Hark the rise of the middle kingdom in Asia: 

The recently-released Global Startup Ecosystem Report and Ranking 2017 by Startup Genome stirs up debate over the necessity of startups to thrive and if the startup world at large is overlooking the less obvious opportunities in a rising Asia, that is, its secondary cities.

The report, based on a survey of 10,000 startup founders across more than 100 cities, assessed the startup ecosystems in 50 countries based on overall performance, funding, market reach, talent and startup experience.

Its 2017 rankings, put together by Startup Genome in collaboration with Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) as its publication partner, place five of the top 20 startup ecosystems in in Asia, with China featuring two cities �" Beijing in number four and Shanghai in number 8. Singapore came in 12th, Sydney in 17th and Bangalore in the final 20th position.

“There is always some subjectivity in such surveys. I would, for example, like to know if e ach criteria was given equal weightage when the rankings were calculated,” said Bill Liu (right), chairman and managing partner, Stream Global Pte Ltd, a Singapore-based venture capital and incubator for startups.

He said that although he wouldn’t “quarrel too much over the rankings”, he noted some of Asian cities of prominence in the start-up arena were missing. Some of these include Shenzhen (“very strong”), Kuala Lumpur (“emerging”), Jakarta (“especially in the last couple of years”) and Mumbai (“given time, will also develop”).

Another venture capitalist in Asia, while wanting to be remain unnamed, concurred saying he was surprised Shenzhen did not make the list “in spite of attracting more venture capital investment than Shanghai for several years”.

One could argue that it is too easy for foreigners to get too enamoured with Shanghai without considering the huge tiger in the south, Shenzen, which is seeing an incredible rate of innovation and invention but less talked about in foreign media circles.

Indeed, the growing prominence of secondary cities in Asia in the startup arena suggests there may be an unnecessary emphasis on the importance of being in a startup “ecosystem” in order to thrive.

Download "Global Startup Ecosystem Report and Ranking 2017" here.

Read the full article here.