, one of China's top technology entrepreneurship service parks in the Xi'an High-Tech Industrial Development Zone in the capital of Shaanxi province, has been encouraging mass innovation and entrepreneurship by focusing on hackerspaces.

A hackerspace is a community workspace where people with interests in computers, machining, technology, science or electronic art, can socialize and collaborate. It also offers services like assistance with fundraising for potential startups.

It recently established a service system for innovation and business startups. It has also developed an incubator cluster that can provide more than 20 kinds of services for small and medium-sized enterprises, such as business consultation and guidance, investment promotion and financing, training, technology transfer and project planning.

As the first hackerspace in Shaanxi province, Startup in Xi'an became operational in October 2014. It has attracted 66 innovation and entrepreneurship teams, with 14 projects by these teams having already received 51.3 million yuan ($8.02 million) in angel investment funds.

Led by Startup in Xi'an, more than 30 hackerspaces have been established in the zone. According to local statistics, the total floor area of hackerspaces is more than 30,000 square meters and more than 30,000 people who wanted to create their own businesses took part in more than 800 various entrepreneurship promotional activities held by hackerspaces in the first 10 months of this year.

On Oct 19, the zone's development, reform and commerce bureau issued a document for managing local hackerspaces and identified a first batch of 11 such incubators.

Beefing up funding

The zone's authorities have also made efforts to improve its funding system for local science and high-tech enterprises, especially small and medium-sized companies.

To support the development of a financing platform for small and micro enterprises, the park is in preparations to establish its first small-loans company for science and high-tech firms in Shaanxi province.

The move is expected to further broaden financing channels for small and micro enterprises and open a path for the development of similar loans companies in the province.

The park has also carried out cooperation with JD Finance, one of China's top Internet finance companies, to build a crowdfunding platform, which would be Shaanxi's first.

To encourage mass entrepreneurship, the park hosted the 2015 Xi'an Innovation and Business Startup Competition from April to September this year that attracted a large number of entrepreneurs and venture capital institutions.

In all, 884 innovation and business startup projects entered the preliminary competition, with 29 projects winning honors. A month later, the park hosted the Xi'an leg of the National Mass Innovation and Entrepreneurship Week.

Earlier this year, the central government agreed to hold an annual national event for mass innovation and entrepreneurship every October.

Beijing is the main venue for this year's event and activities were also staged in seven other cities, including Xi'an.

The weeklong Xi'an event started on Oct 9 in the newly developed Xi'an Mass Innovation and Entrepreneurship Demonstration Area. The show covered a floor space of 4,800 sq m for exhibiting startup projects and holding business matchmaking activities.

The Xi'an innovation demonstration area, which has 300,000 square meters in display area for hackerspaces, was jointly developed by the Xi'an High-Tech Industrial Development Zone and the Xi'an Science and Technology Bureau. It is operated and managed by the Xi'an Pioneering Park. The area aims to be the largest site for innovation and business startups in western China in three to five years.

Contact the writers through luhongyan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 12/16/2015 page18)