OPAA Master Class 2024: Achieving Entrepreneurial Success

Dr Ng leverages his skills and knowledge to help start-ups realise their potential. In 1999, he established Goldford Group with an initial seed capital of HK$5,000; the investment group provides angel funding and support to early-stage start-ups in the fintech, internet, and education sectors, and creative industries. By spearheading R&D initiatives in pattern recognition and image processing, Dr Ng also solidified the group’s leading position in the biometric facial recognition market and listed one of its companies in the U.S. in 2006. Afterwards, he set up G-Rocket and Web3Labs; the latter assists global Web3 companies in expanding their international presence from Hong Kong through landing services, investment acceleration, technical cooperation, and compliance support. It currently has offline incubators in Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Hangzhou, Beijing and other locations.

Mr Fang co-founded Hai Robotics, the first unicorn start-up nurtured under PolyU’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. The company independently developed HaiPick, the world’s first Autonomous Case-handling Robot (ACR) system that boosts warehouse operation efficiency by three to four times and storage density by 80% to 400%. Hai Robotics currently serves customers from over 40 countries and regions, with offices in China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Netherlands, Singapore and the U.S. Revolutionising warehouse logistics, it has filed over 1,800 patent applications worldwide and earned the RBR50 Robotics Innovation Award in 2022. 

Dr Tam is the President of the Outstanding PolyU Alumni Association. With over 30 years of experience in the technology sector, he has played a pivotal role in nurturing start-ups in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area. He founded Group Sense (International) Limited in 1988, which has been renowned for its Instant-Dict, the world’s first electronic Chinese-English dictionary. Within just five years of its launch, the company was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, setting a record at that time. Dr Tam has served as Chairman of the Hong Kong Industry-University-Research Collaboration Association, and has been a Partner of Hong Kong Inno Angel Fund, Shenzhen Baytech Capital, and Shenzhen Zebras Technology Startup Acceleration, all of which are important vehicles that support entrepreneurs in developing their innovations. 

Ir Sit is a Professor of Practice (Electrical Engineering) and Adjunct Professor at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of PolyU. In his role as Secretary for Innovation and Technology, he oversaw the establishment of two InnoHK research clusters and flagship I&T projects, focusing on healthcare technologies, as well as artificial intelligence and robotics technologies. He actively promoted Hong Kong’s participation in developing the Greater Bay Area into an international I&T centre by capitalising on the synergies between local research and development capabilities and the strong advanced manufacturing capabilities of neighbouring cities. Additionally, he further deepened the I&T co-operation between Hong Kong and Shenzhen.