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Why a robust digital insurance distribution system is the future in APAC

With the ever-increasing internet penetration and usage disrupting all aspects of business across the world in the past decade, technology has slowly and steadily reshaped how we live. In the past year, however, this trend has been catapulted amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns when even the sceptics were forced to embrace digitalisation in an almost overnight fashion for business continuity and survival.

With every aspect of business transforming, distribution channels are no exception. These events have significantly altered how services and products are delivered, affecting consumer expectations and behaviour, and impacting businesses all over the region and beyond.

According to a Bain and Facebook study, 47% of consumers decreased offline purchases with 30% increasing their online spending. For this study, the buying patterns of 8,600 digital consumers in six Southeast Asian countries were analysed for six months in 2020. The study also found that the region’s digital consumers are expected to spend more time at home even after restrictions are lifted. Consumers are increasingly buying essentials online, delaying splurge spending and favouring value for money and trusted brands. The study concluded that consumer goods companies are responding by swiftly increasing product availability and visibility online, targeting digital engagement across platforms and optimising pricing and value perception.

The role of insurance distribution in an increasingly digital world

While digital distribution was an emerging trend even before the pandemic, there is no doubt that global lockdowns have spurred this further. These developments have now opened up unique opportunities for key stakeholders to fortify their operations with digitalisation efforts and one of the best ways to achieve robust digital transformation in any given industry is through partnerships and collaborations as evidenced by several studies and reports. However, it is important to note that these new trends also expose businesses to unique risks in terms of security and protection. This is where insurance distribution becomes key.

Also read: Witness Malaysia’s newest digital solutions at the MYHackathon 2020 Finale & Showcase

McKinsey Partner Sumit Popli said in an interview, “there is a lot more data available, a lot more computing power available. This allows banks and insurers to really understand customers deeply by using analytics. And we know, in insurance, the best time to have the initial conversation is at life moments—childbirth, marriage, things like that. Banks and insurance companies can now find out, using data and analytics, which is the right time. There are a lot of attackers who also realise this shift and have started to go after this opportunity. They are going after the customers and they are getting a lot of traction, so banks and insurers need to change.”

The digitalisation of insurance distribution becomes even more pertinent with the shifting consumer expectations.

“Customer experience is becoming a key competitive weapon — and insurers need to make sure they keep up with customers’ expectations,” says Evangelos Avramakis, Head Digital Ecosystems R&D, Swiss Re Institute.

Tapping into a well-developed digital insurance ecosystem

This ongoing drive toward digitisation has put the insurance industry on the verge of a paradigm shift. Before the pandemic, companies that digitised were at the forefront but now, digitisation has permeated every level of the competitive landscape. It is no longer a mere choice but a necessity. The world’s growing reliance on digital technologies is redefining boundaries across industries and insurers need to hop into this phenomenon.

As traditional business models become obsolete and conventional borders fall apart, the future of insurance lies in collaborative ecosystems where different cogs of the digital world, such as IoT, AI, machine learning, fintech, and Big Data work together collaboratively. Hence, digital ecosystems are the way forward as we usher into an era without sectors. According to a McKinsey report, ecosystems will account for 30 per cent of global revenues by 2025.

Also read: Are cyber attacks more life-threatening than we think?

This benefits insurance seekers and providers alike. According to an Accenture study, 76% of insurers agree that their competitive advantage will be determined not by their organisation alone, but by the strength of the partners and ecosystem they choose. With digital partners that help fuel the insurtech industry enabling easy onboarding, quick deliveries, and smooth payment gateways while ensuring data security and integrity, providers will see unprecedented growth and customer acquisition. While on the other hand, customers get excellent experience, access to all relevant and important information at fingertips, plus personalised services such as promotions, discounts, and more.

To achieve this, the key thing is to effectively expand digital distribution channels. AXA, for example, has bought a stake in and secured a distribution agreement with simplesurance — software that integrates into online stores’ checkout process, allowing customers to buy product insurance with a click. However, simply placing their services in the right distribution channels won’t be enough for insurers. They need to focus on creating quality and relevant products.

