Since our founding, CKGSB has aimed to cultivate transformative business leaders with a global vision, a humanistic spirit, a strong sense of social responsibility and an innovative mindset, so that they embrace innovation ans strive for social and global good.

So we have very positive conversations with some investors especially from the last beach camp we had conversations now with Fosun, a company that has been investing in Portugal in the last few years and so it’s really about this connection. Sometimes you have to knock on several doors to open a door that is very close to you. And I think that might have happened with the China Start. Of course, conversations are still ongoing and are still starting but this might actually be the start of a very interesting journey.

After joining China Start, we worked together with Tencent to help Chinese visitors to Europe, especially the free independent traveler who is coming back to Europe after the pandemic for sure. People say Tencent has a very good network of over one billion Chinese users. We used Wechat mini programme to attract Chinese travellers to come to Europe. I'm really a big fan of the way Chinese people look at businesses and technology, so I would love to taste China again.

I know I speak up on behalf of myself and my fellow classmates in China Start cohort but it’s been really impressive the quality and caliber of the people that we’ve been introduced to and getting lectures from if it’s either teaching us about Chinese customs and the approach to business and how to get the deals done but also it’s the social media from senior executives at Byte Dance, retail trends from Alibaba. We’ve learned about structure from rows of senior partners at PWC. And this is all topped off with pitch events to not just mid-tier investors, we’re talking about opportunities to chat with managing partners at major VC firms. We’ve met with Tencent, Fosun. It’s just been a very impressive lineup for a lot of people that we met in the program.

I came to the UK 26 years ago, so lots of changes obviously, so I need to understand a bit more in terms of business because I’ve trained as a scientist, and doing business in China is totally different, even I’m Chinese. It’s quite hard to understand. So China Start actually helps you to know how to build a relationship, how to build trust through an introduction by CKGSB, this kind of big platform which is really good for us, for investors after the final pitching I received.

We participated in China start because we are focused on social media space and China is way ahead of any social media platform invest and China Start really helped us to actually understand and map out the landscape within that. They had experts from Tiktok and also Dean Bo Ji has been tremendously helpful in sort of compartmentalizing all of the aspects within that space. So if you want to build something massive, go to China Start.

Our goal was to find a partner in the great bay area and China Start gave us the opportunity. The networking with other companies on the same mission with investors and big companies in China gave us the exposure we needed. The learning opportunity to know more about business trends in China was my biggest takeaway and I was particularly impressed with the development on the retail industry in China since my last visit to Shenzhen and Guangzhou. I believe that we have a great partnership opportunity in the future and I would recommend China Start to anyone who wants to expand to China.