(Yicai Global) April 27 -- The winners of the first Cultural and Innovative Shanghai awards, co-organized by Shanghai DoBe Cultural & Creative Industry Development Group, a developer and operator of cultural and creative industry clusters, were announced yesterday.

The five grand prizes went to: interactive movie and television production platform Altstory Beijing; virtualization solution provider Xiamen Meta Maker; smart retailing solution supplier Shanghai Cloudpick; livestreaming tool developer Yichang Chenjin Technology; and ethnic culture promoter Yangpu Ensan Ethnic Culture Communication Center.

Ten other contestants won second prize, while the remaining 20 took third prize.

More than 400 companies signed up to the contest. Fifty-one qualified for the selection round held at the DoBe WE International Hub Century Space between April 10 and 13. Themed as Cultural and Innovative Shanghai Gathering Forces for the Future, the contest had three competition areas: digital tech and metaverse, future lifestyle, and original content production and distribution.

The winners will receive nine forms of support from the organizing committee, including incubation, cloud services, promotion, and investor matching. Eligible high-quality projects will also be offered free office spaces in related industrial parks for a certain period.

In addition, the committee will recommend they take part in exhibitions such as the Yangtze River Delta International Cultural Industries Expo and China International Small and Medium Enterprises Fair as well as the competitive ranking for top 100 designers and brands in Shanghai, enabling the startups to accelerate their growth.

An alliance for Shanghai's digital and cultural innovation and metaverse industries was also set up yesterday by the Shanghai Cultural and Creative Industry Promotion Association and local metaverse-related technology providers, application scenario suppliers, academic research bodies, public service platforms, and others.

The alliance will build cooperation platforms in areas such as culture and creativity, culture and tourism, and cultural entertainment, promoting the clustering of major firms and projects while providing members with industry training and exchanges, brand promotion, resource matching, policy alignment, and so forth to better serve the development of the digital and cultural innovation industry.

The cultural and creative sector contributed 13 percent to Shanghai's total economic output last year, with the per capita output of cultural and creative practitioners averaging CNY1.7 million (USD245,525), data from the 2023 Shanghai Cultural and Creative Industry Promotion Conference showed.

Shanghai plans to enhance the study of new technologies, business forms, and trends in the cultural and creative sectors and cultivate new business forms for digital and cultural innovation this year.

Editors: Zhang Yushuo, Futura Costaglione