Optics Valley, the cradle of star startups

Return of the natives

Ruan Rui, 37, founder of animation company Yhkt Entertainment, is a Wuhan native who has taken advantage of what Optic Valley has to offer.

Last month, the company announced it had been authorized to produce a 3D animation based on Chinese sci-fi writer Liu Cixin's Three Body trilogy. It will premiere on Chinese video website Bilibili, a co-producer of the animation.

Ruan graduated from Beijing's Communication University of China in 2005 and came back to found the company a decade later.

Just over one-quarter of the 140 staff members are from the province and relocated to Wuhan for work. The majority of the employees were born between 1990 and 1995.

"Young talent brings new ideas, which are important in the animation industry," Ruan said.

"Wuhan is a vibrant city that has developed fast in its economy and other aspects. You can maintain a good quality of life in Wuhan, where the cost of living is a bit lower than Beijing and Shanghai."

Ruan extolled the preferential policies of Optics Valley saying his company was awarded rent and talent subsidies.

"The quality of Chinese animation series has caught up with their counterparts in Japan and South Korea in recent years. And the audience in China for animation series is increasing greatly, making it a potential market," he said.

Like him, 35-year-old twin brothers Wu Bing and Wu Jie, are natives of Wuhan who chose Optics Valley due to its friendly environment for startups.

Wu Bing worked on Wall Street and Wu Jie in Silicon Valley with both returning to China in 2012 because of curiosity about the "great changes" happening in their homeland. Two years later, they founded Shimo Docs. Similar to Google Docs, it's a cloud-based collaborative office software with Chinese aesthetic design. Many of its 20 million individual users and 200,000 corporate users live in first-and second-tier cities in China and are aged between 18 and 35.

"Optics Valley is like the home where we started our dream," Wu Bing said. "The authorities are doing their utmost to support us with their policies and help us have more media exposure."

Since 2016, their company has been selected to take part in an annual project of Optics Valley that offers staff exchange programs, both domestic and overseas, for entrepreneurs. Wu Jie said young talent is an integral part of the company. The average age of their staff is 27.

"Our young staff members are self-motivated, with great professional competence. They are of similar age and get along easily with each other," he said.

Liu Kun contributed to this story.