The Taiwan External Trade and Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) yesterday said it would for the first time take 13 Taiwanese start-ups to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, at the end of this month, in an attempt to increase their presence in the global market.
“Helping Taiwan’s start-ups thrive in the global market has become one of TAITRA’s missions since last year, in line with President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) policy of cultivating business innovation,” TAITRA vice chairman Liu Shih-chung (劉世忠), who is to lead the delegation to Barcelona, told reporters in Taipei.
The theme of the delegation is “smart living,” TAITRA said.
The selected start-ups’ products include “smart” medical solutions, surveillance devices and mobile applications, as well as Internet security and chatbot products, the government-backed trade promotion body added.
Some of the start-ups have begun to gain international recognition, TAITRA said.
Chatbot developer Botpartner Inc (博他夥伴) has been participating in a France-based start-up accelerator, Orange Fab, since the first half of last year, and iXensor Co Ltd (安盛生科) won the Best of Baby Tech Award in Fertility and Pregnancy at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas for its ovulation testing and tracking system, it said.
Booths have been arranged for the start-ups in the “4 Years From Now” zone at the congress from Monday to Wednesday next week, TAITRA said.
The council said it is to host a “Taiwan Demo Day” at which the start-ups could introduce their products to global investors.
To create opportunities for Taiwanese firms to broaden their business horizons and learn something from their regional peers, TAITRA aims to lead a delegation of Taiwanese start-ups to July’s IoT Asia exhibition and conference in Singapore, and to arrange visits to other start-ups in Southeast Asian nations in the second half of this year, Liu said.
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