Global innovators honored at HICOOL summit

The HICOOL Global Entrepreneur Summit and Entrepreneurship Competition concluded Saturday in Beijing, a sign the city is increasingly attractive to top-tier talents and innovative projects.

The four-month-long competition saw the participation of 82 countries, 2,026 projects, 11 scientific and technological cities and 72 leading investment institutions, among others.

At the summit, the 100 winners of HICOOL's worldwide entrepreneurship contest were announced. The winners and their project referrers shared 80 million yuan ($11.7 million) in prize money. Also, a total of 1 billion yuan was offered at the event as a special fund to encourage entrepreneurship and investment.

Zhang Xu's project was among the first-place honorees and focuses on developing an antibody that neutralizes the novel coronavirus.

The team is working closely with Beijing You'an Hospital for the antibody's domestic phase one clinical trial, and the product could be put into mass production as soon as the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021.

Projects honored at the summit cover multiple sectors, including medicine and healthcare, artificial intelligence, big data and financial technology, new energy, materials and intelligent equipment, cultural innovation and next-generation information technology such as 5G.

The award ceremony, held at the China International Exhibition Center New Venue in Shunyi district, brought together business leaders such as Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun, Meituan CEO Wang Xing and Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures.

"Why was Xiaomi born in Zhongguancun? Because Zhongguancun has many of the top talents. It is certainly the best place in China to start a business," said Lei Jun, founder and CEO of Xiaomi, a Chinese multinational electronics company.

"Xiaomi has been in business for 10 years, and each round of investment has been completed in Zhongguancun," said Lei, who added, "I believe Beijing will become better and better in the next decade." Ranked 468th, Xiaomi was the youngest company on the Fortune Global 500 list for 2019.

In 1997, 18-year-old Wang Xing arrived at Tsinghua University in Beijing to study. He went to the United States for two and a half years and then came back.

"Together, I have lived and worked in Beijing for more time than in my hometown or any other city, so I love Beijing very much," said Wang.

"No matter where you are now, if you really want to start a business, the first thing you should do is move to Beijing," said the Meituan CEO. Meituan, which has a market value of over $1 trillion, has 460 million users worldwide.

Further dialogue and networking were encouraged at the event, and Chairman Xue Xiangdong of Donghua Software Co set up a WeChat group to help companies and potential investors communicate.

"I have opened a WeChat group, and investors and outstanding enterprises that are interested can join us. We can communicate together," said Xue as he flashed his mobile phone number on the screen.

"We now have more than 9,000 employees, fewer than 3,000 of which are in Beijing," said Xue. He added that the high-end algorithm sector and many R&D companies are based in Beijing.

HICOOL is dedicated to building a platform for entrepreneurs, business leaders and investment institutions to discuss business development, according to the event organizer. By holding the summit, HICOOL aims to attract high-quality start-up projects and talents worldwide and support them with prize money and preferential policies.