Key things to consider for existing and aspiring ecosystem players

The rise of ecosystems is one of the greatest opportunities, but it comes with its set of challenges and risks. Not all industry players are equally suited to pursue this, and companies that dive in might not be able to capture all of the value at stake. Leading, at-scale insurers are somewhat better suited to evolve into orchestrators. However, this emerging trend does create an avenue for local as well as regional players to realign priorities and beat the competition in the process.

Also read: Why Taiwan Matters: local and international initiatives in Taiwan startup ecosystem

There are several important factors to consider before embarking on the path of becoming an ecosystem player. It not only requires technology investments but calls for a 360-degree view of the business operations across various dimensions to ensure that the investments align with the requirements. From talent to culture and target audience to strategies — everything needs to be carefully evaluated and strategised if needed. Other crucial aspects are partnerships and collaborations.

Building an insurtech ecosystem requires aligning with partners from outside the insurance industry, and stakeholders need to be ready to do that.

Deep diving into digital distribution and ecosystems

In line with these emerging trends in the insurtech industry, Insurtech Connect Asia is bringing an APAC-focused virtual summit “DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION & ECOSYSTEMS: VIRTUAL SUMMIT” on 25th February (1 pm to 4 pm SGT). From the distribution of micro-insurance to embracing technologies to support digital sales forces and the relevance of bancassurance today to insights on how to effectively expand ecosystem and distribution partnerships, the summit covers a wide range of relevant topics in the form of panel discussions and solo presentations involving industry leaders and key experts. 

If you are curious to learn more about digital ecosystems and platforms, and seeking to ride the insurtech digital distribution wave, register for the virtual summit here asia.insuretechconnect.com/summit

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by 
ITC Asia Summit

We can share your story at e27, too. Engage the Southeast Asian tech ecosystem by bringing your story to the world. Visit us at e27.co/advertise to get started.

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Kollective Ventures and Joseph Phua’s family office acquire SoundOn, a Taiwanese startup with 35M monthly podcast downloads

SoundOn

Likai Gu, Founder and CEO of SoundOn

Singapore-based investment firm Kollective Ventures (KV) and Turn Capital (the family office of Joseph Phua, Co-founder and Non-Executive Chairman of 17LIVE) have jointly agreed to fully acquire Taiwanese podcast platform SoundOn.

The details of the deal were not disclosed.

As per a press note, SoundOn will continue to operate under its current brand and its services remain unaffected. KV and Turn Capital will look to continue to “accelerate” the growth of the company and the industry in the near future.

Also Read: How 5-year-old live-streaming app 17LIVE acquired 60M users globally

Founded in late 2019 by Likai Gu, SoundOn produces its own content shows featuring Taiwan’s top influencers, besides connecting podcasters to advertisers. The platform also manages its own podcast player app and website, which it claims has been the go-to source for discovering new podcasts in the Taiwanese market.

SoundOn said it has grown to become the largest podcast hosting platform in Taiwan, with over 35 million monthly podcast downloads. This number is projected to grow to over 500 million downloads in 2021.

The Taiwanese podcast industry has grown exponentially since SoundOn’s entry in 2019. The number of podcasts produced for the local audience has grown from less than 50 before 2019 to over 10,000 today. SoundOn claimed its own traffic has grown over 20x in the past year.

“With the growth in market size and SoundOn’s strong product-market fit, the company has achieved over 70 per cent market share and looks to drive further domination in 2021. Kollective Ventures and Turn Capital see massive potential in the podcast and audio space in Taiwan, and this acquisition allows us to further invest and develop the podcast ecosystem,” said Phua.

Also Read: Kollective Ventures acquires Paktor Group from M17 Entertainment

“Recent global success stories in the space, like Clubhouse, have shown the explosive potential of the social audio entertainment space. We look forward to exploring synergies between our audio-related portfolio companies to create an Asian beachhead in this space,” opined Khenglian Ho, Managing Partner at Kollective Ventures.

Last May, KV had acquired Paktor Group, which was founded by Phua, from M17 Entertainment. Paktor is the umbrella that owns a few dating assets, including its namesake app available in Taiwan, Korea and Southeast Asia, and Goodnight, a voice-dating app.

