It's been over a year since the Chinese government made its call for mass entrepreneurship and innovation, to add new impetus to the country's growth. So what's the situation like now? And how has the nation responded? As part of our special coverage for the labor Holiday, my colleague Wang Tongxuan visited some startups in Beijing. She joins me now in the studio to tell us about their ups and downs.
It's the dream of many people to run their own business, but the journey to success is never easy.China's innovation concept has been integrated into traditional manufacturing and the booming Internet industry, with the plan "Made in China 2025" and "Internet Plus" strategy. And the innovative spirit is vibrant. Here is the story of a young entrepreneur, who, with the help of the internet, wants to change the culture of dining in China.
Gao Yangzi has been dreaming big for a long time.
"Like you enjoy a coffee, you can have a new lifestyle by taking soup," Gao said.
She decided to quit her job as a public servant and enrol in Peking University's Guanghua Management School as an MBA student.
Easy Soup was her case study, for which she got a lot of support from her professors.
"The key point is you have to make sure that the new project has a good business model, so it's a new unique model that can make profits," said Jack Ting-ju Chiang, assistant professor of Guanghua School of Management, Peking University.
But finding a model nobody has tried before isn't easy.
A recent survey shows that over 10-thousand new firms registered in China every day in 2015, eight every minute. Four in five Chinese start-ups fail. Only five percent of business graduates ever get off the ground.
"It's not just the skills and technologies you have and also the management and also how you handle investors, these are difficult because its complex activity. Some people only have certain skill sets, so it's important to find right people that have good morale together to work on the same goal. So it also needs internal management, which many people lack skills in," Chiang said.
Having originally started with only an online store, the Easy Soup off-line shop opened in February...
"It’s not only about drinking soup, it is a way to foster customers’ habit of online consumption by in-store experience. So combining traditional food-service and the internet industry is a kind of innovation. As we hear buzzwords like O2O or Internet+, what remains essentially the same is that we can use modern methods to solve problems like information asymmetry, and to help the traditional industry and consumers maintain strong communication," Gao said.
China has become the world's second largest destination for venture capital after the United States.
There are over 3-thousand funds managing more than 1 trillion yuan or around 150 billion US dollars.
Yangzi feels no pressure from China's economic slowdown. Instead, she is positive about her startup, and feels the business environment has never been better.
"My dream is to spread the traditional Chinese dining culture worldwide, by serving a traditional Chinese soup recipe. I hope Easy Soup can move far ahead and I am quite positive that we are not alone in promoting Chinese culture," Gao said.
