As a post-80’s entrepreneur from Hong Kong, Chan Sing has quite a full daily schedule just like his peers who start business in Shenzhen, "now none of my companies are in Hong Kong".

Inspired by the inundant trend of e-pay in the mainland, Chan determined to transfer his business to Guangdong, and registered an IT company Ekstech developing searching engine systems for cross-border e-commerce in Qianhai Free Trade Zone in 2015.  

Chan Sing in the interview.

Chan also acts as the secretary-general for Young Professionals Alliance, an organization aiming to gather talents from all fields and boost integration and communication between Hong Kong and Guangdong.

To some extend, Chan is bridging Hong Kong and Guangdong.

Benefit from GD-HK’ win-win cooperation

Chan introduced that the main product for Ekstech is a searching engine system named RUSSEL, providing services for B2B cross-border e-commerce platforms and their logistics and distribution.

As a multi-lingual and multi-currency system, RUSSEL has received a very good feedback from global market. It provides more than 150,000 kinds of products from about 212 giant suppliers in the world, with the maximum monthly turnover over 3.45 million USD.

Thanks to the closer connection between Guangdong and Hong Kong, Chan cheered for the benefits that have been brought to his company，“without the win-win cooperation between the two places, my company would be not exist at all”.

At present some of his colleagues in Hong Kong are responsible in product design and marketing, while colleagues in Shenzhen do more about technical parts and sales.

This has become a common mode for Hong Kong-invested companies in Guangdong, so that they can take full use of two places’ advantages.

Moreover, a series of preferential policies including CEPA, Belt and Road Initiative and co-construction of Guangdong Pilot Free Trade Zone have been carried out to boost cooperation between the two places. Now more Hong Kong people have been attracted to invest or start businesses in Guangdong.

Statistics shows that in the past 20 years 840,000 Hong Kong-invested projects have been approved in Guangdong with a contractual value of 379.06 billion USD.

Promote Cantonese brands to the world

When talking about his future plan, Chan expressed his ambition of introducing brands from the mainland, particularly from Guangdong to the world via his searching engine.

Chan explained that now there are many Guangdong brands that are very popular in foreign areas, such as Wong Lo Kat (Wanglaoji, 王老吉), a famous brand for Chinese herbal tea especially welcomed by people in South China, and Zhujiang Beer, a famous brand for beer originated from Guangzhou. Those products have been exported to some parts of the world already and are known to some foreign people.

But Chan was not satisfied with this situation, saying those brands would become world famous just like Coca-Cola, which was just an ordinary US brand in the beginning.

Chan really hoped to make contribution to it, and he is now on the road. One of his friends has become an official agency for Zhujiang Beer in South America and will cooperate with RUSSEL to bring more Zhujiang Beers to the world.

Chan is not alone on this road. CY Leung, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, indicated that Mainland and Hong Kong enterprises can work together to leverage each other's strengths to explore overseas markets. Hong Kong’s role as a “super-connector” will not only help Mainland enterprises to “go global” but also bring in foreign companies, fully leveraging Hong Kong’s competitive advantages to meet the country’s requirements.