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City-Tech.Tokyo is one of the largest startup events in Japan, which aims to realize sustainable cities through open innovation with startups. This year’s event featured seminars, exhibitions, and presentations by participants from both Japan and abroad on a wide variety of ideas and technologies for overcoming urban challenges and creating a new vision for cities.
This report continues from Day 1, introducing the latest technology exhibits at the venue, the Startup Demo Day on Day 2, and the Pitch Contest.
SusHi Tech Tokyo stands for “Sustainable High City Tech Tokyo”, a project to promote "sustainable new values" from Tokyo to the world through cutting-edge technology and digital know-how. They hosted an oversized exhibition booth near the entrance of the venue, which was filled with a wide variety of exhibits in line with the four main themes of City-Tech. Let’s have a look at a few of them!
Echimatopoeia is a device that visually displays environmental sounds such as station announcements and approaching train sounds as text, sign language images, and onomatopoeia on a display. The idea was co-created with students from the Kawasaki City School for the Deaf, and was realized to make train travel a safe, secure, and enjoyable experience for people with hearing disabilities. The project team consisted of Fujitsu Limited, East Japan Railway Company, and Dai Nippon Printing Co.
According to the person in charge of the booth, the demonstration was installed on top of a vending machine and attracted a lot of attention with comments such as "I've never heard the sound of a train before" and "It's essential, but no one has done it before.”
VoiceBiz UCDisplay made by Toppan Printing Co. is a service that translates voice input and displays them as subtitles for the conversation on a transparent display.
The service targets organizations and companies that provide window services, such as local government offices and train stations. The service supports communication with foreign visitors to Japan who cannot speak Japanese, as well as people with hearing or speech impairments. When voice input is performed using the terminal installed at the bottom of the display, the translated words are displayed on the listener's side of the display. For Japanese people with hearing or speech impairments, keyboard input can be used.
The company's VoiceBiz voice translation service plays a key role in translation. It is also attractive in that it supports voice translation in 12 languages, not just English. The company plans to start sales around June 2023.
An eye-catching exhibit near the entrance of the venue is the eVTOL (so-called "flying car") developed by SkyDrive. eVTOL vehicles differ from conventional aircraft in that they are powered by electric motors. This difference in engines allows for low noise and vertical takeoffs and landings within residential environments. The reason why it is called a next-generation aircraft is its low-cost operation and high level of safety, and the built-in sensors are the same type as those implemented in the iPhone.
Day one featured a session titled "What's New in the Practical Application of Flying Cars" by companies at the forefront of the eVTOL industry, allowing visitors to experience the possibilities of mobility in the cities of the future.
During the session, it was emphasized that in the sky, there is no need to build new infrastructure such as stations and highways, a world in which people will be free from the hassles of existing infrastructure such as traffic signals.
SkyDrive aims to meet UAM (Urban Air mobility) regulations and certification in the airline industry, and to realize an air cab service in the Osaka Bay area for the Osaka-Kansai Expo in 2025.
The Startup Ecosystem Tokyo Consortium is working to promote the formation of a startup ecosystem and the launch and growth of startups through industry/academia/government collaboration. One of these is the "Deep Ecosystem," an initiative to select and intensively support startups that are expected to grow rapidly in the future, thereby encouraging their growth into unicorns.
At the City-Tech.Tokyo Demo Day, five fast-growing startups selected for the 2022 Deep Ecosystem program took the stage and made pitches. The five companies on stage were INNOPHYS, inQs, TechMagic, RevComm, and Human Life CORD Japan
The company is a venture company originating from Tokyo University of Science that develops and sells powered exoskeleton suits that support movement when lifting people or heavy objects and maintaining a mid-back posture. As of February 2023, the company has sold 25,000 units of the suits in Europe, Asia, and Mexico.
The company is a startup that provides clean energy through light-based power generation technology. The company will develop the SQ-DSSC — an ultra-low-light photovoltaic device that can generate power even on cloudy days, in the rain, or by candlelight indoors — and the SQPV, a colorless, transparent power generating device. The SQ-DSSC functions as a stand-alone power source for IoT devices, eliminating the need for battery replacement and wiring. The company also explained that since the SQPV is colorless and transparent, it can be installed in a double-layered structure on the inner frame of the window glass of buildings and automobiles to provide heat shielding, power generation, and lighting, as well as an approximately 40% improvement in power efficiency.
The company won the Japan Venture Awards Technology Innovator Award in 2016, and the IDTechEx 2017 Best Technical Development within Energy Harvesting, among other awards.
The City-Tech Challenge, a heated pitch battle with 10 million yen at stake, featured seven companies selected for the finals after the day one semi-finals. The seven companies that made it through the selection process to the final stage of DAY2 were: Synspective, BlueSpace.ai, Tractable, Turing Chain, Alterpacks, Alchemy Foodtech and Kyoto Fusion Engineering Co.
Although each of the seven finalists was at a different stage and in a different field, they presented their ideas from a variety of angles and spoke powerfully about the future of their businesses.
They were then quizzed on the existence of competitors, global customer acquisition contacts, monetization methods, and other important points in scaling a business, and the stage became a test of whether a company could become a global market leader.
Commenting on the final stage, one of the judges said, "It was very exciting to have the opportunity to judge such a diverse group of companies from all over the world.”
The winning company is a Kyoto University spinout that is accelerating the realization of safe and clean fusion energy.
Fusion has long been considered a pipe dream, but in December 2022, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that they had succeeded in generating more energy than input in a nuclear fusion reaction, bringing it steadily closer to commercialization.
The company conducts research and development on the key components required for the commercialization of fusion and provides engineering solutions to private companies and research institutions around the world. The company is currently developing three types of components, including its core product, the gyrotron (the main component of a fusion reactor, which needs to be replaced every few years).
Mr. Kei Seko of Kyoto Fusion Engineering Corporation, who spoke at the event, said the following in an interview immediately after his victory:
“First of all, I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to make nuclear fusion known in this way. And I feel that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and the judges have recognized the potential of fusion and that everyone is committed to building the next society, so we want to do our best as well. Now all we need to do is to create a truly global company from Japan.”
In her closing remarks, Governor Koike of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government announced that next year's City-Tech.Tokyo would be held in May 2024. In addition to City-Tech.Tokyo, she also introduced the G-NETS Leaders Summit and the Tokyo Bay eSG Project.
With 328 startups from 36 cities, this event was probably the first global tech event in Japan since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The venue, urbane stage decorations, big-name guests, and introduction of the latest technologies made this two-day event a true showcase of Tokyo's commitment to progress. The City-Tech Challenge being won by a startup for nuclear fusion gave a strong sense that major changes are coming for Japan, and the world.
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