HONG KONG, March 30, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation ("HKSTP") is named the Technology/IT Incubator of the Year by the International Business Innovation Association ("InBIA") at the organisation's annual Incubator Awards. The newest addition to HKSTP's list of accolades reaffirms HKSTP's commitment to supporting the technology start-up scene in Hong Kong, and shows how the innovation and technology ecosystem in Hong Kong is gaining international recognition.
The InBIA is a world-leading organisation for advancing business incubation and entrepreneurship. Through its annual Incubation Awards, the organisation honours the business incubation programmes, graduates and other stakeholders in the global entrepreneurial ecosystem that exemplify the best of the industry they serve. Nominees of each category are judged based on the business model of their incubation programme and how it benefits their incubatees in achieving outstanding growth, as well as their incubatees' ability to secure funding.
HKSTP's incubation model all revolves around its three Cs strategy -- Connect, Collaborate, Catalyse. Under this strategy the incubator plays the role as a super-connecter between Hong Kong's thriving technology community and other stakeholders in the start-up ecosystem. By maintaining a close relationship with the Government and businesses, schools and research institutes, HKSTP fosters collaboration between industries and creates opportunities for locally developed innovation to be applied and adopted.
HKSTP also catalyses the growth and development of local innovation by offering a wide breadth of value-added services, and maintaining an inspiring environment in its Science Park and three industrial estates through continuous strategic redevelopment and expansion. We also actively reach out to collaborate with leading financial corporations such as JP Morgan, Citibank and AIA so as to strengthen the service offering of our incubation programmes and provide our incubatees with direct access to domain experts hence accelerating their commercialisation process.
"We are honoured to be named the Technology/IT Incubator of the Year," said Allen Ma, CEO of HKSTP. "This is an incredibly strong validation showing that world-class incubators are not exclusive to the West. Our mission has always been to cultivate a thriving technology and innovation ecosystem to drive technological advancement, and we are proud that our work is recognised by a prestigious international organisation such as InBIA. This award proves the effectiveness of our comprehensive Incubation Programmes as well as our efforts to uplift start-ups under our wings to be globally competitive and innovative."
"What further differentiates HKSTP from other nominees of the Award perhaps is the fact that we provide our incubatees with some of the best and most thorough support. Mainland China, being one of the most important markets in the world today, can be tough for some start-ups to enter, but many were able to find success in that market through our established network of partners in the Mainland. The start-ups under our various programmes also enjoy very high rate of success after their graduation," said Mr Ma.
HKSTP offers three Incubation Programmes, namely Incu-Tech, Incu-App and Incu-Bio, to nurture start-ups focused on developing technology for healthy aging, smart city and robotics, three key strategic areas where HKSTP has identified as the most beneficial to Hong Kong's reindustrialisation. Since the programmes' inception, HKSTP has incubated 402 incubates, with many of them becoming local success stories by winning international accolades or expanding overseas. As of to date, the incubatees operating under the programmes were able to attract HK$307.8 million in investment during the year 2015-2016 and our incubatees had won over 60 industry awards or international start-up competitions, including but not limited to the Aliyun+ Cloud Computing Competition, The Economist: Tiger's Lair - Entrepreneurship Challenge, Red Herring Top 100 Asia List, the Asian Association of Business Incubation (AABI) Award as well as The Best Wearable Mobile Technology Award of the Global Mobile Awards (Glomo Awards) 2016 at GSMA Mobile World Congress.
About Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation
Comprising Science Park, InnoCentre and Industrial Estates, Hong Kong Science & Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) is a statutory body dedicated to building a vibrant innovation and technology ecosystem to connect stakeholders, nurture technology talents, facilitate collaboration, and catalyse innovations to deliver social and economic benefits to Hong Kong and the region.
Established in May 2001, HKSTP has been driving the development of Hong Kong into a regional hub for innovation and growth in several focused clusters including Electronics, Information & Communications Technology, Green Technology, Biomedical Technology, Materials and Precision Engineering. We enable science and technology companies to nurture ideas, innovate and grow, supported by our R&D facilities, infrastructure, and market-led laboratories and technical centres with professional support services. We also offer value added services and comprehensive incubation programmes for technology start-ups to accelerate their growth.
Technology businesses benefit from our specialised services and infrastructure at Science Park for applied research and product development; enterprises can find creative design support at InnoCentre; while skill-intensive businesses are served by our three industrial estates at Tai Po, Tseung Kwan O and Yuen Long.
More information about HKSTP is available at www.hkstp.org.
About InBIA
The International Business Innovation Association (InBIA) is the world's leading organization advancing business incubation and entrepreneurship. Driven by its mission, InBIA helps communities enable their entrepreneurs to transform their dreams into innovative businesses that make global prosperity a reality.
InBIA serves over 2,100 members in across 60 nations. InBIA's members are managers of business incubators, accelerators, university commercialization/entrepreneurship centers and regional economic development stakeholders focused on building entrepreneurial ecosystems in their communities.
InBIA members serve every entrepreneurial demographic (age, ethnicity, and gender), population area (rural, urban, and suburban), and industry sector (IT/software, biotech, energy, manufacturing/prototyping labs, agricultural, arts, food and non-tech businesses).
Each year, InBIA provides thousands of entrepreneurship program managers and regional economic development leaders with information, education, policy recommendations, advocacy and networking resources to bring excellence to the process of assisting early-stage companies.
