Checked: China is waiting for startups from Russia
Daniil Kozlov, GVA LaunchGurus Business Development Director , on how to conquer the Asian market, what conditions for start-up entrepreneurs are created in China and what projects and technologies are in demand there today.
What are the conditions for the development and support of entrepreneurship in China today?
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It is enough to look at the statistics: over the past 6 years, 45 incubators were built in Beijing alone (excluding private ones). Large-scale programs were launched, the government at various levels takes the initiative and tries to allocate funds for the development of the infrastructure of entrepreneurship; this is on the agenda as one of the most important national tasks. It can not be said that the incubators in China are much better than ours; nevertheless, the growth rate and volume itself is impressive. The state unequivocally creates and provides conditions for the development of small and medium-sized businesses. In addition, a network of private investors is growing very rapidly in China. Of course, as in Russia, there are some gaps that hinder the development of this sector: a small number of business angels, an insufficient amount of private investment, entrepreneurs are not yet so qualified to, from a business point of view, think over the business model, their positioning, as in the same Valley. But they definitely have a desire to develop in this direction.
As co-organizers and partners of Plug & Play, we attended the US-China Startup Investment Forum conference, presented our portfolio projects and consolidated our interaction with Chinese partners. It is worth noting the level of the forum in Chinese Zhengzhou. The conference was opened by the city’s mayor and vice-governor of Henan Province, the largest province in China, where more than 100 million people live. Zhengzhou is its center. From the point of view of entrepreneurship, the city is not so bright in comparison with Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, but, nevertheless, the local government has a clear goal to develop this direction, which is visible to the naked eye. From this point of view, the government showed great attention to this conference — the event turned out to be gigantic, there were about 2-3 thousand people, given that the event lasted two and a half days. There were many young entrepreneurs, there were many students from the local university SIAS.
How can a startup enter the Chinese market and why participate in conferences and forums?
If a startup wants to enter the Chinese market, you definitely should not look for a partner remotely, you must go and dive into the environment, communicate with people. When you come from the street or write to e-mail - the Chinese may simply not answer. In our case, startups come on behalf of an organization that the Chinese know well, to which there is already respect - in this case a completely different perception is formed and people become much more open. Within the framework of such events it is much better to develop business and build relationships. Such conference formats in general are practically not made in Russia, few people go to China, mostly only small groups of investors and experts. And this must be done, since we have many points of contact, starting from which we can work. It is very important for the Chinese side to show the quality of entrepreneurs, start-ups from Russia, with whom you can work.
At the US-China Startup Investment Forum we had a delegation jointly with Plug & Play and co-organizing partners such as us, GVA LaunchGurus, which consisted of entrepreneurs, experts and investors. The program of the event consisted of discussion panels, where experts from different countries spoke, round tables and pitching of more than 60 entrepreneurs. From GVA LaunchGurus, 7 startups went to the conference, including projects from the GVAccelerator accelerator: “Hotel Face” by Alexey Zhurik, Oleg Senkov with “Arenza”, “IPV17”, CEO Vasily Prosin, “SpyLance”, CEO Mikhail Khusainov. Olga Oshurkova also arrived with “Diva Ora”. Our partners from Azerbaijan brought one project: “SmartPlane”.
On the Chinese side, there were a lot of media projects and applications. Peer-to-peer lending is also growing incredibly: this market is estimated at 140 billion yuan a year. In China, this is the direction that is widely represented among startups. There were several IT projects. On our part, there were completely different startups: Internet aggregation, a clean IT protocol, an application for improving the services sector in hotels, a platform for drones, bottles for feeding children. We brought from Russia not only virtual projects, but also startups from the real sector, such diversity impressed our colleagues in China.
The performances of all participants were at different levels, but, in general, I can say that the Russian projects, including the start-ups, which came out of the GVAccelerator, were better prepared. In China, there is a remarkable structure for incubating startups, but few strong acceleration programs. However, from the point of view of pitch, we have a slightly different approach to preparation, a more pronounced focus on the business model, and not on the product, on understanding how the business will grow, what is really necessary for this. The Chinese had a lot of presentations, more related to the product itself and its features.
What startups were interesting to colleagues from China?
DivaOra, as a company representing a special way of making baby feeding products, was very interested in the Chinese because of the peculiarities of its production. The “Hotel Face” project was interesting because in China there is a large growing tourism industry and they are interested in new solutions, they are lagging behind in hotel technology. “SmartPlane” is interesting because there are many companies that produce drones, they can be useful basic platform for their creation.
