On 2 December 2020, TechBIZKON IV, a startup/investor pitching and conference event jointly organised by Advantage Austria Tokyo, Business Finland and the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Japan (AHK Japan) took place at Venture Café Tokyo and via livestream under the title: “Connected Industries - Time to Scale up”.
The event consisted of high-level panel discussions and a startup pitching with voting competition featuring twelve startups three each from Austria, Finland, Germany and Japan. Some of the speakers where in Tokyo while others attended via live video conferencing. The audience at Venture Café Tokyo as well as the online audience was asked to vote for the pitching startups.
Prestigious prices went to the winners:

• Prewave https://www.prewave.com,
• Hacarus https://hacarus.com,
• XELA Robotics https://xelarobotics.com
• Blue Danube Robotics  https://www.bluedanuberobotics.com

The event was supported by Venture Café Tokyo, CIC, DWIH Tokyo and the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation who moderated the panel discussions and set up and helped customise an online platform (https://techbizkon-iv-connected-industries.b2match.io/) to host the live-stream, online voting and enable matchmaking between participants. A recording of the stream can still be viewed online
TechBIZKON IV is a joint initiative by the 3 organisations mentioned above, which all run individual startup programmes targeting Japan but have teamed up to create TechBIZKON IV as a common flagship event for 2020. The 2020 event was the 4th annual installment and the first one to be held in a hybrid format.

PIC: TechBizkon (From left to right: Luca Escoffier, Technology Transfer Helpdesk, EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation; Dominik Wraneschitz from Advantage Austria; Tak Umezawa from CIC Tokyo. On the screen: Claus Karthe, Southeast Asia Program CEO, German Accelerator; Glenn Gassen, Director for Innovation, Growth and Invest In services, Enter Espoo Oy)

Published: March 2021