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On Tuesday, Chinese telecom gear maker Huawei announced it will invest $100 million in the Asia-Pacific startup ecosystem over the next three years.

A senior official said that the company plans to expand Spark Programme to India after the COVID-19 pandemic eases in the country.

Huawei Asia-Pacific vice-president Jay Chen said that the company has started this programme in Singapore, and has thereafter, expanded it to other APAC economies like Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia.

“We are investing in these startup ecosystems and providing them with an open and collaborative ICT ecosystem. India is a very important country for Huawei. It has a good economic environment and a hardworking talent pool. As the pandemic situation eases, we have plans to expand the scope of this initiative to support the robust startup ecosystem of India,” Chen said.

Huawei has been contributing in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand to build their startup hubs.

At the Huawei Cloud Spark, Founders Summit held on Tuesday, Huawei also announced that this programme would focus its efforts on developing four additional startup hubs in Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam with the overarching aim of recruiting a total of 1,000 startups into the Spark accelerator programme and shaping 100 of them into scale-ups.

Earlier in June 2021, the Bengaluru-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP) received CSR support from Huawei India for the deployment of C-CAMP’s non-invasive ventilator and remote vitals monitoring machines in public health hospitals and facilities across Karnataka.

According to the official statement, the joint initiative also helped in the deployment of oxygen concentrators.

(Disclaimer: Additional background information has been added to this PTI copy for context)