The East Lake High-tech Development Zone (also known as Optics Valley of China, or OVC) issued its latest policies on the OVC guide fund for entrepreneurship and investments on March 16. The fund's total scale has been expanded to 10 billion yuan ($1.57 billion).

The fund was established in 2012 and consists of 20 sub-funds involving 188 investment projects. A number of enterprises, including ABclonal and HGC Lighting Solutions, have grown rapidly due to the fund's support.

The expansion of the fund was meant to invite global investors and entrepreneurs to engage in the development of the valley and will focus on supporting OVC's young high-tech firms.

According to the policy, the first phase of the fund will involve 2 billion yuan, and the total scale will later be increased to 10 billion yuan. Sub-funds of over 50 billion yuan will also be created during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25) and may help around 5,000 OVC-based medium- and small-sized technology companies.

Companies in the valley's two pillar industrial clusters – the "optics, IC, displays, terminals and internet" industrial cluster and the life and health industrial cluster – be prioritized.

For a single sub-fund, maximum capital support has been raised to 100 million yuan and the fund return rate has been lowered to 1.5 times that of the guide fund.

Fund applicants can submit their files at any time and receive their results within 60 weekdays of the date of their official application.

Please check the WeChat public account of Optics Valley of China ("中国光谷" in Chinese) to view the detailed requirements of the sub-fund application.

Statistics show that the valley is currently home to more than 160,000 market entities and 110,000 enterprises. Over 1,500 technology financial institutions are operating in the valley, holding more than half of Wuhan’s total funds.