An exhibition booth at SLUSH

For the first time in three years since 2019, Fukuoka City had an exhibition booth at the Finnish startup event SLUSH with four startups. The Fukuoka City booth facing the main street next to the substage was always crowded with people. The four startups, who joined SLUSH for the first time, were very active, not only in individual business meetings at the booth, but also in promoting their products at other booths and making new contacts at side events during the SLUSH event.

(Participating startups are as follows)

• Chiral (https://www.chiral.one/)
  Provides solutions to difficulties and challenges in drug development for pharmaceutical companies by combining cutting-edge technologies of AI and Big Data with chemical informatics.
• Dopang (https://dopang.co/en/a-homepage-section/)
  Dopang offers a learning kit, “Gengoya", developed by Indonesian illustrators and designers who have experience in learning Japanese.
• Studio Treant (https://treant.co.jp)
  Planning, design, production, distribution, operation, and sales of Internet and digital contents.
• xCura (https://x-cura.com/)
  Developed "XR Therapy," a digital analgesic application that reduces pain, anxiety, and chronic pain during treatment through VR.

Fukuoka City also promoted to booth visitors the support it provides as a startup city, its living environment, and the specific support it offers when expanding into Fukuoka. Startups with a concrete desire to expand their business in Fukuoka set up meetings with the Fukuoka Global Startup Center (GSC) to discuss specific business matters.

Fukuoka Event Held

On Slush Day 2, we held a side event with four startups in cooperation with Fukuoka Directive Council (FDC), Helsinki Partners, a partner of FDC, and the City of Helsinki. The event included sharing the healthcare market in Helsinki and Japan, introducing Fukuoka City projects related to healthcare and examples of GSC's support, pitches by four Fukuoka startups, and casual networking time. The event attracted about 60 attendees, and during the networking session, local companies, startups, and support organizations interested in the startups' services contacted the Fukuoka startups to learn more about their services and products.

Global Pitch Event "ASCENSION Pitch" Held!

On November 17, Fukuoka City held a global pitch event in cooperation with JETRO and Startup GoGo.
In this event, 15 global startups, from 15 bases in 11 countries/regions with which Fukuoka City has concluded MoUs for mutual support gave pitches, "Desk Me" (https://deskme.com/) from Finland and "EchoX" (https://www.echox.app/en/) from Taiwan won awards respectively.

In addition, the startups also took the stage at "StartupGo! 2022 The Pitch," one of the largest pitch stages in a domestic event. The "JETRO global collaboration pitch" held at the same venue on the following day, November 18, to pitch to domestic investors and large corporations. A networking party was held in the evening of both the 17th and 18th, where the startups, investors, and large corporations were able to interact with each other.

While face-to-face exchanges were restricted under COVID-19, Fukuoka City was able to hold an onsite event with overseas startups for the first time in about 3 years.

With the significant easing of waterfront measures by the Japanese government, borders have been opened and startups and support organizations from abroad are visiting Fukuoka almost every week. We will continue to deepen exchanges even further from here on out to boost our mutual startup ecosystem.

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