China: Dynamic Markets Covestro Eyes China’s Growing Entrepreneur Market

Covestro is keen to be a part of China’s growth story and is already supplying consumer start-ups with innovative materials. The company has also collaborated with Kairos Future and carried out a joint market study on the expanding start-up scenario in the country.

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China – The vast Chinese start-up ecosystem is a new field of engagement for the materials manufacturer Covestro. For this reason, the company, together with the market research consultants of ‘Kairos Future’, facilitated a new, comprehensive study of the broad landscape that has developed over recent years.

Nurtured through government policies and investments and triggered through entrepreneurial success stories like Alibaba and Tencent, a new idea of becoming entrepreneurs has emerged among Chinese youngsters. In 2017, over 100 Chinese start-ups were listed in stock markets around the world, and more than 270 companies were in the list of Chinese ‘unicorns’, meaning companies younger than ten years and valued with around one billion Euro or more.

With venture capital assets of around 746 billion dollars, China is now second only to the US when it comes to global venture capital. Covestro wants to take part in this development and looks into ways to cooperate, invest, teach and learn from the start-up environment in China.

The company supplies materials and solutions to different start-ups of consumer industries in order to improve their products and material choice within the first mile of their development. For that reason, Covestro is present in accelerators or incubating spaces in innovation hubs like Shenzhen. In China’s ‘Silicon Valley’ the firm meets and approaches entrepreneurs to offer help, advice and sharing of know-how on materials and solutions that help them to bring their products to market readiness.

Covestro fosters its start-up engagement globally by partnering with US-based founders platform ‘Plug & Play’ on digital and new material solutions. In Germany, the company actively supports the development of sustainable chemistry start-ups together with the ‘Federal Association of German Start-ups’.

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