During a recent trip back to Myanmar, I met with many players in the emerging innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem there, and on one occasion I was fortunate to visit the new Yangon Innovation Centre (YIC). The YIC is a compelling example of how a local government can provide the most useful asset it has at its disposal – real estate – to spur a new innovation ecosystem.

The YIC, supported by the Yangon Regional Government, has supported the capital city’s I&E ecosystem following its establishment in March 2019. It started as a small experiment by the regional government following a discussion around how the city can “empower young people to do more”. The space is in downtown Yangon, by the river, and was a former go-down. A group of like-minded individuals was brought together as the YIC Association to run the Request for Proposals process to select an operator and had as little involvement with government as possible in order to keep the process credible. Accordingly, Seedstars, a global accelerator and entrepreneurship community development enterprise was selected, and their subsidiary – Seedspace, which runs a global network of c-working spaces and startup hubs – won the bid to run YIC. The Seedspaceinnovation and entrepreneurship hub at YIC is now supported by CB Bank and Thura Swiss. The operating model is that of revenue plus profit sharing. Revenues comes from co-working and event space. The Hub is looking at setting up similar models in Kayin State and in Mandalay Region.

YIC runs an ‘Investment Readiness Programme’, which is an accelerator for startups for 6 months. Under this, 4 startups are currently in the cohort. There is also the ‘Seedstars Academy’ where university students and young entrepreneurs can get support to develop very early, idea-stage, businesses.

Local conglomerates have now begun looking to engage the YIC startup community (through hackathons, for example) and are eager to sponsor and work together. This is a testament to the growing interest among so-called ‘old economy’ businesses of Myanmar, in this new area of I&E. Recently a ‘FinLit’ hackathon (on financial literacy) was organized together with Phandeeyar, Oracle, and Yoma Bank. Meanwhile, Aya Bank now has their own innovation unit based out of YIC.