Hong Kong’s fledgling startup industry (INFOGRAPHIC)

Look out, Singapore, Hong Kong wants to be a major startup hub. Photo credit: Steve Webel.

Hong Kong is widely known as a great place for shopping and eating. And some know it as one of the world’s top financial hubs. What many might not realize is that Hong Kong wants to be a center of tech entrepreneurship and startups.

It’s already started working towards that.

Hong Kong’s tech startup ecosystem has “great potential for acceleration, building on unique strengths,” says a new 65-page report by Compass. The study says Hong Kong is well placed to allow entrepreneurs and their new startups to tap into both the territory’s financial industry as well as the hardware manufacturing hub that’s just a metro ride over the border in the mainland China city of Shenzhen.

Hong Kong has an array of strengths – as well as obstacles.

“In a world where startups have become the number one driver of economic growth and job creation while large corporations continue to cut down on their workforce, Hong Kong cannot afford to rest on its past achievements and legacy industries,” warns JF Gauthier, an analyst at Compass who’s one of the four authors of the paper.

As shown in our infographic below, which is based on data and observations in the report, Hong Kong has an array of strengths as well as obstacles in its goal of becoming a new Asian startup hub.

It’s still early days for Hong Kong right now. The startup industry’s total ecosystem value is estimated at about US$2.8 to US$3.5 billion, a number dwarfed by the value of some medium-sized American and Chinese tech startups. Singapore’s tally is four times higher. But with strong growth, Hong Kong is working towards having its first homegrown startup “unicorn.”

Infographic and illustrations by Tech in Asia’s Andre Gunawan.