Busan Metropolitan City (Mayor Park Heong-joon) and Busan TechnoPark (President Kim Hyung-gyun) announced that they participated in "SusHiTech Tokyo 2024"—held in Japan for two days from May 15 to 16—to search for prospective participants for the Asian startup expo "FLY ASIA 2024," secure a pool of investors, and expand global market channels and investment opportunities for local companies.

SusHiTech is Japan's largest major startup conference. For this event, a Busan delegation participated, consisting of the city government, Busan TechnoPark, and four promising Busan startups, including MarinaChain.

This participation marked the first project under the "Global Exchange and Investment Attraction Support" initiative, a follow-up program to the Asian startup expo FLY ASIA. Launched this year, the project aims to leverage overseas networks built through FLY ASIA to support local businesses in expanding globally and to attract outstanding foreign companies to Busan.

The four participating companies conducted a combined total of over 104 buyer consultations and 38 investment consultations. Notably, MarinaChain signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with a Dutch company, while ELECT received expressions of interest for investment reviews from three major Japanese corporate venture capital (CVC) firms, drawing strong attention from global stakeholders and raising expectations for actual investment outcomes.

The city selected startups targeting the Japanese market back in February and provided them with customized global capacity-building training and consulting to prepare for the event. City officials noted that these preparatory efforts enabled them to achieve more meaningful results.

Meanwhile, the city is preparing to participate in Vietnam's "Startup Wheel" in August and Singapore's "SWITCH" in October to continuously support local businesses in pioneering global markets and attracting investments in connection with FLY ASIA. Companies for the Vietnam expansion program were recruited in April and selected in early May, while recruitment notices for the Singapore expansion program are scheduled to begin in late May.

Source : https://www.ilyo.co.kr/?ac=article_view&entry_id=472554