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Many start-ups have great ideas, but to succeed in making those ideas reality, they need the support of a strong network of incubators, accelerators and co-work spaces.

5 Asia start-ups hope to edge out global competition to win hearts of judges and the public

  • Number of start-ups in Hong Kong has increased by 146 per cent in five years
  • Non-profit initiative Jumpstarter returns to support young businesses in the region and around the globe
Paid Post: JUMPSTARTER

Hong Kong has always been famous for its entrepreneurial spirit, so it should come as no surprise that the city is becoming a global hub for start-ups.

Data recently released by the government department InvestHK shows the number of start-ups in Hong Kong reached 2,625 in 2018 – a remarkable 146 per cent increase compared with the 1,065 recorded in 2014.

The ecosystem is also cosmopolitan, with 35 per cent of these young businesses founded by entrepreneurs from outside the city, most notably the United Kingdom, the United States and mainland China.

The report points to “a strong network of incubators, accelerators and co-work spaces, deep and diverse community partner support, pro-innovation policies and a multicultural ecosystem” as possible factors behind the upward trend.

Springboard to success

Against this favourable backdrop, Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund – launched in 2015 by Alibaba Group, the Chinese e-commerce conglomerate, which owns the South China Morning Post – is bringing back non-profit initiative Jumpstarter to provide the world’s start-ups with a platform to exchange ideas and showcase their innovations to potential financiers.

While the debut event in 2017 focused on Hong Kong start-ups, this year’s agenda is global and open to applicants from all around the world.

The Hong Kong Science Park is among the many incubators that have supported the growth of the city’s start-up ecosystem. The facility is managed by statutory body Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation, a co-organiser of Jumpstarter. Photo: SCMP

A total of 100 start-ups have been selected for “Hong Kong track” and “global track” respectively, divided into four cohorts: smart city, retail, advanced technology, and financial services.

They have all been invited to a range of networking opportunities that aim to facilitate collaboration.

After two rounds of selection, 12 start-ups in each track have made it into the top 24 and qualified for the chance to have demo opportunities and one-on-one meetings with decision makers of the city’s leading corporates and venture capitalists.

The event will cumulate in a two-day conference on January 23 and 24, with the finale featuring onstage presentations from the top eight start-ups. The Jumpstarter IdeaPOP! Student Winning Team, The Most Favourite Start-up and The Best Jumpstarter will be announced at the event.

Winners will be chosen by both a panel of adjudicators and a public vote, which is currently open on jumpstarter.hk.

Health matters 

Acesobee, a health tech start-up among the top 24, is hoping to pitch its TeamCare Solution designed to address the patient-care planning and communication gap.

We developed TeamCare as a patient-relationship and care-management solution to address the challenges faced by carers
Albert Au, founder, Acesobee

Founder Albert Au says the idea for the business came from his real-life experience of taking care of his grandmother with other family members.

“We have used WhatsApp to communicate about her schedules, records and health status,” he says.

“But WhatsApp is for instant communication and not designed for care scheduling, so we developed TeamCare as a patient-relationship and care-management solution to address the challenges faced by carers.”

The company is also developing a B2B2C (business to business to consumer) version of the solution that aims to link up health care professionals, carers and care-receivers.

Au says the company is trying to overcome the challenge of convincing health care providers, such as hospitals, clinics, nursing home and elderly care centres to adopt the solution.

“The health care industry still has big reservations about start-up solutions,” he says. “It requires a long selling cycle to educate the users.

“Our strategy firstly is to focus on community care and elderly care. It is a growing market with the most demand in Hong Kong and Asia.”

Manage your wealth 

Another of the top 24, Mellow, wants to tackle a widespread problem that deserves more attention: the lack of financial planning among younger generations.

We realised many of our friends did not have financial goals, and did not manage their finances well ... a habit they had developed since childhood
Teresa Chan, co-founder, Mellow

“The idea came about when we realised many of our friends did not have financial goals, and did not manage their finances well, Teresa Chan, co-founder of the company, says.

“It was a habit they had developed since childhood and it is difficult to change.”

Mellow has been created as a personal finance solution aiming to engage both parents and children to experience and learn the full spectrum of personal finance solutions.

