Cloud-based retail business application developer LinkedTech has emerged victorious in AliCloud's inaugural Hong Kong Maker+ start-up competition.
Ten selected startups competed last week to pitch their business ideas to a panel of experts. LinkedTech was selected to advance to the final Maker+ competition at the Computing Conference 2015 in Hangzhou, China.
The competition has been designed to provide young entrepreneurs with supporting resources from AliCloud and parent company the Alibaba Group.
The judges on the panel included AliCloud head of business development for mainland China and Hong Kong Binxing Liu, HKSTP head of incubation programs Peter Mok, FUEL Capital founding partner S.C. Mak, Teclent Venture Investment founder Felix Lio and Yinxinggu Captial senior fund manager Haiyan Xu.
AliCloud's Maker+ competition is designed to offer selected start-ups with support including free hardware, funding, office space, marketing services and access to investors, with the goal of helping the companies better explore business opportunities in the Chinese market.
The competition builds on AliCloud's existing support programs and services for Hong Kong start-ups, include collaborations with local incubator and VC firms to provide cloud services and technology training.
“Hong Kong has many excellent start-ups. Through the competition we have witnessed the creativity and vision shown by the city’s talented entrepreneurs,” AliCloud's Liu said.
“[At the same time], we also notice the challenges faced by many start-ups especially the rising R&D investment and the lack of technology resources support. By offering localized hybrid computing services and efficient cloud computing solutions, we hope to facilitate Hong Kong start-ups to develop their businesses in a more cost-effective way.”