Once again I want to note why you need to go. In China, they are very determined to work with the Russians. Our companies were not deprived of attention throughout the conference: colleagues from China approached each startup, offered their services, manufacturing partnership, possible investments. China lacks serious technology projects with which Russian businessmen can enter this market.
Olga Oshurkova, founder and CEO of DivaOra, shared her impressions of the trip with us: “Such events open up a wide range of opportunities for entrepreneurs. It is important how much the entrepreneur himself uses the opened opportunities, because no one will do his work for him. These events are an excellent opportunity to remove barriers (psychological, organizational, cultural, etc.) for building international business. This is like the first step, which is very difficult to do on your own for various reasons. After this conference, it will be much easier for me to independently organize my next visit to China, after having developed a schedule of meetings and relocations. The holding of this conference was organized at a high level, our delegation in the group from GVA LaunchGurus was greeted as VIP persons and personal assistants helped us significantly to adapt to the new environment. The results of the trip for DivaOra are the emergence of the first real contacts in China, through which it is planned to work out the exits to investors and partners, and personal acquaintances allow, if necessary, to attract new employees (who have previously agreed) to work in a company in China ".
In reality, our experience has shown that such trips are necessary for the development of relations and partnership. People are afraid to take startups to China, but why? For us, this was a very important experience, because almost all startups were able to find new partners in China, with whom it would be possible to begin work, we are now called back to new events. There were people from all over Asia, representatives from America, so it was an opportunity to find partners around the world.
Vasily Prosin, the IPv17 project said: “It’s immediately obvious that the Chinese market is a rapidly growing economy, because the Chinese partners were literally greedy for new startups and for new ideas. They grabbed at everything new, which unfortunately is not in emerging markets. As it seemed to me, the main criterion of interest is something new. If new, then ready to participate. New contacts were the result of the trip, personally I, since I have a high-tech startup, I found contacts of potential partners for myself and continue to communicate with them for future cooperation. Definitely, we were the most advanced delegation, were organized. The trip together with GVA LaunchGurus opened up additional opportunities for us to meet with partners and investors. ”
Of course, besides new contacts and partners, projects as a result receive a large amount of information, which is difficult for many, but nevertheless necessary for business development. Participants see how their specific industry is developing in China and can understand how relevant their startup is. Having visited this event and talked with experts and projects from Asia, some entrepreneurs realized that they were losing time, but they had to go to China, look for partners, and establish production there. And in the development of your business is very important not to be late.
What are the conditions for the development and support of entrepreneurship in China today?
')
It is enough to look at the statistics: over the past 6 years, 45 incubators were built in Beijing alone (excluding private ones). Large-scale programs were launched, the government at various levels takes the initiative and tries to allocate funds for the development of the infrastructure of entrepreneurship; this is on the agenda as one of the most important national tasks. It can not be said that the incubators in China are much better than ours; nevertheless, the growth rate and volume itself is impressive. The state unequivocally creates and provides conditions for the development of small and medium-sized businesses. In addition, a network of private investors is growing very rapidly in China. Of course, as in Russia, there are some gaps that hinder the development of this sector: a small number of business angels, an insufficient amount of private investment, entrepreneurs are not yet so qualified to, from a business point of view, think over the business model, their positioning, as in the same Valley. But they definitely have a desire to develop in this direction.
As co-organizers and partners of Plug & Play, we attended the US-China Startup Investment Forum conference, presented our portfolio projects and consolidated our interaction with Chinese partners. It is worth noting the level of the forum in Chinese Zhengzhou. The conference was opened by the city’s mayor and vice-governor of Henan Province, the largest province in China, where more than 100 million people live. Zhengzhou is its center. From the point of view of entrepreneurship, the city is not so bright in comparison with Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, but, nevertheless, the local government has a clear goal to develop this direction, which is visible to the naked eye. From this point of view, the government showed great attention to this conference — the event turned out to be gigantic, there were about 2-3 thousand people, given that the event lasted two and a half days. There were many young entrepreneurs, there were many students from the local university SIAS.
How can a startup enter the Chinese market and why participate in conferences and forums?
If a startup wants to enter the Chinese market, you definitely should not look for a partner remotely, you must go and dive into the environment, communicate with people. When you come from the street or write to e-mail - the Chinese may simply not answer. In our case, startups come on behalf of an organization that the Chinese know well, to which there is already respect - in this case a completely different perception is formed and people become much more open. Within the framework of such events it is much better to develop business and build relationships. Such conference formats in general are practically not made in Russia, few people go to China, mostly only small groups of investors and experts. And this must be done, since we have many points of contact, starting from which we can work. It is very important for the Chinese side to show the quality of entrepreneurs, start-ups from Russia, with whom you can work.
