Beijing is the new startup scene of China, which has become in less than 2 years a must-see of innovation. Indeed, the government has been promoting mass entrepreneurship by putting innovation at core of the five-year plan. The plan includes financial support, administrative assistance as well as partnerships with local actors (Tsinghua University, incubators, and accelerators) to create clusters and funds.
The striking point in Beijing is its tech area, Zhongguancun (1), where are headquartered Weibo, YouKu, Microsoft and other major IT firms. Hence, incubators, accelerators and startups have settled there.
For instance, Cheku Café has been the core center of early-stage startups by offering a space to work for only RMB 20 (USD 3) per person per day and has evolved to an incubator, connecting about 400 entrepreneurs with big companies who also ask for advice.
Alphawolf is an accelerator focused on hardware, software and IoT since November 2014, accompanying 17 startups every 6 months.
Other emerging centers in Beijing are Sanlitun (2) and Guomao (3). We can find there the coworking spaces Day Day Up, TechTemple and Urwork, which are fully filled with a variety of internet-based startups, as well as entrepreneurs specialized in O2O, hardware and IoT. The N°1 media focused on tech news 36kr was backed by TechTemple. We can also mention SynergyWorks, whose goal is to bring Japanese and German technologies into China.
In a nutshell, if you come to China, your main target has to be the capital city. The startup scene is very dynamic and growing at a high pace.
