Jayanty Nada Shofa, Jakarta – Shenzhen-based tech firm Huawei recently unveiled its plans to bolster the Indonesian startup ecosystem, making the country an important part of its $100-million Spark accelerator program for the Asia-Pacific region.

"Indonesia is one of the most promising lands for startups," Leo Jiang, Huawei's Cloud Asia Pacific chief digital officer, told a press conference on Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, Huawei announced it would invest a whopping $100 million into the Spark program in the Asia-Pacific region over the next three years. The Spark program focuses on building the startup ecosystem in Asia-Pacific.

Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand had already joined the first edition of Spark. Huawei revealed it would add four additional startup hubs in Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. It seeks to recruit a total of 1,000 startups into the Spark accelerator program and shape 100 of them into scale-ups.

"We have had a number of discussions with the government agencies there who are keen to work with us. There is also a Huawei cloud team operating in Indonesia. So, we will launch Spark there," Leo said when asked about Huawei's plans for Indonesian startups.

According to Leo, the startup's capabilities and market presence will determine the support given by Huawei. The Spark program will equip early-stage startups with training and access to Huawei's tech in the incubator tier.

"The more sophisticated ones will have a customized program. [For example,] the Spark Fire enables [the startups] to sell [their solutions] to, sell with, or sell through Huawei," he said.

"Our mission right now is to incubate and support the startups who are in Asia or coming into Asia and shape them into scale-ups. We also would like to contribute to the social and economic prosperity in Asia," he added.

At the Huawei Cloud Spark Founder Summit, Huawei also introduced three additional initiatives for its Spark program.

The first is the Spark Developer program, which nurtures a Huawei Cloud-powered developer ecosystem in the Asia-Pacific region. Whilst the Spark Pitstop program seeks to support startups on Huawei Cloud to accelerate product development. Also, the Spark Innovation Program (SIP) will facilitate enterprise innovation through the Spark startup ecosystem.

Startup Ranking data shows Indonesia is home to 2,257 startups. The archipelagic country ranks fifth globally.

Source: https://jakartaglobe.id/tech/huawei-seeks-to-help-indonesian-startups-flouris