The Ministry of SMEs and Startups has been active in trying to raise awareness for Korean startups by participating in global events like CES and startup conferences. At CES, they have their own K-Startup pavilion. CES (Consumer Electronics Show) is the world’s largest consumer electronics show and draws a lot of attention from tech innovators worldwide. Therefore, CES is a place to showcase your latest innovative product or service, from big corporations to startups. Some of the top topics at CES 2023 included:

• 5G
• AI
• Internet of Things (IoT)
• advertising
• entertainment and contents
• automobiles
• blockchain
• product design and manufacturing
• robotics
• startups

In addition to Korean startups, over 100 Taiwanese startup teams participated in CES 2023. Taiwan Tech Arena (TTA) was the organizer for the pavilion and was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of Taiwan. Moreover, Taiwan is renowned for its outstanding high-tech R&D capacity, highly trained professionals, and thriving network of entrepreneurs, similar to South Korea. TTA was launched to serve as a bridge connecting Taiwanese startups to high-tech industries and global resources.

The  TTA and MOST presented and prepared the Taiwan innovation for their global stage in four aspects:

1. Providing 1-on-1 tailor-made training for improving corporate and key personnel soft-skill levels;
2. Creating “TTA Taiwan VR Pavilion” for operating a year after CES as a virtual venue for prolonged promotion
3. Enhancing market awareness by making corporate and 3D videos for the teams
4. Encouraging and assisting teams to join various pitch events locally and globally and matching with more clients, suppliers, and venture capitals would accelerate potential teams’ international growth.

The Pavillion featured five categories: Smart Living, Tech for Good, Cybersecurity and Cloud, Healthcare and Wellness, and Mobility Tech.

A hundred companies participated in the CES Taiwan Pavilion Exhibition Hall. All showcased their innovative solutions. However, we will focus on the top 10 we feel have the best chance to break into the South Korean market. Therefore we have selected 10 Taiwanese startups that show great potential for commercialization in Korea.

3drens

3drens provides a data-driven IoT platform for commercial fleet owners such as vehicle rental, logistics, transportation, and automakers. In addition, the platform is equipped with IoT asset management, predictive maintenance, driving behavior evaluation, and itinerary optimization. The functions on the platform can be made flexible and customized. Therefore it can be adjusted accordingly to customers’ needs. Combined with open data, the solution can improve operational efficiency, save costs, and increase profit.

ACSI Laboratory

ACSI Laboratory has developed a personalized and handheld acupuncture and physical therapy device. It features automatic acupoint recognition and has an automatic needle drop. Inserting needles into specific acupoints along meridians helps the user’s energy flow to be rebalanced. In addition, it provides heat, pressure, pulses of electromagnetic energy, and infrared therapy. The handheld automatic acupuncture system provides symptom input and acupoint suggestions.

Agromeans

Agromeans is an agricultural startup at the forefront of developing lighting technologies. They have developed the Helios LED platform by combining a powerful energy-efficient LED with their Hyperion Edge AI system. Helios can reach unprecedented levels of energy efficiency. Furthermore, the platform can allow plants to grow faster with a higher yield, all at a reduction of 30% in energy consumption.

AuthMe

AuthMe focuses on preventing identity fraud, especially by providing the safest, fastest, and easiest ID authentication solutions. It allows enterprises to onboard customers safer, faster, and simpler, helps them comply with regulations, and opens up new business opportunities. Their solution uses OCR to obtain the key to unlock the biometric ID with NFC. Then, it will proceed with facial recognition and liveness detection to compare ID information with the user. Furthermore, the whole process only takes 3 minutes. Therefore, their solution helps lower manual reviewing costs by 70%, shorten registration time by 90%, and confirm the ID authenticity with 100% accuracy.

ible

IoT startup ible is the creator of Airvida, a wearable air purifier with noise-canceling earphones. It is the world’s smallest wearable air purifier. The wearable air purifier can reduce inhalable airborne allergens, viruses, and PM2.5. Therefore, it is the perfect solution to improve air quality on the metro, bus, public transportation, and outdoors. Airvida uses an ECO ION technology innovation to effectively formulate 2 million negative ions per cubic centimeter every 0.6 seconds around the user’s facial area. In addition, these negative ions quickly attach to airborne particles within proximity, turning them into bigger, heavier chunks of particles that fall to the ground and away from the user’s facial area.

iPreg

iPreg has developed a sperm sorting chip to collect healthy sperm before placing it into vitro fertilization therapy. When using the iPreg sperm sorting chip the healthy sperm can be easily separated under simple procedures without additional instruments. The ratio of progressive sperm will increase to 90% within 15 minutes of the chip operation. Moreover, the purity and the quality of the progressive sperm are expected to increase greatly. In addition, it will improve the infertility rate of IVE therapy.

KDH DESIGN

KDH DESIGN develops AR-based transparent film. It is a flexible AR-based transparent film for consumer, industrial, military, and automotive industry applications. Furthermore, the startup is committed to radically changing the transparent film by making it flexible and maintaining high brightness. In addition, it has a high optical performance display technology in far-field and near-eye applications. Their AR film solution is patent pending.

LYDSEC

LYDSEC is the developer of BAO. It is a new generation of cloud authentication products. It is successfully used in banking, 3rd party payment companies, smart buildings, e-commerce, online gaming companies, and healthcare industries. BAO is a total solution for internet content providers and service providers. It is convenient, easy to implement, and cost-effective software and is considered a pioneer in the consumer technology industry. Moreover, LYDSEC BAO allows users to control and verify program accounts via mobile devices and computer equipment. Their new patented design, A key-lock function, brings users convenience during online and offline transactions.

NUWA Robotics

NUWA Robtoics is the developer of kebbi AIR, an AI-powered social robot development platform that allows brands to create an interactive learning and playing experience for kids. There are more than 600 schools in Taiwan that are using kebbi AIR for language education in classrooms. Moreover, Kebbi Air is an all-in-one robot that can recognize faces, objects, gestures, sound sources, voice, and context subject to environmental changes. In addition, users can edit their programming, giving the robot hundreds of reactions for an impressive interactive experience.

Strike

Strike is the developer of the world’s first smart baseball. The baseball has a built-in precision sensor that can measure spin rate, rotational axis, velocity, trajectory, top time, and location. Therefore, it allows coaches and athletes to analyze quantifiable data. The smart baseball has multiple precision sensors, all built-in. Therefore, it can discover the untapped potential of athletes through scientific training. Users can improve efficient training methods that are customizable to each athlete.