Committed to driving Taiwan's startup developments, Startup Terrace Kaohsiung AWS Joint Innovation Center (JIC) hosted Startup Demo Day on November 8th. The event gathered seven startup teams from Kaohsiung and abroad to showcase their innovative solutions, including advanced AI image recognition, one-stop carbon management and smart factory services, as well as their overseas market expansion achievements. The results of the hackathon challenge, "Stream Your Life," organized by the Kaohsiung City Government, iPASS, KKCompany, LINE Taiwan, FamilyMart and AWS JIC, were also presented at the event. The teams that participated in the challenge demonstrated how public data from the city government, private data from the collaborating companies and cloud computing technologies can be synergized to bring net zero emission innovations to reality.
Since 2019, AWS JIC and the Small and Medium Enterprise and Startup Administration Ministry of Economic Affairs have worked together to support more than 200 startup companies. Going into operation in 2022, Startup Terrace Kaohsiung AWS JIC leverages the Kaohsiung City Government's connections to local businesses, incubation center resources and AWS cloud hardware and software to foster digital transformation talent, support startup communities, engage industry collaborations, help companies incorporate cloud technologies and accelerate digital transformation for southern Taiwan.
The seven teams that showcased their innovations at the event included Aiieyes, aira, Combogic Tech., Havbeat Technology, Linker Vision, PowerArena and TBCASoft. Not only do they offer a diversity of solutions, but they have also made outstanding achievements in markets at home and abroad. For example, in just one month after TBCASoft's HIVEX payment platform went online in Taiwan and Japan, thousands of Taiwan's Jkopay users made payments via PayPay, accepted at over one million stores in Japan, realizing borderless mobile payment. Linker Vision's AI image recognition platform has been adopted by Korea-based Samsung, German-based Bosch and Japan-based Sony. It is scheduled to be available on AWS Marketplace starting January, 2024 to offer AI-enabled solutions for autonomous or assisted driving, smart city and smart factory.
Robert Wang, Managing Director, AWS Taiwan & Hong Kong, remarked "AWS contributes to the development of the Kaohsiung startup ecosystem by providing our technologies as well as AWS services and organizing business events. Starting 2023, we make it a first priority to connect the Kaohsiung startup community with the AWS JIC networks in Singapore and Hong Kong, helping Startup Terrace Kaohsiung foray overseas and tap worldwide resources. We also make every effort to introduce the latest AI and cloud technologies to Kaohsiung so that local startups and enterprises may become the next 'sacred mountains of protection' for Taiwan." AWS aims to step up its collaborations with startup incubation centers in Kaohsiung, including those at colleges, KO-IN, DAKUO and the recently founded MEGABAY, by providing startups not only cloud resources and technical support but also connections to the AWS JIC networks in the Asia-Pacific region when they expand internationally.
On Startup Demo Day, the winners of the "Stream Your Life" hackathon were also presented with awards. The competition was organized by the Kaohsiung City Government, iPASS, KKCompany, LINE Taiwan, FamilyMart and AWS JIC Kaohsiung with the total awards exceeding NT$1 million. After three months of proposal selections, technological guidance and workshop sessions, three teams stood out and won the Startup Terrace Excellence Award, the Enterprise Excellence Award and the Enterprise Honorable Mention Award. The team that won the Startup Terrace Excellence Award noted "Making use of AWS cloud computing, public data APIs from the Transportation Bureau of the Kaohsiung City Government as well as data from iPASS and FamilyMart, we are able to display city carbon footprints and carbon reduction achievements on a visual dashboard. Through our efforts, we hope to encourage individuals and businesses to reduce carbon emissions, trade carbon credits on carbon markets, make donations for charitable causes and create new possibilities."
Tai-Hsiang Liao, Director-general, Economic Development Bureau, Kaohsiung City Government, stated "We are happy to see that the participants of the hackathon organized by AWS JIC Kaohsiung and partners came up with creative solutions supporting the city's dual initiatives—digital sustainability and net zero emission, using public data from the Transportation Bureau. The city government is making efforts to stay on top of data and use data to facilitate all kinds of public services. Such efforts are being recognized by citizens and allow Kaohsiung to move up quickly in the smart city rankings to become No. 1. It is hoped that the event will attract more startup teams from Taiwan and abroad to Kaohsiung to jointly drive digital sustainability innovations for the whole world."
The winners of the Stream Your Life hackathon.