(Yicai) Sept. 29 -- A delegation of UK entrepreneurs, investors, and industry experts has visited Shanghai to seek cross-border business opportunities in artificial intelligence, finance, and healthcare.

Cynthia Davis, co-founder and chief executive officer of recruitment platform Diversifying.io, Nzube Ufodike, co-founder of financial education platform Crown Caste, and Paul Hercok, CEO of medical device consultancy Mantra Systems, were among the UK visitors to Shanghai.

Yicai interviewed them at the Bund FTC, an innovation hub in Shanghai’s central Huangpu district, to learned more about their visit and views of China.

Diversifying.io, an AI-powered diversity and inclusion job matching platform, plans to set up an office in China and find local partners with strong technology abilities, Davis told Yicai. She has visited Shanghai three times this year to do on-site research, including her last trip in July, during which she attended the World AI Conference.

“Just understanding how innovative China is, especially around AI capabilities, is amazing because it helps us to refine our own product,” Davis noted. “From my visits to China, I’ve been able to build a team of Chinese people who help us modify our AI capabilities on our platform because of the knowledge and experience that they have.”

Crown Caste is a podcast that aims to provide entrepreneurs with knowledge about investment and fundraising.

“We’re keen to get more Chinese listeners to understand some of the nuances if they want to tap into the capital markets internationally, then they can do so,” Ufodik told Yicai. “We’re also keen to get some capital allocators in China to be on the podcast so that they can also share how they invest.”

As an investor, Ufodike focuses on early stage companies. China has been one of the leading countries in AI and robotics, and the government gives a lot of support to startups through state-owned financial companies, he noted.

“The rest of the world can actually learn from that because the funding gap for small- to medium-sized businesses requires patient capital, while most venture capital or private equity firms have shorter timelines for investments,” Ufodike pointed out.

Mantra Systems focuses on helping medical device manufacturers to meet strict regulatory requirements when entering the United Kingdom and markets in the European Union.

China is a major force in medical device manufacturing, but Chinese firms usually bring their products to the UK and the EU through partnerships with other companies, which denies them the benefits of direct market access and denies overseas patients access to new innovations that are coming out of China, Hercok told Yicai.

The UK population is getting older, with more health problems appearing, and the only solution to this challenge is innovation, he noted.

“I’ve already seen for myself the standards of innovation here in Shanghai, and I’ve no doubt that companies based here have huge amounts to offer in terms of meeting those demands, and that means that there’s direct commercial opportunities for companies based here,” Hercok pointed out. “It’s a win-win situation if we can close that gap.”

Launched in July, the Bund FTC has seven floors and an area of 4,700 square meters, integrating office space, studios, and convention and exhibition areas. It aims to build an open and innovative community for digital content creators and financial technology practitioners.

Editor: Futura Costaglione