In Shanghai, a player of the startup scene not to miss is Knowledge and Innovation Community, as known as KIC.
Who is KIC Shanghai?
Fostered by Shui On Development Limited whose mission is to build communities in Shanghai that are focused on Internet, smart cities and are mobile related, KIC has become a high-tech ecosystem where entrepreneurship is promoted. Multinational companies are settled in this 500,000 sq.m facility area strategically located just nearby the campus of the prestigious Fudan University, such as IBM, Oracle, EMC, Siemens and Alibaba.
The map of KIC
Through its InnoSpace project, the community provides startups with incubation services and investments; its performance is very impressive. Indeed, among the more than 100 incubated startups, 90% of them survived!
Innospace also includes a 3 months acceleration program which is market-driven and tailored for projects which are focused on the Internet and aiming to develop smart devices and hardware. At the end, a Demo Day is organized. Notable ventures that got successful through this program are BICI (building smart bike), Chaojiaoyi (fintech solution), QingPingGuo (connecting patients to doctors) and Huizuche (overseas car rental).
InnoSpace building
InnoSpace Demo Day 2015
A worldwide connected community
KIC is also interlinked with overseas players in the Silicon Valley, Asia, Israel and Europe. For instance it has partners in France around the smart cities topic and in Korea in order to help foreign startups grow in China. Korean entrepreneurs regularly join InnoSpace’s acceleration program which is adapted to them as special sharing sessions are added. This collaboration with the Korean government allowed so far two startups to stand out as they received investment and cooperation proposals right after the Demo Day.
The first is Earing, which offers mobile marketing solution that delivers audio messages and push notifications to smartphone users. The specificity is that Earing tackles the moments when users plug their earphones or headphones into their smartphone, seen as being a timeframe opportunity for brands to communicate promotions.
The second one is Creative Bomb, which developed Boto, an ‘edutainment’ app for children to develop their creativity and cognitive abilities through submarines characters. The app is available in Japanese, Korean and Chinese by Google Play and App Store.
We will keep a close eye on KIC, as it is evolving with a current expansion project!