Soft Landing China – A review

17.04.2022 Daniela Musial-Lemberg News

On average every five years China experiences an absolute retread - from bureaucratic decisions to economic development and changes in the urban landscape. Our 3-day soft landing event offered German start-ups and people interested in China not only up-to-date insights into the Chinese market, but also first contacts to the foreign network.

There are many paths leading to the Chinese market. To a market that convinces with its size, dynamics, stable GDP and open culture, which is reflected by the high number of registered German companies and start-ups in China. However, surveys conducted by the Chambers of Commerce Abroad (AHK) reveal that German companies in China prefer to focus on realism rather than euphoria. After all, anyone who wants to avoid traveling, has no local contacts or has never heard of China’s dual circulation strategy has little chance of success in this country.

This was exactly the goal of our Soft Landing China Bootcamp – to prepare German founders for the Chinese market and to enable contacts to Chinese partners, incubators, start-up accelerators, investors and other relevant institutions.

The program included topics on economic policy, market entry strategies, legal basics, Chinese start-up ecosystem and numerous experiences of German entrepreneurs and expats.

At the end of the information event, the teams #R3DT GmbH, XplicitTrust GmbH, FastCast, Klangio GmbH, Aimino, Kamedi GmbH, Pockethost and other participants*, such as Change Xu, who is working on the development of an Innovative Recommendation System for Production Experts in Industry 4.0, were happy about the personal match-making with our speakers. The successful networking was the first step towards China.

The KIT-Gründerschmiede had invited speakers from different fields. At the beginning of the event, Sabine Dietlmeier presented the AHK and the topic of economic policy in China. Further lectures on realistic strategies for market entry were presented by Bernhard Weber and Nina Lehfer from BW_i. Fabian Knopf from R&P China Lawyers, which is active locally, spoke about the legal aspects of the market. Martin Gunkel (KIT alumnus), Andreas Kleinn (Entechnon, founder of the Chinese company Klai GmbH), Chunyan Wu (founder of EASIA GmbH), Ben Hauck and Kevin Prestel (founders of ARA MACAO GmbH), Sabrina Wetterkamp (founder of divnr) spoke about very personal experiences. Afterwards, the match-making took place with the following Chinese partners: ZGC, InterBridge, Shenzhen Angle FOF and Zpark.

Soft Landing is a fundamental part of the Global Horizon Program – GHPro. The vision of GHPro is to make KIT and its regional partners an internationally visible contact point and competence center for prospective founders as well as supporters, industry partners and investors.