TAIPEI, Taiwan, June 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- InnoVEX, the
startup exhibition of COMPUTEX has successfully ended in Taipei
on June 8. During the three days,
InnoVEX 2018 hosted 388 startups from 21 countries & regions:
Taiwan, Canada, Singapore, Philippines, Japan, United
States, Netherlands,
Belgium, France, Poland, Spain, Japan,
Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong
Kong, Mexico, Sweden, Austria, Germany, and Saudi
Arabia. In total, InnoVEX 2018 was joined by 17,867 visitors
from around the world and the livestream of forums & pitches
reached 696,324 views.
Significant Government Support to InnoVEX
Many government VIPs joined the opening ceremony of InnoVEX;
including: the Premier of Taiwan,
Mayor of Eindhoven, Mayor of Taipei, and more. The attending VIPs
also signed a signboard as a show of support towards innovation and
the startup ecosystem. They also toured the showgrounds, visiting
booths from both local and international startups.
During the opening ceremony, Premier Lai held the opening
remarks. He stated that the Taiwan
government is actively developing a good environment for startups
in funding, taxes, and testing by implementing new policies and
laws. He believes that with a cooperation between the government
and industries, InnoVEX can more easily grow and help startups to
develop innovative solutions in industry 4.0, IoT, AI, cloud
computing, autonomous cars, and more; to apply them in daily
life.
There are also pavilions organized by government instances: the
Ministry of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Science and Technology,
and more. There are also 13 national pavilions including: Le French
Tech, Netherlands Trade & Investment Office, and more. This
shows how highly they regard Taiwan as a partner in both trade and
innovation.
Top Tier Global VCs Join InnoVEX Forum Together with over 60
Speakers
InnoVEX Forum lasted for 3 days. Speakers from around the world
and all walks of life joined to share their insights on the
industry. The main topics of the forums are: AI, Blockchain,
Startup Ecosystem, Women Entrepreneurship, Gaming, and Future
Mobility.
The speakers come from a variety of backgrounds and are
currently in: Appier, BBC, Bitmark, Bloomberg, BMW, Deloitte
Tohmatsu Venture Support, Fenox Venture Capital, Girls In Tech,
IBM, Imec.xpand, Insilico, Intel, IOTA Foundation, Microsoft,
NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Twitch, and more. In total, the number of
speakers was more than 60.
On June 7, InnoVEX co-hosted the
Women Entrepreneurship Forum with Girls in Tech. In the opening
keynote, the founder & CEO of Girls in Tech, Ms. Adriana Gascoigne mentioned how women's presence
in the workspace can be beneficial to help companies develop a more
comprehensive product as more perspectives can go into the
development process. She also expressed her delight in seeing a lot
of women in InnoVEX; how she enjoyed the forums brought by the
other speakers; and might be able to cooperate more with InnoVEX in
the future.
On June 8, 3 top tier global VCs
joined the Startup Ecosystem Forum to share their insights from
different regions. Tom Vanhoutte,
the Founder & Managing Partner of Imec.xpand from Belgium shared with the audience that
Europe is not a unified market and
every country will have their own idiosyncrasies. The investors in
Europe are also generally more
careful in their due diligence and more risk averse.
Yuma Saito, the Founder & General Director of Deloitte
Tohmatsu Venture Support from Japan believes that entrepreneurs should not
work for money and pride, but to solve a problem in society and
change it. In Japan, entrepreneurs
might have a better chance to get funding from corporate investors,
such as SoftBank, Sony, Panasonic, and more.
The CEO & General Partner of Fenox Venture Capital from
USA, Dr. Uzzaman shared several
important techniques to help startups to grow. He encouraged
startups to focus on core businesses rather than patent filing,
which might slow them down. He also advised startups to master a
short pitch. He emphasized how effective communication can be the
difference between success and failure of a startup.
All forums are livestreamed to the InnoVEX Twitch channel where
it attracted nearly 700,000 views. Soon the videos will also be
available in the InnoVEX YouTube channel.
BioInspira is the InnoVEX Pitch Contest Grand Prize
Winner
123 startups applied for the InnoVEX Pitch Contest this year.
After going through the preliminary round, only 29 startups
remained for the semifinal round on June
7. The Final round was held on June
8 where the 8 finalists from Taiwan, US, Philippines, and China pitched in front of the panel of
judges.
"The competition was getting better every single year." the
Chief Judge, Anis Uzzaman said. "I was really excited to see so
many great companies. The level of the companies was the best so
far and I feel that it was a great competition overall." The Grand
Prize of USD 30,000 went to
BioInspira; a materials science company from United States that harnesses biology to
provide low cost and highly accurate sensors for real time
detection and analysis of air chemicals in industries.
In addition to the grand prize from the organizers, there are
also special prizes from the sponsors. The Delta Electronics, Inc.
Special Award of USD 10,000 was
awarded to OneWatt Solutions. Nogle Limited & Maxceed Capital
Group special prize of USD 10,000 was
awarded to Kloudless. Taiwan's
SMEA Startup Terrace Awards are given to A-Volute, Tempow, Origami
Group Limited, Kloudless, and OneWatt Solutions. The winners of the
Startup Terrace Award were awarded USD
60,000 each and are invited to enter the Linkou Startup
Terrace for 1 year with a discounted rate.
InnoVEX will Return in May
2019
InnoVEX 2018 hosted 388 startups, 17,867 visitors, and over 200
global investors; many of whom gave a positive impression of
InnoVEX. Aymerik Renard of Hardware Club stated that he was
pleasantly surprised and very impressed by the caliber of the
companies and how they did in the pitch. He would like to return to
InnoVEX next year. Ryan, the CEO of BioInspira which won the
InnoVEX Pitch Contest Grand Prize praised InnoVEX as a really good
event, as it helps startups connect with investors and customers;
and he will definitely come back next year.
After a stellar 2018, InnoVEX 2019 will be held in late May. As
there will be a new exhibition hall for COMPUTEX, the scale of
InnoVEX is also expected to grow even larger than this year. The
registration of startups will be announced in October 2018. More details can be found on the
InnoVEX website: https://innovex.computex.biz
About InnoVEX
InnoVEX was established in 2016 as a platform specifically for
tech startups to network with global buyers, investors, and
manufacturers. This exhibition aims to accelerate the
commercialization process, while also providing effective
matchmaking for capital and manufacturing capabilities. InnoVEX
also has a packed schedule of forum sessions, pitch contest,
startup demos, and one-to-one business matchmaking.
About TCA
Taipei Computer Association (TCA), the co-organizer of COMPUTEX
and InnoVEX was established in 1974; and is the leading industrial
organization in Taiwan. Its 4,000
members engages various fields such as software, hardware,
semiconductors and components, manufacture, sales, network
communication service, etc., thereby generating over 80% of the
total production value of Taiwan's
Information Communication Technology (ICT).
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SOURCE Taipei Computer Association (TCA)