Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups welcomes Alibaba entrepreneur fund
Careers specialist says move can enable three-way help for entrepreneurs
Alibaba's HK$1 billion fund to help young Hongkongers start their own businesses shows the private sector is becoming increasingly involved in supporting entrepreneurs, a youth career development specialist says.
Such schemes can enable three-way cooperation between the government, the business sector and non-governmental organisations, said Gary Tang Leung-shun, supervisor of the Federation of Youth Groups.
Jack Ma Yun , co-founder and executive chairman of the Alibaba Group, announced the fund on Sunday, a day before giving a talk to some 6,900 people in the city. The talk was organised by Our Hong Kong Foundation, a think tank set up by former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa and to which Ma is an adviser.
"Although some people question whether Ma sincerely wants to help young people or if he's just making another investment, I think the fund can offer young people an opportunity to start e-commerce businesses," Tang said. "This is a creative idea."
Tang said businesses, in realising their social responsibilities, used to focus on donating money to relieve poverty. But since the government put more emphasis on young people's upward mobility and set aside funds for them to start companies, the private sector has begun to change focus.
He said this would lead to a new model for cooperation, in which the government would mark out the path, the business sector would contribute financially and NGOs would put the money to good use.
Chung Jah-ying's company Launchpilots - which helps connect student event organisers at universities with sponsors - is one of 11 start-ups supported by an entrepreneurship programme run by Swire Properties.
The developer's Blueprint programme provides start-ups with six months of free work space, mentoring, connections to capital and market-testing opportunities.
Chung, 25, started the company in 2012 and expanded into Shanghai a year later. "The mainland is great for business growth, but it's easier to register a company in Hong Kong," she said.
Aaron Cooper, another 25-year-old entrepreneur signed up to Blueprint, said he believed Alibaba's fund would benefit Hong Kong's start-ups if it could also provide the resources and connections to sort out mainland's complicated regulatory requirements in setting up a business.
"Hong Kong needs to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of early-stage start-ups," said Cooper, who in 2014 founded Locate, a company providing luggage monitoring and security services for clients.
With an eye on the growing mainland travel market, the company had to find a subcontractor there because the legal and licence costs proved too expensive for the new start-up.
Cooper said he was interested in Ma's fund but would need to know more about it and what constraints there might be.