On Monday, Podcast Network Asia, a Philippine-based podcast network agency, announced raising of US$750,000 in seed funding from Foxmont Capital, Venturra Discovery, Kumu and Lisa Gokongwei, President of Summit Media.

Image Credit: SoundOn

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How to set up your business processes for scaling your growth

 business process

If you’re tired of the buzzwords, you’re not alone. The idea of a “digital transformation” or digitalisation or any other kind of coined version of “change” drives many in business to the brink. The reason is that seasoned professionals know that embracing every buzzword doesn’t guarantee success.

You need more than buzzwords. You need results.

An already popular study from the Harvard Business Review pegs the fail rate at around 70 per cent for most digital initiatives. Seventy per cent. Two-thirds. What’s worse is that McKinsey surveyed several businesses, asking them if they thought their businesses would stay “economically viable” if the trend towards digitalisation continued.

The results? Only eight per cent believed they would…

Only eight per cent of businesses think they could survive the changing tides that technology and innovation bring. That’s shocking.

If your business wants to do more than survive, it needs a different approach to optimise processes in your business. It needs to take control. And doing isn’t as difficult as you may think, provided you make the right choices at the start.

How to successfully transform your business

Before you can understand what works, you need to realise what doesn’t. While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to transforming your business, there are mindsets you can and should avoid. 

Luckily, the right solutions can help you overcome the common problems that plague scaling your business. This is your roadmap to scale your business successfully.

Problem: Lacking clear expectations

When you ask many executives and department heads what their goals are for their company, you often hear generic responses, “Improve customer service, grow sales, and stay competitive.” 

Also Read: Ecosystem Roundup: Grab considering US IPO this year; Turochas Fuad unveils his new BNPL venture; Tesla scaling its S’pore team

But generic mantras won’t get you far. And tacking on “digital transformation” to every initiative doesn’t constitute change.

Businesses aren’t clear cut, black and white processes with concrete, established boundaries. They’re organic entities with a lot of moving parts. If you shift one area of your company without respect to how it will affect another, you risk doing more harm than good. 

New processes need to flow across all areas of your organisation. Without that, they’ll fall apart before they even get off the ground.

Solution: Clearly defined business goals

The solution is to have clear business strategies. Rather than have generic goals, discuss and create specific, reachable ones. Once you define those goals, you’ll be able to easily backward design a roadmap to get you there. 

During this process, you should listen to input from all departments so that you can have an understanding of how each area of your business evaluate success. You’ll also see the obstacles that stand in the way of that success.

Delegating a single approach will not work. Successful business transformation rests in having a holistic strategy. It should keep in mind the focus of the goals, how to implement them, and how to balance change with growth. It should also be dynamic and run from the top-down, back up again, and throughout the business as a whole. 

Remember, without clearly defined goals, your strategy will lose momentum before it even sets sail.

Problem: Choosing the wrong beginning

There are most likely clear strategies you can put to work right now that would reduce costs and keep your business competitive. But are they the right strategies? And how do you know? And which order should you implement them? 

While it may seem commonsensical to implement quick, simple solutions, that may not be the best approach. Quick fixes can be like patches that take up time and resources but only slow the problem temporarily. To really make a change, you need to think bigger.

Solution: Prioritise strategies for change

While creating the strategy for your company’s future success, begin listing needed changes to workflows and processes in your business. 

Once you know what changes your business could benefit from, see how other processes would be affected by implementing these changes. 

Also, look at what problems remain after putting them into practice. You’ll quickly find that some quick fixes may be unnecessary. Or worse, you may discover that they slow down progress.

Problem: Having a “set-it” and “forget it” mindset

With the ease of access to information these days, it doesn’t take much effort to find out what kind of tactics successful companies used to grow and stay competitive. 

Certain workflows may, again, seem commonsensical at first. And requiring rigorous review and oversight before adding them as solid stepping stones toward progress may seem excessive.

Also Read: How understanding culture can drive digitalisation of payments in Myanmar

Except there’s a problem with that way of thinking. Every business is different. One strategy and roadmap may work well for one company. But it could fail to bring results for your business. Expecting solutions to work because they worked for other organisations is a recipe for disaster. You need to take a different approach.

