First Google Asia Women Startup Forum is held in Seoul

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First Google Asia Women Startup Forum is held in Seoul

Published: 17 Nov. 2022, 16:27 Updated: 17 Nov. 2022, 17:26

Agnieszka Hryniewicz-Bieniek, global director of Google for Startups, speaks during a discussion session in the Google Asia Women Startup Forum held in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, Thursday. [GOOGLE KOREA]

Google held its first offline demo day event for women-led start-ups in Asia-Pacific regions on Thursday.

“What I find so important about this demo day is […] the impact [these women] leave for the next generation of women founders,” said Mike Kim, head of Google for Startups in the Asia-Pacific region, during his opening remarks for the Google Asia Women Startup Forum held in Gangnam District, southern Seoul.

The Google Asia Women Startup Forum, attended by local and global venture investors, is the first women entrepreneur-centered start-up pitching program hosted by Google for Startup, according to the company.

“Globally, only 20 percent of the start-ups from the world have a woman founder,” said Kim, emphasizing the importance of leveling the playing field for the underrepresented group in the global start-up scene.

Founders or CEOs of 10 women-led start-ups from Korea, Japan, India, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines and Australia made their sales pitch, after completing a 12-week Google Founders Academy program.

Founders Academy, in its third year, is a mentorship program for women-led start-ups based in the Asia-Pacific region.

Some 100 attendees in the local and global start-up sector were present, including Agnieszka Hryniewicz-Bieniek, global director of Google for Startups, and three judges for the pitching event: Cindy Yun-jung Jin, partner at Softbank Ventures Asia; Tiago Costa Alves, entrepreneur-in-residence of Golden Gate Ventures; and Oh Jin-suk, partner at Goodwater Capital.

“Korea is a very interesting market for the fact that very tech-savvy consumers are here,” said Hryniewicz-Bieniek, when asked why Korea was selected as the first place to host the Google Asia Women Startup Forum. “And I think it makes Korea the perfect market [in which] to start a business.”

The ten women-led start-ups in the event were: DAL Company and SoftlyAI from Korea; palan and TPO from Japan; Nalagenetics from Singapore; Krealogi from Indonesia; PankhTech from India; Rarity Punks from Australia; Taxumo from the Philippines; and GloStudy from Hong Kong.

Topics covering artificial intelligence, digital transformation, healthcare, augmented reality and non-fungible tokens were discussed during the event.

As for the two Korean participants, DAL Company runs a digital healthcare service for people suffering from menstrual syndromes. SoftlyAI is developing a software program to automatically moderate offensive chats and users in the live-streaming community.

The Judges Choice Award went to Singapore’s Nalagenetics, a healthcare company that provides hereditary testing tools for screening and prescriptions.

BY SHIN HA-NEE [shin.hanee@joongang.co.kr]