AIA Launches Start-Up Accelerator Course in Hong Kong

Insurance giant AIA has launched a 12-week course aimed at helping start-ups in the health care and wearable sectors develop their businesses, and it’s using social to drive the message.

The accelerator program started accepting applications last month and will select eight companies during a demo day in June, who will each receive mentoring and potential long-term equity investments.

AIA used the social media accounts of its 17 global offices to garner interest in the program, across Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It also promoted it on WeChat and Weibo in China. The program sponsors, including Microsoft, KPMG, and Amazon, too, shared a series of online posts on their social accounts.

“It’s gone viral and we want it to continue to be viral but now in a more controlled way,” says Alyssa Tam, program director of the AIA Accelerator Course.

Nest, an early-stage venture capital firm, has joined AIA to run the course in Hong Kong. While the company already holds some programs aimed at helping fledgling start-ups grow, this is its largest partnership to date.

“It’s about creating a dialogue with entrepreneurs and the start-up community, to transfer knowledge and learning, and to help shape the creativity and idea of the start-up community into commercial outcome,” says Tam.

Napoleon Biggs, commercial director of retail start-up Bolei Digital, and founder of Hong Kong’s Web Wednesday, says the scheme puts AIA ahead of its competitors by allowing them to tap into a new generation of potential future business customers.

“Yes you get some corporate social responsibility out of the initiative,” he says, “but you can also use it as leverage for a younger demographic to get them interested in the brand without talking about insurance.”

Others believe that AIA’s decision to make this a branded accelerator program is both forward-thinking and innovative.

“A big brand reinvents itself by connecting insights with execution, and this is a great way for a large organization to achieve that without disrupting its internal organization,” says Peter Dingle, brand and strategy lead for tablet at Intel Asia Pacific and Japan.

He predicts more brands in Asia will catch onto this in 2015.