Huawei Cloud announced at its Global Startup Founders Summit in Shenzhen that it is committed to building a global startup ecosystem that will accelerate growth in the ICT sector.
This ecosystem will comprise three key initiatives – an innovative cloud platform, startup acceleration programmes, and business resources – and is expected to enable 10,000 high-potential startups globally over the next three years.
Zhang Ping’an, Huawei Senior VP and Huawei Cloud CEO, said Huawei Cloud believes that startups have the power to change the world.
This is why his department is sharing Huawei’s 30-plus years of technology and innovation experience with startups and augmenting this with Huawei’s global cloud infrastructure and extensive Technology-as-a-Service offerings.
Huawei Cloud Accelerator
Ping’an was then joined by several venture capitalists to announce Huawei Cloud Accelerator – a programme that will empower startups at all stages of their lifecycles.
The programme focuses on six key areas:
- Enterprise services/SaaS
- AI
- Biotech
- Fintech
- Smart energy / Carbon neutrality
- Industrial digitization
These areas will be expanded to cover more industries and domains in the future, said Ping’an.
Participants will also get access to an early-stage startup bootcamp, as well as industry-themed bootcamps that assist each startup at its lifecycle stage.
Huawei Cloud is excited about the opportunity to work with partners and customers to build an inclusive, vibrant startup ecosystem that it believes can serve as a powerful engine for digital transformation.
Benefits for South Africa
This exciting announcement aligns with Huawei’s existing commitment to the South African SMME sector, as Huawei Cloud South Africa has already started to build an ecosystem of local start-ups.
On 8 July 2022, Jay Zhou, Managing Director of Huawei Cloud South Africa, announced the Spark Program.
Huawei Cloud will be investing R100 million in this three-year program to help start-ups grow.
So far, more than 120 start-ups have signed up for the program.
- Click here to join Huawei Cloud Spark Program.
Huawei Southern Africa president Leo Chen has also configured that Huawei Cloud is launching a third availability zone in South Africa, which will halve cloud latency once it goes live.
He emphasized that by 2025, one in six Internet users will be African, and the South African government expects the digital economy to make up half of the country’s GDP by this time.
“South Africa is well poised to make that transition,” said Chen.
Source: News24