“We differentiate ourselves by fostering financial well-being with a fun, practical, and digital solution, so that all our users can have better relationships with their money and gain confidence from it from when they are young.”

She and the other company co-founder Chester Szeen hope to be chosen as one of the top eight start-ups to present the solution on stage.

Mellow app promises a fun, informative, and digital experience for parents and children to learn the full spectrum of personal finance solutions together.

“We will also showcase the power of Mellow in developing correct habits in children by walking through the entire user journey – how children set their financial goals, save, earn, record spending and learn; while parents give tasks, reward, monitor, gain insights from analytics, and stay alert to their children’s financial behaviour,” Szeen says.

“Mellow will grow to become the personal finance solution for the entire family, and we will build a tight community of Mellow fellows in the near future.”

More than meets the eye

Another start-up wants its eponymous artificial intelligence (AI) solution, Aitrak, to become the next Google for its target audience.

“We want ‘Aitrak’ to become a verb for brands, retailers, marketers and designers, with them saying, ‘Those designs look amazing … have you Aitrak-ed them yet to measure and benchmark their visual impact?’,” Mike MacMillan, co-founder and head of Asia, says.

AI-powered digital solution Aitrak is designed to help marketers analyse what catches the eyes of consumers as they browse the store.

MacMillan, who has experience in running AI start-ups since 2000, has put together a small team with start-up and retail experience, including David Bailey, co-founder and CEO, who has worked for Apple.

“Billions of dollars are spent annually on merchandising, packaging, advertising, branding – but how do you know if that product or brand is even being seen when placed in the real world? After all unseen is unsold,” Bailey says.

“Our team developed a solution using artificial intelligence to reverse-engineer traditional eye-tracking studies.”

The team behind Aitrak hopes that their AI solution will one day become the go-to tool for brands, retailers, marketers and designers as a way to benchmark their products’ visual impact.

According to MacMillan, Aitrak is designed based on decades of scientific research relating to how the human visual system works.

“However, at Aitrak we don’t believe pure AI will replace designers, nor will it replace experienced retailers, but we look to enable them by adding science to their designs and also allow them to work at greater scale and efficiency,” he says.

Live long and stay healthy 

Taiwan-based Real Fin Technology is hoping to secure more funding to grow Dr. Pay, a digital solution that aims to help people access quality healthcare as they need it, without having to worry about the sudden burden of a crippling bill.

Through blockchain technology – a system where a record of cryptocurrency transactions is maintained across several computers that are linked in a peer-to-peer network – the company provides smart contracts between the health care provider and the patient with various payment methods.

Dr. Pay is a digital solution combining health tech and fintech to help more people afford quality healthcare.

“Living a hundred years is not a big issue to many people with the current health care technology, but it may not be affordable to everyone,” Adolf Tsai, founder of the company, says.

“Our vision is to help people afford it through a new credit rating mechanism and financial solutions that bridge the gap.”

Dr. Pay allows the patient to set up an installment plan with a chosen healthcare provider, while the latter is promised a rigorous mechanism supported by personal credibility assessment technology that will help control risk. Social media is also employed to facilitate communication between the two parties.

He says that there are no other services linking the health care and financial sectors, which makes his company unique. But that mission also presents a mounting challenge.

“Uncertainty is the biggest challenge to us, especially our service aims to connect two conservative industries,” he says.

“We need to collaborate with large corporations such as banks, insurance companies and Alipay [the mobile and online payment platform established by Alibaba Group] to boost our service widely.”

A lab for everyone

From the advanced technology cohort, Feles hopes to create a cohesive software and hardware platform to empower people to participate in synthetic biology.

“I came to the field of synthetic biology from an economics background,” co-founder Yixiao Jiang says.

“I noticed the status quo of bio-lab access, which is extremely unfriendly to most people, while the learning curve for the hardware is unreasonably high.”

Feles Box, designed by an eponymous start-up, promises to give more people access to real laboratory capabilities at home and in the classroom.

The company’s platform aims to integrate and modernise hardware and software to bring real laboratory capabilities to homes and classrooms, and build a network of innovators.

“We see the lab equipment industry as still stuck in the computer mainframe era of the 1960s, and we want to make laptop versions of the biolab,” Jiang says.

“We envision people carrying Feles Boxes to work in the future the same way we carry laptops and smartphones to work today.”

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