Opal Wu Rocket Internet Hong Kong Co-Founder and Managing Director
According to Europe’s largest incubator of dotcommers, Rocket Internet GmbH, the potential of Hong Kong’s startup scene is still relatively untapped.
Rocket internet has been building strategic partnerships with numerous innovative internet companies in more than 20 countries across several continents around the globe.
The support and expertise they provide range from concept, set-up, optimization, application development, internationalization, operations to logistics, a broad network of contacts, advice and of course, capital injection. Rocket’s associated start-ups benefit from its expert knowledge and multi-years of experience.
In five years, they have constituted well-known projects including eBay Germany, Groupon International, TopTarif, Zalando, Dafiti and eDarling.
E27 catches up with Opal Wu, 26-year-old Co-Founder and Managing Director of Rocket InternetHong Kong, whose main duty is to manage Rocket’s office in the country (which currently sustains around 30 people), and set up the support infrastructure and shared services for the incubation of new online ventures.
Aside from his role as a country MD, the former McKinsey Australia man has also assisted the early phase roll-out and build-up of online ventures in Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and Indonesia.
The short interview reports on how the Berlin-based incubator is doing in the Special Administrative Region of China.
Please share the story of Rocket Internet Hong Kong in its early days
Our office is still relatively young, opening only in February this year. While Rocket ventures such as Wimdu have been operating in the city prior to that, we decided that it was time for a more formal Rocket presence, both in recognition of Hong Kong’s importance to us as a market and also to better support the pipeline of new ventures we have in store. We expect our staff to grow in the coming months as we roll out more ventures.
How do you see the start-ups scene and ecosystem in the country?
This is more my personal view rather than Rocket Internet’s per se, but to be frank, Hong Kong’s startup scene lags behind that of other cities in the region, particularly Singapore and even more developing places like Jakarta.
Of course there is a small and budding community of online entrepreneurs in Hong Kong, often operating out of shared spaces like HK Commons and BootHK and converging at meet-ups run by organizations like StartupsHK.
However, a few factors hold things back for Hong Kong
First, Difficulty in attracting talent.
Great ideas require great people to execute them successfully. In Hong Kong, the best talent has traditionally been funneled into professional services like finance which dominates the economy, accounting, law and consulting. Venturing into startups is not a well-trodden or credible career choice in the eyes of many.
This is an area where Rocket Internet is helping to lift the credibility and profile of the online entrepreneur, by attracting some of the best people from the top management consulting firms, investment banks and business schools.
Second, Lack of early-stage funding
Despite being a global financial capital, it is not so easy to obtain funding for start-ups in Hong Kong. There is not the multitude of incubators, accelerators, seed, angel, and early-stage investors which you might see in Singapore for instance. The ones which are present in the country are very much China-focused. Nor is there the same level of government support which you also see in Singapore for instance: Spring Seeds or Business Angels Fund.
Third, under-developed supporting networks
By this I mean the network of startup events, conferences, hackathons, competitions, and so on and so forth which act as critical catalysts of any healthy startup ecosystem. There are some in Hong Kong, but there could be far more and at a larger scale.
What program are you running currently?
We have Wimdu.com which is Asia’s leading Consumer-to-Consumer travel accommodation website and the other is Zalora.com.hk, the online fashion destination throughout Taiwan and Southeast Asia.
How do you excel your company there?
One can be rest assured that the ventures launched in Hong Kong will bring some form of added value to consumers.
Ocassionally, I would come across people from HongKong wishing for this website, or this app, which currently exists outside of Hong Kong. Therefore, Rocket Internet would do what they do best – spot proven models from around the world and making them available to consumers who want them.
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