At the US-China Startup Investment Forum we had a delegation jointly with Plug & Play and co-organizing partners such as us, GVA LaunchGurus, which consisted of entrepreneurs, experts and investors. The program of the event consisted of discussion panels, where experts from different countries spoke, round tables and pitching of more than 60 entrepreneurs. From GVA LaunchGurus, 7 startups went to the conference, including projects from the GVAccelerator accelerator: “Hotel Face” by Alexey Zhurik, Oleg Senkov with “Arenza”, “IPV17”, CEO Vasily Prosin, “SpyLance”, CEO Mikhail Khusainov. Olga Oshurkova also arrived with “Diva Ora”. Our partners from Azerbaijan brought one project: “SmartPlane”.
On the Chinese side, there were a lot of media projects and applications. Peer-to-peer lending is also growing incredibly: this market is estimated at 140 billion yuan a year. In China, this is the direction that is widely represented among startups. There were several IT projects. On our part, there were completely different startups: Internet aggregation, a clean IT protocol, an application for improving the services sector in hotels, a platform for drones, bottles for feeding children. We brought from Russia not only virtual projects, but also startups from the real sector, such diversity impressed our colleagues in China.
The performances of all participants were at different levels, but, in general, I can say that the Russian projects, including the start-ups, which came out of the GVAccelerator, were better prepared. In China, there is a remarkable structure for incubating startups, but few strong acceleration programs. However, from the point of view of pitch, we have a slightly different approach to preparation, a more pronounced focus on the business model, and not on the product, on understanding how the business will grow, what is really necessary for this. The Chinese had a lot of presentations, more related to the product itself and its features.
What startups were interesting to colleagues from China?
DivaOra, as a company representing a special way of making baby feeding products, was very interested in the Chinese because of the peculiarities of its production. The “Hotel Face” project was interesting because in China there is a large growing tourism industry and they are interested in new solutions, they are lagging behind in hotel technology. “SmartPlane” is interesting because there are many companies that produce drones, they can be useful basic platform for their creation.
Once again I want to note why you need to go. In China, they are very determined to work with the Russians. Our companies were not deprived of attention throughout the conference: colleagues from China approached each startup, offered their services, manufacturing partnership, possible investments. China lacks serious technology projects with which Russian businessmen can enter this market.
Olga Oshurkova, founder and CEO of DivaOra, shared her impressions of the trip with us: “Such events open up a wide range of opportunities for entrepreneurs. It is important how much the entrepreneur himself uses the opened opportunities, because no one will do his work for him. These events are an excellent opportunity to remove barriers (psychological, organizational, cultural, etc.) for building international business. This is like the first step, which is very difficult to do on your own for various reasons. After this conference, it will be much easier for me to independently organize my next visit to China, after having developed a schedule of meetings and relocations. The holding of this conference was organized at a high level, our delegation in the group from GVA LaunchGurus was greeted as VIP persons and personal assistants helped us significantly to adapt to the new environment. The results of the trip for DivaOra are the emergence of the first real contacts in China, through which it is planned to work out the exits to investors and partners, and personal acquaintances allow, if necessary, to attract new employees (who have previously agreed) to work in a company in China ".
In reality, our experience has shown that such trips are necessary for the development of relations and partnership. People are afraid to take startups to China, but why? For us, this was a very important experience, because almost all startups were able to find new partners in China, with whom it would be possible to begin work, we are now called back to new events. There were people from all over Asia, representatives from America, so it was an opportunity to find partners around the world.
Vasily Prosin, the IPv17 project said: “It’s immediately obvious that the Chinese market is a rapidly growing economy, because the Chinese partners were literally greedy for new startups and for new ideas. They grabbed at everything new, which unfortunately is not in emerging markets. As it seemed to me, the main criterion of interest is something new. If new, then ready to participate. New contacts were the result of the trip, personally I, since I have a high-tech startup, I found contacts of potential partners for myself and continue to communicate with them for future cooperation. Definitely, we were the most advanced delegation, were organized. The trip together with GVA LaunchGurus opened up additional opportunities for us to meet with partners and investors. ”
Of course, besides new contacts and partners, projects as a result receive a large amount of information, which is difficult for many, but nevertheless necessary for business development. Participants see how their specific industry is developing in China and can understand how relevant their startup is. Having visited this event and talked with experts and projects from Asia, some entrepreneurs realized that they were losing time, but they had to go to China, look for partners, and establish production there. And in the development of your business is very important not to be late.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/291788/
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