China

Shanghai #8

Shanghai has a very impressive mix of global corporate innovation, startup co-working and investment hubs that helps startups connect dreams to innovation, make ideas to reality.

Howard Wang
Incubation Director, Shanghai Caohejing Innovation Center

Ecosystem by the Numbers

EARLY-STAGE FUNDING
$8.7 bn
GLOBAL AVG.
$687 m
ECOSYSTEM VALUE
$138 bn
GLOBAL AVG.
$28.6 bn
MEDIAN SEED ROUND
$1500 k
GLOBAL AVG.
$671 k
MEDIAN SERIES A ROUND
$10 m
GLOBAL AVG.
$4.7 m
SOFT. ENGINEER SALARY
$30 k
GLOBAL AVG.
$46 k

Edtech

Over 1,000 Edtech companies are headquartered in Shanghai, and they received about $1.3 billion in venture funding between 2015 and 2017.OneSmart Education platform raised $28 million in an IPO in 2018. 17zuoye is an online learning platform which became a unicorn in 2018 when it raised $250 million in Series E funding led by Temasek Holdings. Zhangmen, a K-12 tutoring company, raised $350 million in Series E funding from China Media Capital and CICC Alpha in January 2019.

Gaming

China accounts for over 25% of global gaming revenue and is the world's largest mobile gaming market. Shanghai’s gaming industry is expected to reach over $15 billion by 2020. Shanghai is home to more than 130 gaming startups, a satellite for industry giants such as EA, Ubisoft, and Virtuos. In addition, Shanghai is host to ChinaJoy, Asia’s largest gaming expo with over 340,000 attendees including participation from Giant players such as Sony, Xiaomi, and HTC.

Reasons to Move Your Startup to Shanghai

Abundant funding

Shanghai’s venture capital network includes about 5,000 angel investors and associations. The Shanghai science and technology innovation fund was launched by state-owned investors with an initial round of $970 million.

COVID-19 Policy

As an effort to stabilize employment, the Shanghai Government is returning half of the unemployment insurance premiums paid by the companies in the previous year, provided they do not lay off workers in 2020.

R&D investment

Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, sometimes referred to as China’s Silicon Valley, has more than 400 R&D institutions.

Selected Startup Organizations

ChinaAccelerator
Ether Capital
Founder Space
Innoclub
Innospace+
Innospring
NakedHub
People Square
Shanghai valley
Sinavation Ventures
Startup Grind
Technode
Xnode

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