StartmeupHK Festival showcases Hong Kong and Greater Bay Area’s thriving start-up scene – and its potential in the metaverse

The StartmeupHK Festival 2022 wrapped up a successful week on September 10, with more than 20,000 participants from over 100 countries and territories joining online and in-person events. The annual conference, presented by Invest Hong Kong (InvestHK), saw industry leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, tech enthusiasts and government officials gather to explore the latest developments in the start-up sector.

Under the theme of “A Future Unlimited”, the festival featured 556 speakers across a six-day schedule packed with keynote speeches and panel discussions, sharing their insights on emerging technologies and how start-ups will help shape the future through innovation.

The various events at the festival addressed globally trending topics such as sustainability, tech investment, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the metaverse, healthtech, gaming and proptech, as well as the potential of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area (GBA) in innovation.

As the flagship event for government agency InvestHK, the StartmeupHK Festival showcases Hong Kong’s increasingly vibrant start-up ecosystem. The goal is to promote the city as an international innovation and technology hub, where start-ups can set up a base from which to expand into the GBA, Asia and beyond.

“Access to markets is one of the most important business fundamentals, and Hong Kong is great at this,” said Jayne Chan, head of StartmeupHK at InvestHK.

“Even though Hong Kong has a small population, it still presents lots of opportunities for start-ups,” she added. “Then there is the GBA, which is collectively home to 86 million people. The business opportunity coming from this is massive, and if you extend this further – into the rest of Asia, even Southeast Asia – then Hong Kong makes a lot of sense for a company to be based here.”