How can the central urban area with the highest economic density in Shanghai transform into a fertile land for scientific and technological innovation?, Technology+Magic City Innovation | Huangpu District | Economy

In my impression, Huangpu District is the Bund Suzhou River and the century old Nanjing Road, with historical buildings and commercial activities being its best representatives. However, in recent years, as the trend of technology returning to the city continues to strengthen, a number of new science and technology innovation centers, such as Silicon Lane and Shanghai Style Smart Valley, are becoming new business cards of Huangpu District, highlighting the science and innovation vitality of Shanghai center's central urban area.

Shanghai is building a technology innovation center with global influence, and fundamentally, the development of science and technology innovation is the driving force for high-quality economic development and transformation. On June 29th, the reporter visited two high-tech enterprises in Huangpu District for science and technology innovation services. Their incubation experiences may provide new ideas for technological innovation in super large cities.

Deeply cultivate segmented tracks

"The future competition is the competition of data," said Hu Junqing, Chairman and CEO of British Software. In 2011, Hu Junqing won a national innovation and entrepreneurship competition and was given the opportunity to settle in the Huangpu District Science and Technology Capital Innovation Incubation Base. Afterwards, he focused on this and continuously expanded his data replication business.

Over the past 12 years, British software has grown from four people to over 600 employees, serving over 5000 companies worldwide, breaking the long-standing monopoly of foreign companies on related data replication technologies. In January of this year, British software was also listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, becoming the first domestic data replication software company to go public.

When it comes to why enterprises have been able to develop rapidly, Hu Junqing believes that in addition to the popularity of the digital economy in recent years and the increase in market demand, the more important reason is that enterprises have been prepared and have been deeply cultivating in segmented markets for many years. Data replication technology can be used for big data collection, data backup, cloud disaster recovery, and other aspects, and is an indispensable technical service for modern enterprises. It is not difficult to get started with the technology in this track, but the difficulty lies in the fact that in the past, the market was dominated by international giants. If Chinese companies want to break through, they need to achieve the ultimate speed of real-time data replication and form their own technological advantages. "We are very determined to continuously invest in technology. During the listing review, the average annual R&D investment disclosed by the British software in the past three years was over 33%, and this year it is expected to reach nearly 40%," said Hu Junqing.

Similarly, another high-tech listed enterprise incubated in Huangpu District, Prus, is also a science and technology innovation service enterprise, except that Prus is engaged in the sub field of clinical trial site management services.

With the continuous acceleration of national innovative drug research and development, the pharmaceutical industry is undergoing a transformation in division of labor, and more and more sub fields are being developed. Yang Hongwei, the founder and CEO of Prius, realized in 2009 that hospitals were the main scene for clinical development of new drugs, so he drew inspiration from the Japanese SMO model and began entrepreneurship in the domestic biopharmaceutical field.

SMO services can help pharmaceutical and medical enterprises quickly organize highly specialized and experienced clinical trial teams, effectively control trial costs, and accelerate the development cycle of new drugs while ensuring the standardization of clinical trial research. As of March 31, 2023, Prius has participated in over 2500 SMO projects and has over 3700 professional business personnel, ranking among the top tier of domestic SMO enterprises. In May of last year, it officially listed on the ChiNext board and became the "first pharmaceutical SMO stock" on the A-share market.

Years of deep cultivation in a specific field have led to the rise of two science and technology innovation service enterprises. "Our advantage is that through years of accumulation, we have a considerable amount of data, which can basically cover the amount of data required by any pharmaceutical company, thereby helping customers quickly establish a clinical trial execution plan." Yang Hongwei said.

Utilize scene advantages

Building star enterprises in segmented fields and developing headquarters based, platform based, and growth oriented enterprises to settle down is the experience of science and technology incubation in Huangpu District. "The central urban area has very high environmental requirements and limited spatial resources. For industries like biopharmaceuticals, we cannot develop the entire industry chain. However, our diverse application scenarios, abundant medical resources, and developed commercial and service industries can help platform based enterprises quickly expand into the market," said Xu Weipeng, a researcher at the Huangpu District Science and Technology Commission.

Based on application scenarios, Huangpu District has planned three key industries for scientific and technological innovation development: financial technology, artificial intelligence, and biopharmaceutical industry. Huangpu District has a developed financial service industry and complete infrastructure. Currently, it is promoting the application of cutting-edge technologies such as blockchain in finance and other fields, creating a growth pole for Bund financial technology; To cultivate and develop artificial intelligence, Huangpu District is leveraging the role of the China Electronics Technology Special Robot Innovation Center and the Haipai Intelligent Valley Intelligent Manufacturing Science and Technology Innovation Platform, continuously gathering key artificial intelligence enterprises and projects, and promoting the cross-border and mixed application of artificial intelligence technology; Relying on abundant medical resources, Huangpu District is accelerating the landing of leading pharmaceutical companies, CROs, SMOs and other projects, and creating a number of biopharmaceutical health service brands with translational medicine as their characteristic.

In recent years, Huangpu District has been increasing its support for science and technology innovation enterprises. On the one hand, Huangpu District provides financial subsidies to high-tech certified enterprises that comply with policies and high growth high-tech enterprises. On the other hand, Huangpu District, as the urban area with the highest economic density and the richest economic formats in Shanghai, is also leveraging its scene advantages and actively organizing influential summit, forum, salon and other activities to provide a larger platform and more opportunities for science and technology innovation enterprises. For example, under the recommendation of Huangpu District, the British software will follow the Shanghai delegation to Hong Kong next week to participate in business exchange activities and gain more opportunities to expand its business in Hong Kong and globally.

From January to May this year, the tax revenue of the science and technology innovation service industry in Huangpu District increased by 28.2% year-on-year, and the tax revenue of the health service industry increased by 13.6% year-on-year, both showing recovery growth. At present, Huangpu District has 187 high-tech enterprises, a year-on-year increase of 14.7%. Xu Weipeng introduced that Huangpu District Science and Technology Innovation Group is currently preparing for a government guided fund. After the fund is established in the future, more attention will be focused on high-tech enterprises, and through government guided fund investment, social capital's investment confidence will be enhanced.