Foreign technology start-ups like Inteliclinic Inc and Embr Labs Inc are taking part in the Computex Taipei this year, looking for manufacturing partners and investors in Taiwan.
San Francisco-based Inteliclinic, with its wearable mask capable of analyzing and improving sleep quality, is seeking Taiwanese contract electronics and textile manufacturers as part of the firm’s plans to expand its reach to East Asian markets.
“We would like here [Taiwan] to be our window to Asia, given that Japan is one of our largest markets,” Inteliclinic cofounder and general manager Tomasz Kolodziejak told the Taipei Times at the company’s booth at the annual trade show.
Since raising US$500,000 from crowdfunding platform Kickstarter in 2014, Inteliclinic has grown into a small company with 20 employees over the past two years.
Its smart intelligent sleep mask, called Neuroon, measures the body’s brain waves, pulse, temperature and physical motion. The data is then analyzed using an application developed by the company to recommend the best Neuroon features and therapies to help one sleep better, according to information posted on the company’s Web site.
Users can also access their sleep data, such as the length of time it takes them to fall asleep or their rapid eye movement sleep, business development manager Ryan Goh said.
Working in cooperation with a Polish manufacturer, Inteliclinic has sold nearly 7,000 units, mainly in the US and Japan, via its Web site and Amazon.com over the past two years, Goh said.
Inteliclinic plans to extend its business to South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan via a manufacturing hub here, Goh said.
The start-up has talked to three to four potential manufacturing partners, including large Taiwanese textile suppliers, and has inked a letter of intent with six international airlines, including Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Virgin Atlantic and All Nippon Airways (ANA), he added.
Starting next month, Inteliclinic will begin supplying Neuroon masks for Lufthansa’s Frankfurt-San Francisco flights, Goh said.
Inteliclinic’s client base mainly consists of retail consumers and airlines, but the company will start supplying a boutique hotel in downtown San Francisco in fall this year, it said.
To support its expansion, Inteliclinic is planning to hold its first round of venture capital fundraising, hoping to attract institutional investors and raise US$4 million this summer, Goh said.
Embr Labs, founded by a research team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said it attended Computex to look for manufacturing and supply chain partners, as well as “a little bit” of investment.
Incorporated in Massachusetts in 2014, the company is developing active wearable technology to reduce thermal stress caused by uncomfortable environments.
“We have a patent-pending technology for wearables to heat and cool people directly, helping them feel more comfortable,” Embr Labs cofounder Samuel Shames said at the company’s booth.
The technology is still in the prototype stage and the company has not decided on what kind of wearable device it will be, he said.
It hopes to make a major announcement later this year and provide more product details, he said.
Shames said the company has talked to several Taiwanese companies over the past few days.
They could be manufacturing partners or even potential investors, he said, without elaborating.
HEAVY TOLL: The closure of the plants, which produced 56 percent of Feng Tay’s shoes last year, followed similar shutdowns in India, its second-biggest production base Feng Tay Enterprises Co Ltd (豐泰), a supplier for Nike Inc, on Saturday temporarily shut down four factories in Vietnam, its biggest manufacturing base, for about a week amid COVID-19 lockdowns, it said yesterday. Feng Tay is the latest in a slew of local manufacturers with operations in Vietnam that have suspended operations as the country grapples with its worst outbreak of COVID-19. Pou Chen Corp (寶成工業), the world’s largest manufacturer of branded athletic and casual footwear, last week said that it had suspended operations at its plant in Ho Chi Minh City, as virus restrictions shuttered factories in the business hub
Taiwan should protect its vaccine supply chain and invest in vaccine development after seeing how the COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted tremendous social and economic losses worldwide, Sanofi Pasteur Hong Kong & Taiwan general manager Philip Ho said in an interview this week. “When you look at the trillions of dollars that countries have lost, parents who are forced to stay at home with their children and various restrictions imposed following a nationwide lockdown, we really see what we are losing compared with what we can benefit from vaccination,” Ho said. While the government has been trying to secure vaccines since the middle
The next target for China’s cybersecurity crackdown is to be the pools of data collected by the latest generation of vehicles. This approach risks Beijing shooting itself in the foot, and jeopardizing its ambitious plans to lead the global race for electric and autonomous vehicles. China wants to have control over the information vehicles have about their drivers, the roads they traverse, and the faces and voices they pass, according to a draft law on data-security management for the automotive industry issued in May. It seeks to ensure manufacturers across the auto supply chain keep data in the country and pass
Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp (陽明海運) is to use NT$16 billion (US$570.4 million) of its NT$29 billion in newly raised capital to lower its debt-to-asset ratio to less than 60 percent, it said yesterday. The container shipping company’s assets and liabilities were NT$208.85 billion and NT$146.4 billion respectively as of the end of March, indicating a debt-to-asset ratio of 70 percent, company data showed. Its major rivals had lower debt ratios. As of March 31, Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運) reported a debt-to-asset ratio of 61.6 percent, while Wan Hai Lines Ltd (萬海航運) had an even lower ratio of 57.4 percent. After repaying debts,
RSS