Hong Kong Startup News Roundup - 05 January 2020

USD50,000,000+ SeriesC opportunity on AngelHub

AngelHub continues to launch new campaigns, covering several sectors including PropTech and Fast Fashion/E-commerce, including a Series C company, which already confirmed more than USD50,000,000 investment. This tech company is also opening its round to Professional Investors, with a minimum ticket size of only USD10,000. AngelHub, Hong Kong’s first SFC licensed startup investment platform pursues its mission to democratise startup investing by offering Professional Investors with a highly selected deal flow, strict due diligence and negotiated terms through a stringent vetting process. AngelHub provides Professional Investors the opportunity to build a diversified portfolio along top tier VCs and partners inaccessible to individuals. 

Sino Land creates innovation lab for startups and inventors in Hong Kong

Property developer Sino Land Co. Ltd. has set up an innovation lab to support startups and inventors in Hong Kong. At Sino Inno Lab, which spans 3,000 square feet at Westin Centre in Kwun Tong, Hong Kong, startups will be able to test out new ideas in a sandbox environment and co-create solutions, according to the lab's website. The lab is intended to serve as "part incubator and part accelerator" for startups in property technology, artificial intelligence, big data, robotics, and environmental technology, said associate director for innovation at Sino Group, Andrew Young. Nine Hong Kong startups had already been accepted to participate in the lab.

Who Will Be the Ultimate Winner of Asia Pacific’s Virtual Banking Race?

Ever since Hong Kong issued 8 virtual banking licenses earlier this year, regulators around Asia are clamoring to come up with their own framework to facilitate this new breed of banks. Hong Kong has reinvigorated Asia’s interest in virtual banks by providing licences to banks including startups WeLab and ZA bank. Being home to a massively unbanked population of 196 million and 324 million mobile internet users, paving the way for this new breed of banks couldn’t come at a more crucial time for South East Asia. A significant number of existing players like WeLab are eyeing the SME market and we expect that when markets like Singapore and Malaysia open their doors to virtual banks, a notable number of players may do the same. For the new fintech players, key challenges are associated with creating new capabilities from scratch, staying within the regulatory and compliance boundaries, and maintaining a lean engineering team.

Startup Investors Shun Asia in 2019; Flock to Americas and Europe

HexGn released a study of the funding trends in the global startup ecosystem in 2019; the team analyzed over 60,000 deals and one million data points for the report. Globally, the total funding for technology startups this year dipped by 22 percent to USD 293 billion from USD 375 billion in 2018, with a 27 percent drop in deals. Health & Medtech clocked the highest number of transactions, while Fintech scored in terms of numbers in 2019.

Asia bore the brunt with investments shrinking 47 percent to USD 83 billion from USD 157 billion last year, and the deals went down by 27 percent, primarily due to China startup funding crashing from USD 117 billion to just USD 51 billion in 2019, a drop of 56 percent. In the 2019 annual startup report, HexGn announced the Top Ten Startup Cities for 2020. However, global heavy-weights like Hong Kong and Shenzhen failed to make it onto the list.

Global Startup Competition roadshows to take place in 10 more countries. 

The Global Startup Competition by AngelHub and WHub hosted two roadshows in December 2019 in Paris and Berlin. The 10 remaining roadshows are set to take place in January 2020 across Asia and the EMEA. The Tel Aviv roadshow, the first one this month,  will take place on January 7th at the Google Campus. Winners would get to showcase their #StartupPassion at the finals at the Startup Impact Summit in Hong Kong on the 14th of February, 2020 as well as compete for up to USD 1,000,000 in equity investment.