On day 2 of AsiaBerlin Summit, the opening and welcome was by Michael Biel – Permanent Secretary at Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises, explaining the collaborative efforts of AsiaBerlin in the past 25 years to support the startup ecosystem of Asia and Berlin.
“Berlin is not the first destination startups from Asia look at when they want to expand or raise money. The same is true, the other way around. We have a long way to go, but AsiaBerlin has made progress in the right direction,” says Michael Biel.
The interview with Chika Yamamoto, CEO & Bridgebuilder at Crossbie, by moderator Karena Belin – Co-Founder and CEO at AngelHub, WHub, highlighted the success stories of AsiaBerlin They believe collaboration between the two nations has been high and more Japan firms will visit Berlin to explore the startup ecosystem.
In the ‘PARTNERSHIPS: Corporate Innovation – The challenges and opportunities of collaborating with Startups’ Panel, Veronika Brandt – Head of Co-Innovation & Bosch Startup Harbour at Bosch, Karena Belin – Co-Founder & COO / CFO / RO | CEO at AngelHub, WHub, Ian Hannigan – Founder & CEO at FORMATION, Azadeh Ghahghaie – Director of SAP.iO Foundry Berlin at SAP, Tejo Chalasani – CEO at Utpatti talked about the startup-corporate core innovation, success and failure stories in collaborations of SAP and Bosch, and the development of startups by facing challenges.
Veronika Brandt : “80% of the startups who have already left the Bosch Startup Harbour program 2 years ago are still active on the market, which is a super high survival rate. We have continued collaborations with more than 10 of these startups and internal figures that show that it’s not like a one time effect, we are establishing long lasting relationships. We see cases where actually we want to even create joint IP and we have to investigate more on the legal side.”
Azadeh Ghahghaie: “SAP has 25 industries and thousands of corporations that are our customers. The value proposition of what we do as SAP is that we work with startups that can deliver out of the box integration to the customers. They either have solutions that can fill the white space in our portfolio, or they have really niche innovations that can be used on top of any SAP system. That’s why at the SAP.iO we always call it a win-win-win relationship.”
The use of hydrogen to tackle climate change and create a cleaner global energy system was discussed in the ‘PLANET: Climate Change – The Hydrogen Revolution and the global energy system’ panel with Johannes Garbino-Anton, CTO and Co-Founder at NEX Aero GmbH, Saurabh Singh, Podcast Host at Tech Sheroes for Good and a virtual tour of nex-gen tech from Allen Chou, CEO, RAIDiCAL. There were discussions about the future of mobility and fuel, battery efficiency in climate change, and women in corporations.
“There are no harmful by-products when we make fuel from Hydrogen. But the infrastructure is expensive to make and the issue with Hydrogen is you can’t start small. You need all the infrastructure from the get-go. We are confident that we are on the right track and are going to solve a major mobility and sustainability issue, but despite that funding is not easy. I don’t foresee it as being a critical issue. The problems of creating infrastructure and finding the right talent are more serious ones.” says Johannes Garbino-Anton
In the Panel – PROSPERITY: Metaverse & Creativity – True magic or tech-dominated dystopia?, Anna Franziska Michel – CEO & Founder at YOONA.AI , Florian Krueger – CEO at UNYTED and moderator Gianluca Boccadifuoco – Digital Art Curator at GTech, discussed the opportunities that metaverse and NFTs provide for startups and corporation which allow the financial mechanics of the new world.
In the Panel ‘PEACE: China Hands On – Collaborations through Closed Borders’, Scofield Liang – Operations Manager at THE DRIVERY GmbH was present virtually. Timon Rupp – Founder & CEO at THE DRIVERY GmbH, Rainer Seider – Head of Division International Cooperation at Governing Mayor of Berlin – Senate Chancellery, Tao Dong – Vice President/Chief Representative at Shanghai Foreign Investment Development Board, talked about the feasibility of doing business in and travelling to China.
