By Niccolò Schlueb, Junior Project Manager - Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Last week, a very Scandinavian start-up fair took place in shanghai: Slush Shanghai and swissnex China’s Innovation & Entrepreeurship team was there!

A black interior, glaring lights, loud music and animators on no less than four stages – Slush certainly resembled more a huge concert hall than an exhibition for entrepreneurs and innovators.

Nevertheless, Slush impressed with a large line-up of high-level keynote speakers and panelists such as Peter Vesterbacka, Finnish mobile game developer of Angry Birds and Tony Han, Cofounder and CEO of WeRide.

Slush Shanghai also hosted lively pitching competitions in Healthtech, 5G and IoT & IoV. Last but not least, it featured various upcoming companies showcasing and promoting their products.

Bobby Lee, co-founder and former CEO of China's first crypto exchange BTCC on ownership in blockchain

Slush Shanghai impressively demonstrated that innovation and entrepreneurship can be energetic as well as cool and attract an overwhelmingly young and modern audience.

Amongst all the companies we met at the fair, we felt that a high focus was put on the new technologies in the Greentech and Cleantech environment. We deeply exchanged with startups that aimed at having a sustainable impact for the planet through new mechanisms transforming waste into any kind of reusable material.

Shanghai has become one of the major epicenters of innovation and the hot spot for startups and entrepreneurs. This is proven by the fact that next to Slush, startupgrind, in cooperation with Google, organized a China Startup Ecosystem Summit at Explorium Shanghai. The summit offered insightful speeches with the CFO of Luckin Coffee, Reinout Schakel, and interactive workshops, for example Google’s perspective on IP protection in China.

Fireside talk with the CFO of Luckin Coffee Reinout Schakel at China Startup Ecosystem Summit