MaRS Discovery District (“MaRS”) and Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company Limited (“Cyberport”), an innovation hub based in Hong Kong, have just announced a new partnership, with a focus on driving financial technology (fintech) innovation and entrepreneurship in Hong Kong and Canada.
MaRS Discovery District in Toronto is the one of the world’s largest urban innovation hubs. MaRS supports promising young ventures tackling key societal challenges in the health, cleantech and ICT sectors. In the last three years, these ventures have raised $1.3 billion in capital and earned $640 million in revenue. In addition to helping startups launch, grow and scale, the MaRS community is dedicated to cross-disciplinary collaboration, commercialization of discoveries and driving ideas to impact.
As part of the partnership, Cyberport and MaRS will work to identify business acceleration opportunities for ventures from both hubs, help facilitate relationships with the financial industry in Canada and Hong Kong, and enable collaboration on joint entrepreneurship programs focused on fintech, wearables, big data and payment technologies.
“We are delighted to establish a long-term strategic partnership with MaRS, a renowned urban innovation hub,” said Herman Lam, CEO, Cyberport. “Like MaRS’ financial technology cluster, fintech is also one of Cyberport’s key focus areas with local and overseas startups striving to achieve success and expand globally. With Hong Kong being an international financial centre, the fintech community definitely has the advantage of being able to join forces with like-minded talents and leverage the wealth of financial knowledge here.”
As an international finance centre with a robust startup ecosystem, Hong Kong is a regional hub for fintech innovation. Through its global connections, MaRS is dedicated to helping Canadian startups grow internationally through partnerships with Startupbootcamp in the United Kingdom, Cubo in Brazil and the Singapore FinTech Consortium.
“A global network is essential for the success of our startups, which are looking to scale and grow,” said Dr. Ilse Treurnicht, CEO, MaRS Discovery District. “Hong Kong is a regional hub for the banking industry, the gateway to Mainland China and a centre for technology. This partnership will provide great opportunities for high-potential Canadian fintech startups to collaborate with international financial institutions and investors. By strengthening our position as a leading global innovation hub, we strive to provide new platforms for our startups to soar.”