In the ‘PROSPERITY: Data Unions – Your data, Your decision, Your rewards!’ Panel, Diksha Dutta – Head of Marketing at AsiaBerlin, Marlene Ronstedt – Co-Founder at Data Union DAO, Udbhav Tiwari – Senior Manager Global Public Policy, Mozilla, talked about the complexities around data ownership and how consumers need to be more aware of their rights. They also touched upon the spectrum of regulations and how GDPR is by far one of the strongest data privacy laws!
Tina Nayak – Co-founder & CEO at Volument, Varun Sridhar, CEO at Paytm Money, Muhammad Chbib – CEO at Autobahn Security talked about building rapid scaling organizations at the mistakes they tend to make. They spoke about how to estimate potential revenues, hire right and choose the right investor (if you have the luxury of choice :P).
Next, we discussed the complexity of cross-border data compliance and how some of those issues can be resolved with decentralisation with Sandeep Bajjuri – Secretary General at BerChain; Alex Albano – Head of Marketing at Affinidi and Stepan Gershuni – Chairman of the Board at Identix.space.
With Angela Qu, Board of Directors, Diverse Organizations ; Timon Rupp – Founder & CEO at THE DRIVERY GmbH; Jens-Christian Holst – Research Group Head “Decarbonization and Resource Efficiency” at Siemens and Nikita Gulin – CEO & Co-Founder at Agranimo we discussed the very serious supply chain crisis and how we can strike a balance between sustainability and market pressure.
And while we love global teams and worldwide customers, doing business in multiple countries can be tricky and cumbersome. But since the opportunity, both on the demand and supply side, is huge, we learnt how to navigate the technicalities of Employer of Record vs Employ through Own Office. Thank you Tom Kussmann – COO at Horizons; Matthias Müller – Founder & Owner at MM China Link; Vishnu Nagaraj – Founder CEO at Carve Startup Labs
It was lovely to hear our Ambassadors on market expansion. Thank you Tarek Hassan
Raymond Miranda – Consultant, Professional Speaker and Executive Coach at Labora[s]tory
And Karena Belin – Co-Founder & CEO at AngelHub, WHub
One of the last panels of the day was on sustainable urban mobility! Our panellists Manjunath Sekhar – Project Manager at GIZ India; Nastya Koro – User Researcher, Urban Mobility Expert, Public Speaker at On her way; Shreyas Shibulal – Founder & Angel Investor at Micelio Mobility; Juliane Renz – Head of Business Development & Funding at ELO Mobility GmbH discussed all the three formats with moderator Siddharth Bhasin – Senior Program Manager at enpact e.V.– shared, connected and autonomous discussing the pros and cons of all the options.
The day ended with the most exciting event! Startup pitches!
Big shout out to all the 10 startups who reach the finals !
Here’s a little about them:
Nyo Min Naing from KoSIGNAL – Disease Risk Signaling Smart Scale
Ana Chubinidze from AdalanAI – AI Governance Framework and SaaS platform
Shiddiq Sumitro from TRANSISI – Charging-as-a-Service provider for bus operators
Sapumal Ahangama from Xeptagon Intelligent Production Scheduling (IPS)
Paksy Plackis-Cheng from Staex – Networking and software orchestration platform for IoT
Johannes Garbino-Anton from NEX Hydrogen Fuel-Cell eVTOL – hydrogen fuel-cell powered long-range electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.
Kulendran Gobinthiran from huex– A UX driven Full-Stack Software development platform
Hoang Pham from Unitz – Providing comprehensive teaching and learning management solution.
Panji Prabowo from Qiwii – Virtual queuing system
Tom Würden from DocVox – Document your meeting without even typing!
And the winner for the Startup Pitch session at the summit was DocVox. The task management platform is aimed at increasing employee productivity. Secret sauce: Best presentation with the least gaps! Prize? Straight entry to the ABS Singapore Indonesia delegation!
