ANN/THE KOREA HERALD – The ASEAN-Korea Centre organised an in-person pitching competition aimed at supporting early-stage start-ups in Southeast Asia.
The event which concluded on Friday, saw start-up teams from Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, and Vietnam receiving recognition for their performances.
Thirty start-ups from a variety of sectors including artificial intelligence (AI), e-commerce platforms, fintech, education and tourism were nominated by the 10 embassies from the ASEAN in Korea and the ASEAN Coordinating Committee on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises. Each start-up introduced business ideas to venture capitalists from South Korea.
The winner of the contest, awarded USD30,000, will be invited by the ASEAN-Korea Centre to attend next year’s NextRise, South Korea’s largest start-up exhibition.
In second place was teaching service platform Teachmeguru of Brunei, followed by telemedicine platform ZumVet of Singapore and AI-based health technology platform Genetica of Vietnam in third place.
“We hope that this contest will create a growth foothold for promising ASEAN start-up companies and serve as an opportunity to promote cooperation between regions,” said ASEAN-Korea Centre Secretary-General Kim Hae-yong in his closing remarks. The pitch contest was part of the annual ASEAN-Korea Start-up Week launched in 2018 to recruit promising ASEAN start-ups for networking and to engage in capacity-building with counterparts in South Korea.
Ahead of the contest, the ASEAN-Korea Centre also completed a two-week acceleration programme from September 11 to 22, to introduce the participating start-ups to potential business partners.
The ASEAN bloc is home to about 670 million people, and the average age of the population is relatively young, at 31.
As the spread of the Internet in the region has increased, and business-friendly policies have been implemented, Southeast Asia has become a promising region for upcoming start-ups.
PHOTO: THE KOREA HERALD
