Using Hong Kong as a Fundraising and Expansion Platform into the GBA

With its key role in the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) and an international talent pool, Hong Kong naturally attracts investments and businesses – especially for the IT sectors.

GetLinks is in the business of creating positive impact by connecting people and enabling opportunities, whether it's digital talent seeking to expand their career or traditional businesses evolving for the digital age. This five-year-old human capital and venture-building start-up does business across Southeast Asia.

Two years ago, GetLinks, as one of the leading digital talent platforms in Southeast Asia, saw an opportunity to connect with the huge Mainland China market by opening a Hong Kong office. Now the company's co-founder Keenan Kwok looks into Hong Kong to further connect GetLinks' ecosystem into the GBA and Mainland China.

Leveraging Hong Kong's Unique Advantages

Kwok and his team recognised the strategic advantages of Hong Kong – with a highly educated talent pool and special multi-cultural background that showcases exceptional globality. As the international competition for talent accelerates, especially for digital professionals in this ever-evolving digital era, many corporates stay ahead of the curve by embracing end-to-end SaaS solutions like GetLinks' to help them with building a local and distributed workforce in different parts of the world. "Hong Kong offers the fastest place to do business, where you can do the most meetings with the most relevant decision-makers, and actually go from a meeting to a commitment."

Hong Kong's key role in the GBA is also a strong pull factor for GetLinks, which is now planning to allocate half of its resources to expand into Mainland China through this important gateway. Once their office and partnerships in the GBA materialise in the coming months, Kwok expects to have one of the largest and most sought-after talent pools covering nine mega cities in the region. "InvestHK provided support to GetLinks' setting up in Hong Kong few years ago. In a very short time we were connected with many friends and supporters from various industries who share similar visions of digital transformation on building distributed and remote teams. As a result, our GetLinks (with our HK job-board brand 'CPJobs.com') sales grew from zero to over 20 percent of our group sales, providing us with the vision, resources and teams to deepen our business into the GBA."

Keystone to the GBA 'Ecosystem'

Kwok appreciated the HKSAR Government's pro-active approach to start-ups in nurturing the ecosystem here. "Their agenda is very clear. They are here to help. They are here to build bridges, they are here to provide ignition funding to gear startup for more private funding." A key part of this investment ecosystem is the existence of organisations like InvestHK, which opened new doors for GetLinks, speeding up local growth with businesses and funding from strategic investors such as Cyberport, the Macro Fund Investment, and the Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund. In this ambitious vision, Hong Kong has clearly laid the groundwork for foreign direct investment. "I think being in Hong Kong," said Kwok, "one strong benefit is proximity and abundance to supportive government organisations and family offices. It also exists in Hong Kong many companies like Animoca Brands and Sandbox that are creating paradigm shifts, which serves as great inspiration and provide learning opportunities for the young generation." While Hong Kong is expensive relative to GBA or the rest of Asia, its highly educated and multilingual talent pool is instrumental in assisting foreign companies to expand into Mainland China and vice versa. "We see a lot of Mainland companies successfully build their teams in Hong Kong to help with their overseas expansion."

GetLinks has now become a venture building partner for companies or talent looking to cross-expand in Southeast Asia and Mainland China. It has expanded its business from individual talent to collective team building and project outsourcing. The company is particularly excited about helping Chinese companies to expand overseas.

For Asian companies, he believes Hong Kong remains a great springboard for companies seeking participation into the GBA and Mainland China, and those with an established GBA presence will allow them to capture these once–in-a-lifetime opportunities as the world gets ready for an economic 'reset'.