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City-Tech.Tokyo 2023, Tokyo's first and largest startup event in Japan, was held at the Tokyo International Forum on February 27 and 28, 2023. In this report, we provide an overview of City-Tech.Tokyo as well as the sessions of the day and the results of the semi-final stage of the "City-Tech Challenge" pitch contest.
City-Tech. is an event for realizing sustainable cities through open innovation with startups, attracting more than 10,000 participants from 100 cities in 30 countries, with more than 300 startups exhibiting and more than 100 VCs participating. The event features seminars, exhibitions, networking, and other activities by participants from Japan and abroad on a wide variety of ideas and technologies for overcoming urban challenges and creating a new vision of the city.
Tokyo 2023's programs were organized around four main themes: Infrastructure, Environment, Living, and Culture.
The venue was filled with participants from all over the world, and the air was full of vitality.
Decorations using the greenery of trees and colorful lights transformed the dull hall into a lively space. The stage, where the opening session was also held, was a departure from the usual lecture hall, with smoke, stage lighting, and up-tempo music to enliven the session.
In addition to startups from all over Japan, startups from Finland, Switzerland, Israel, Korea, Taiwan, and other countries exhibited at the venue. Through visiting booths, participating in thematic seminars, exhibitions, and workshops, participants showed a deepened understanding of urban issues and efforts to create new urban visions.
A number of new innovations were triggered by the involvement and discussion of people from various backgrounds; including startups, companies, investors, universities, and the media.
The event opened with a speech by Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike. Koike touched on her studies in Cairo and her advocacy of "Cool Biz" during her tenure as Minister of the Environment, and expressed her willingness to continue to take on challenges as the first female Governor of Tokyo. She also emphasized the strengths of Tokyo as a megacity and the start-up strategy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.
In November 2022, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government formulated a startup strategy, "Global Innovation with STARTUPS," and under the keyword of "Born Global," aims to increase the number of unicorns originating from Tokyo, the number of startups in Tokyo, and the number of startup collaborations in the next five years. In line with this goal, they have prepared a budget of approximately $200 million for this fiscal year, 1.5 times the amount of last year, and expect to expand it to $1 billion within the next five years. She also emphasized the government’s commitment to the global promotion of startups by involving a wide range of sectors, including startups, venture capital, accelerators, research institutions, and universities by preparing a large-scale "Tokyo Innovation Base" that will serve as a gateway for startups in Asia.
Under the concept of "SusHi Tech Tokyo (Sustainable High City Tech Tokyo)," which embodies Tokyo’s desire to propagate its unique ideas and technologies to overcome common global urban issues, Tokyo has set 2023 as a new starting point. The cornerstone of this first phase are this event, and G-NETS Leaders Summit, an international conference of global city leaders.
Governor Koike cited three reasons for holding these events in Tokyo: new growth for Tokyo and Japan, realization of a sustainable future, and solutions to global urban issues. Tokyo will be a venue for open innovation through lectures and sessions by the world's leading experts.
In closing, Governor Koike said, "This is the dawn of challenges and innovations toward the realization of a sustainable city. Let's seize the future together."
How will cities change through innovation by City-Tech toward a sustainable society? World-renowned figures shared their perspectives. This report provides a summary of the session by Ulrike Schaede, which followed the opening session by Tokyo Governor Koike.
Ulrike Schaede, who specializes in Japanese corporate theory and has served as a researcher and visiting professor at a number of prestigious universities and government agencies, took the stage in this session to discuss the possibility of combining the strengths of large corporations — which are well funded and well resourced but lack speed and the willingness to take risks — and start-ups — which lack the financial and human resources but are full of energy and speed.
She pointed out that Japan is being overtaken by China, Taiwan, and South Korea in B2C, and that large companies are under pressure to change in light of changing global trends such as ESG investment outside of Japan, as well as the labor shortage and aging society in Japan.
She proposed that Japan makes full use of its "skills" rather than facing up to the growing size of corporations, especially those in China. Using sumo as an example, she noted that the relatively small Mai-no-umi had developed and deployed so many techniques that he was called a "department store of techniques," while the bigger wrestlers Konishiki and Akebono were the mainstream.
In the City-Tech Challenge, the semi-final stage was held on day one, and 7 companies were selected from 20 companies for the final stage on day two.
The seven companies that were successfully selected for the final stage are Synspective, BlueSpace.ai, Tractable, Turing Chain, Alterpacks, Alchemy Foodtech and Kyoto Fusion Engineering.
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