Huawei to give fresh impetus to local start-up ecosystem

Startups in Sri Lanka will receive fresh impetus over the next three years with leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices, Huawei announcing its decision to focus on the island nation’s start-up hub.

Huawei announced at the Cloud Spark Founders Summit that was held this week, it plans to develop the startup ecosystem in the Asia Pacific region by investing US$ 100 million over the next three years.

While the investment will go towards the Huawei Spark Program in the Asia Pacific region, the startup space in Sri Lanka, alongside Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam has been handpicked by the Chinese multinational technology company to be further developed.

Huawei said by focusing on the four countries, it aims at recruiting a total of 1,000 startups into the Spark accelerator program and shaping 100 of them into scaleups.

Huawei has already carried out efforts to assist Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand to build their startup hubs.

Addressing the summit, Huawei President Asia Pacific Region Jeffery Liu pointed out that for the past two decades the entity has remained committed to being ‘In Asia Pacific, For Asia Pacific’. Huawei Cloud Business Unit CEO Zhang Ping’an shared that through the Spark Program in Asia Pacific the company is working with local governments, leading incubators, well-known VC firms, and top universities to build support platforms for startups in many regions. It currently has 40 startups in its programme.

“Starting today, we are stepping up our support for startups through four new initiatives, aimed at cloudplus-cloud collaboration, continuous tech innovation, global and local services, and high-quality business ecosystems,” said Ping’an.

The four new initiatives rolled out by Huawei are: cloud-plus-cloud collaboration, continuous tech innovation, global and local services, and high-quality business ecosystems.having been in operation in Sri Lanka for over 20 years as a leading global provider of information and communication technology (ICT).

Founded in 1987, Huawei has grown to become a leading global provider of ICT and smart devices. It operates in more than 170 countries and regions, serving more than three billion people around the world.