New center to aid listings for high-tech startups

A new market service center for high-tech companies in the Yangtze River Delta region officially started operations on Wednesday.

The center, established in November last year at 1158 Zhangdong Road in the Pudong New Area, is an incubator aimed at helping emerging tech startups in the region go public on a new local science and technology innovation board.

Since establishment, the center has organized talks and seminars to assess science and innovation enterprises in the delta, including their plans to go public.

For those qualified to list on the new board, the center offers a range of services related to listing, equity investment, financing, fundraising and risk management.

Altogether 57 companies have already applied for listings on the board, which has not set an official launch date. The independent board will be managed by the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Twelve cities in the delta from Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces, as well as a number of legal and accounting firms, have signed agreements to participate with the center.

Zhang Hui, deputy director of Pudong’s financial work bureau, said there are over 100 companies in area with their eyes on the upcoming science and technology innovation board.

“The center will be a platform to grow seeds for the board,” said Zhang. “For the companies, the center will lead the way to the wider market.”

Local artificial intelligence machine vision developer Xiaoyi Technology is one of the companies looking forward to the center's services.

“We are good at research and development, but not the capital market,” said Da Shengwei, CEO of Xiaoyi.

In the future, the center plans to set up branches in other cities of the delta to extend its services.