Hangzhou to sharpen focus on cultivating tech startups

Hangzhou, an emerging technological hub in East China's Zhejiang province, is vowing to cultivate around 2,000 technological startups over the next three years, according to a conference held in the city on Jan 9.

According to the plans, the city will ramp up efforts in building a highly competitive technology enterprise cluster with advanced technical levels and great potential for growth by further improving the policy systems and optimizing the service process.

Over the years, Hangzhou has issued an array of supporting policies to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship, and has cultivated a total of 3,640 technology-based startups with investment reaching 570 million yuan ($84.4 million) to date, according to an official from Hangzhou Municipal Science and Technology Committe, adding that 711 new startup companies were cultivated in 2018 alone.

The city also strives to cultivate more than 500 enterprises whose main business income is over 5 million yuan by 2020.

However, in the course of development, these enterprises are faced with financial shortages when financial institutions fail to identify technological projects due to the lack of relevant background, which greatly hinders the development of technology companies.

In such a scenario, an exchange platform for technology startups and capital institutions would be one of the solutions for the development of technology financial services.

At the conference, Zhejiang Tailong Commercial Bank, one of several financing service leading providers for small and medium-size enterprises, signed a pre-credit agreement with 711 science and technology startup enterprises in Hangzhou to cultivate projects, and pre-granted each company with a credit of 1 million yuan.