Huawei bankrolls $100 million funding to help ICT startups in Asia Pacific

MANILA, Philippines — Global technology leader Huawei plans to invest $100 million over the next three years to enable the development of information and communication technology (ICT) startups in Asia Pacific, a top company official said.

In his keynote speech during the Huawei Asia Pacific Digital Innovation Congress in Singapore last month, Simon Lin, president of Huawei Asia Pacific, said the China-based tech firm will bring its global research and development ability to the local market and innovate based on customer needs.

“For example, we built Open Lab in Singapore and 5G Ecosystem Innovation Center in Thailand. Currently, 5G EIC has gathered more than 100 partners to incubate 5G applications,” he said.

This is in line with Huawei’s plan to spearhead the development of an open and collaborative ICT industry ecosystem with customers and partners. In Asia Pacific, the company has established partnerships with 7,900 enterprise partners, 2,000 cloud partners, and 200 universities.

“We hope to help customers and partners make good use of infrastructure, and extend ICT capabilities to industry digitalization,” he said.

In the Philippines, Huawei is committed to promoting ICT industry development and conducted several corporate social responsibility programs such as School in A Bag and Huawei Philippines Scholarship.

As the company’s flagship CSR program, Seeds in the Future has been in the Philippines for seven years, which benefited more than 200 students. Huawei Philippines also partners with more than 60 universities in ICT Academy, which has covered more than 13,000 students.

In Asia Pacific, Huawei has established partnerships with nearly 10,000 enterprise and cloud partners under the Spark startup ecosystem and trained 170,000 locals on digital skills, and plans to provide digital training to another 500,000 within five years as part of its efforts to develop a talent ecosystem that can drive the digital economy forward.

Spark is a new startup ecosystem support program started just this year aimed at empowering SMEs to develop their cloud capabilities.

SMEs are the backbone of the global economy and are essential contributors to job creation and economic growth. According to the World Bank, small businesses represent about 90 percent of all businesses worldwide and more than 50 percent of employment opportunities.