Hong Kong Startup News Round Up - 30 Dec 2018

Startup League to provide 50-100% sponsorship for selected startups exhibiting at Startup Impact Summit

The Startup League, a one-of-a-kind initiative by Radix, is partnering with WHub for Startup Impact Summit to reward early-stage startups with high potential!

In order to provide promising startups with the large-scale platform they deserve for showcasing their solutions, the Startup League is offering one startup with 100% sponsorship and select startups a 50% sponsorship at Startup Impact Summit along with additional marketing support in the form of PR mentions, marketing goodies and much more!

This is your opportunity to showcase your startup to the world. You can apply for the offer here.

Bowtie Raises US$30M to bring the digital insurance model to HK

Bowtie, a Hong Kong-based digital insurer, just announced a double milestone: the company has become the first online-only operator to earn a license in the country while it has also revealed it has raised a HK$234 million (US$30 million) Series A funding round.

Sun Life, the $20 billion global insurance giant, is one investor in that Series A round via its Hong Kong business unit. The other backer is Hong Kong X Technology Fund, a two-year-old program backed by the likes of Tencent founder Pony Ma and Sequoia China chief Neil Shen.

Founded just over one year ago, Bowtie plans to offer a range of health-focused insurance products to Hong Kong consumers. It’ll launch in the first half of 2019; however, per the “virtual” insurer license issued by Hong Kong’s Insurance Authority (IA), it will not maintain any physical presence for consumers.

HK startup Pickupp raises funding from Alibaba Spark

Pickupp, a logistics technology startup based out of Hong Kong, announced it has secured an undisclosed sum in pre-Series A round of financing, led by Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund, with participation from local VC firm Spark Ventures and existing investor Axis Capital.

The new funds will be used for engineering resources to handle API integration with e-commerce marketplace and multinational 3PL couriers; marketing efforts to further penetrate omni-channel sales for retailers; and expansion to other locations in Southeast Asia (Ho Chi Minh city planned for early 2019).

“With the access to new capital, strategic guidance and technical know-how, we look forward to participating in the Alibaba ecosystem in Asia while broadening our product offerings to better serve merchants of all sizes and needs,” said Crystal Pang, Co-founder and CEO of Pickupp.

20 year old HK whizz raised US $49M to launch blockchain marketplace for cryptocurrency

Kenta Iwasaki, the 20-year-old undergraduate, who turned down offers from Stanford University and California Institute of Technology in the United States for an honour degree course at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, wants to revolutionise cryptocurrency. “There really needs to be something new, a new flavour to what you can do with cryptocurrency”, otherwise the technology will be wasted on basic coin exchange, he said.

Iwasaki recently raised US$49 million to fund a cryptocurrency driven marketplace, a blockchain he created called Perlin, that will provide a new model for how cryptocurrency is valued, and how companies source cloud computing power. It could also help people make money off their smartphones, enabling users to “sell [their] phone’s computing units temporarily every single night to an enterprise or a start-up”, Iwasaki said at an event on his university campus.

Shanghai Junshi Biosciences soars on HK debut after $394M IPO

Chinese biotech startup Shanghai Junshi Biosciences Co Ltd soared more than 22 percent in its Hong Kong debut on Monday after raising $394 million in its IPO, a rare strong showing by a biotech company in the Asian financial hub.

Shares of Junshi Biosciences opened at HK$23.50 ($3.00) and closed at HK$23.7, about 22 percent above the initial public offering (IPO) price of HK$19.38. This is the best performance so far among biotech firms that have debuted in Hong Kong after it changed its rules this year to allow listings from pre-revenue biotechs.

Hong Kong has enjoyed its best year since 2010 in terms of listings, with companies raising $36.3 billion, more than anywhere else in the world, Refinitiv data shows.