City of Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Fueled by Alibaba, a complete and benign environment has been formed to facilitate a start-up boom in Hangzhou. Many business incubator zones have been established, such as Taobao E-commerce Park, Tencent Start-up Base, Fudi Start-up Park, Dream Town, Yunxi Town, and Zhejiang University Science and Technology Park. Among them, the Dream Town established in 2014 aims to attract 10,000 college graduates within three years to start their own businesses and implement about 2,000 start-up projects. It also plans to set up at least 300 institutions for fund management and relevant affairs, with the scale of assets management hitting RMB 100 billion and total financial assets exceeding RMB 300 billion.

Jack Ma, executive chairman of Alibaba, has said on many public occasions that Alibaba is willing to provide a complete infrastructure for the development of e-commerce and any possible condition for new entrepreneurs. In 2015, he opened a non-profit institution – Hupan College (literally meaning Lakeside College) in Hangzhou’s West Lake scenic area, to provide lectures to those whose businesses are in the beginning stages or who want to start their own businesses from scratch. Many former Alibaba employees now constitute the main force of entrepreneurs in Hangzhou today.

Li Zhiguo was the first to resign from Alibaba and start his own business. Li established Koubei.com, a life-search engine providing living consumption information, in 2004. Later Alibaba invested in Koubei and holds an equity stake in the business. Then Li became an angel investor. He invested in Mogujie.com, a fashion-focused e-commerce service, whose founder is Chen Qi, also a former Alibaba employee. Li then invested in Kuaidi Car Hailing App, which bought another car hailing app, and the two together received strategic investment from Alibaba. Now Li has turned his attention to a new start-up by founding wacai.com, a personal finance and wealth management and financial products online platform.

By June 2016, there were 99 registered maker spaces in Hangzhou, home to 1,430 start-ups. Those maker spaces have been supported by 98 funds, with a total capital reaching RMB 7.2 billion.