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Taiwan academia-assisted startups show strong innovation prowess

Chloe Liao, Taipei; Willis Ke, DIGITIMES Asia

As many as 50 startup teams have demonstrated their latest innovations at an annual conference, dubbed TEC #2 Demo Day, hosted on July 24 by Taidah Entrepreneurship Center (TEC) of National Taiwan University (NTU), with some of their innovations even winning iF and Reddot awards.

The startup teams, all developed with assistance of the NTU Accelerator and NTU Garage Incubator - two major units of the TEC - displayed their R&D achievements in four major areas including FinTech, smart IoT, health and medication, and cultural and creative living.

Members of the startup teams include some former presidents at foreign banks in Taiwan, and attending physicians at hospitals, all performing well in their specific professional fields.

Among the teams is FLIPWEB, a virtualized property trading platform, which has recently won the 2018 Young Award from Taiwan's Industrial Development Bureau and obtained Taiwan's first digital asset brokerage patent.

In the area of web applications, StyleMap has set up an alliance with over 4,800 hair stylists to roll out a smart online hair-style book for consumers to grasp the latest fashion styles. Meanwhile, startup 3drens has also had its wearable wireless communication device Sherpa patented for working well in helping mountaineers smoothly go through adventures.

Additionally, the GOGO Furniture designed by a startup from central Taiwan, showcased nine-piece K/D furniture that can be taken apart and reassembled, thus saving space and able to be easily transported. The furniture design won both iF and Reddot design awards in 2017.

Since its inception five years ago, TEC has had a total of over 150 corporate mentors, and it has lately invited five more enterprises as new mentors, namely Diamond BioFund, Fubon Financial Holdings, Advantech, Kuobrothers and the United Daily News Group.