Hong Kong ICT Awards 2025: ICT Startup Award

Background

The Hong Kong ICT (HKICT) Awards aims at recognising and promoting outstanding information and communications technology (ICT) inventions and applications, thereby encouraging innovation and excellence among Hong Kong’s ICT talents and enterprises in their constant pursuit of creative and better solutions to meet business and social needs.​ There are eight categories under the Hong Kong ICT Awards 2025. There will be one Grand Award in each category, and an “Award of the Year” will be selected from the eight Grand Awards by the Grand Judging Panel.

About ICT Startup Award

Hong Kong ICT Awards 2025: ICT Startup Award aims at discovering and recognising the outstanding local ICT startup companies which focus on software, hardware and social innovation areas and, reward their distinguished development based on their growth, innovation, creativity, functionality, market potential and performance.

AWARD STREAM

Entrants may select one of the following three streams

(1) HARDWARE AND DEVICES

To recognise the ICT startup companies with products / services in the category of Internet of Things, wearable devices and various kind of smart devices, medical equipment, robotics and innovation that leverage hardware as a delivery platform.

(2) SOFTWARE AND APPS

To recognise the ICT startup companies with products / services in the category of mobile apps,software and related services, basic research, gaming,etc.

(3) SOCIAL IMPACT

To recognise the ICT startup companies that innovate, launch, create social impact related service, program, platform, etc

GENERAL ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS

• The applicant must have the intellectual property right and/or legitimate right over the ICT product/service mentioned in the application.  The applicant shall disclose disputes any place over the world over intellectual property right about the applicant’s ICT product/service, if any, for the Leading Organiser to consider eligibility of the application.
• The application must be submitted by locally (Hong Kong) registered entities (please enclose Company/Business Registration proof) or residents in Hong Kong[1] at the time of closing for entry enrolment.
• A significant part of the innovation, design, research and development (R&D) of the mentioned ICT product/service must come from resources in Hong Kong.  The applicant should demonstrate significant value-add by the Hong Kong resources contributing to the success of the ICT product/service in the target market.
• The submitted product/service must have been available[2] in the market for at least 3 months or in live operation for at least 3 months at the time of closing for entry enrolment (please enclose proof – e.g. delivery note, invoice, public announcement, advertisement, internal announcement, etc.).
• The same application is only allowed to be submitted to a maximum of ONE award stream among all the Categories. Any application found to have entered into more than one award stream will be disqualified.
• Winning entries of the Gold/Silver/Bronze award in previous years of the HKICT Awards can enter the Awards again only if there is significant change or enhancement in the product/service, or for a new award category.

[1] “Residents in Hong Kong”, in the context of HKICT Awards, include both permanent and non-permanent residents. If an entry is submitted by more than one person, at least half of the members of the group must be Hong Kong resident.  For the case of Student Innovation category, certification of Hong Kong resident status can be performed through certifying student status collectively by concerned educational institution.

[2] Examples are applications and products already in the market, application systems deployed internally in a company, and mobile solutions available at App Stores.  For startup companies competing for ICT Startup Award, prototypes appear only on kickstarter or similar platforms are NOT considered as available in the market.

PRIZES AND BENEFITS

The remarkable achievements of the Awards winners (Gold/Silver/Bronze) will be recognised by customers, organisations, the ICT industry practitioners and across the community.

Winners will be entitled —

• to receive trophies (Gold/Silver/Bronze) of the Hong Kong ICT Awards;

  to display the official logo of the Hong Kong ICT Awards in their promotional materials;

• to participate in various promotional campaigns to publicise their achievements;

• to be supported for entering into other international awards and competitions;

  to 3 months free access to Lion Rock 72 (co-working space in InnoCentre) or co-working space in Hong Kong Science Park Incubation Centre for SMEs [1] ;

• to participate in investment matching activities of the Hong Kong Business Angel Network (HKBAN);

• to 3 months free access to Flexi Space in Cyberport Smart-Space for SMEs[2] ;

• to receive Green Channel Interview (conditional[3] ) offer of “HK Tech 300 Seed Fund” by City University of Hong Kong (CityU). The awardee will receive up to HKD100,000 in funding and other support from the programme (https://www.cityu.edu.hk/hktech300/about-hk-tech-300/hk-tech-300-seed-fund) (For Student Innovation category, only Stream IV “Postgraduate or above” winners are eligible) after passing through the interview; and

• to free participation in some large-scale local ICT events (e.g. InnoEX) for marketing exposure.

Registration link: https://form.jotform.com/250982283899375
Enquiry: ictstartup@hkwtia.org