Solution: Create a custom roadmap for digitalisation

You need a strategy that reflects your company culture, brand, and mission. And more importantly, you need one that caters to your employees’ needs. Any new processes won’t succeed if employees don’t advocate for them. 

Designing a roadmap specifically for your business with company culture in mind is a great way to avoid irritating issues. Looking at the data to back up any decisions while using KPIs to further evaluate performance before augmenting initiatives is key.

It’s better to think of business transformation as a continuous process. One that must be constantly evaluated, adjusted, and tested before its full value is realised. 

And once your new systems take hold and yield results, more employees will aid in championing them on their own. With your company behind new initiatives, successful business transformation is more likely to occur.

Problem: Underestimating the power of disruption

Often, important tasks get pushed aside. Even though executives know the value in successfully digitising your business, they may not fully understand the consequences of putting it off. True. Digital innovation now happens at a far more rapid scale than ever before.

Advancements, data, and analytics mean that more companies are working harder to provide services customers expect. Some changes need to happen quicker than others. And some can be avoided altogether. 

This results in a kind of “analysis paralysis” where companies believe it’s better to hold off and wait because something better is on the horizon.

Solution: Prioritise agility

Rather than waiting for a “better” system, create both a business and company culture that values agility. The key to any successful attempt at digitisation in your company is to have champions behind it. But for that to happen organically, you need a system that clearly improves the experience of those interacting with it.

The best way to do this is to create workflow processes that are easily adaptable. The beauty in business optimisation is that many software solutions are cloud-based. 

They also promote the use of automation and integrations. And as a result, new systems can be far more easily connected to existing ones. These types of workflows reduce processes, handling menial tasks that often bog down employees’ time.

By making digitalisation easier for your company, you’ll greatly reduce pushback from implementing new systems.

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. Become a thought leader in the community and share your opinions or ideas and earn a byline by submitting a post.

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10 lessons on building a great team  by a marketing employee

team building

The story is based on my five years of experience working with amazing team members in content marketing at iPrice Group. Here are my 10 key learnings from this journey:

(Really) Teach what you preach

People will directly or indirectly replicate how their leaders behave. If we want people to read, we need to read. If we want people to be creative, show what creative behaviour looks like. If we want people to put their heart into their work, put ours.

“Monkey sees, monkey do”.

Build, develop, and reward a learning behaviour

Learning is one of the biggest factors for people to join or leave a team company. It’s also one of the most crucial skills in any organisation. If it’s done well, the team can be really-really effective and performs really well.

Everyone wants people to learn. But to learn we need to have a supportive environment. We need to build + continuously develop + reward the behaviour of learning.

Give people a chance to learn something new or level up their understanding of a certain topic. And when people learn, reward their behaviour. As simple as saying “good learnings!” or until the extent of asking them to do a sharing session with the rest of the team.

Also Read: Making offline marketing cool again: How this AI startup is changing the future of B2C advertising

Put extremely high standards on the hiring

“People are the foundation of any company’s success”
Trillion Dollar Coach

  • Make an easy to digest + compelling job description in any openings in your team
  • Do a passive search and ask for a recommendation from “high performers”
  • Provide pre-screening questions in the application form. This is to help you to do an early check of the applicants. Highly recommended as this saves a lot of your time.
  • Prepare a set of questions to check all aspects from the candidate: behavioural + technical
  • Form a case study to understand more detail about their understanding of the topics and ability to produce something
  • Give chance + encourage the candidates to ask you questions
  • (If possible) Ask other team members to have a chat with the candidates

The process might be slightly longer, but it’s really worth it.

Genuinely care with your team and invest time to coach them

One of our main responsibility as a manager is to develop our people. Spending time with them so they can learn the most important skills they need to have to be really successful in their role now (technical and behavioural).

To do this effectively, we need to genuinely care about their personal and career growth. Always ask questions and clarify what areas they really interested in + need to learn at their stage now. Never assume.

Whenever you see progress, congratulate them and let them know they are progressing. It’s important because people want to know whether they are progressing or not.

Create a safe environment for people to discuss, debate, and disagree

“High-performing teams need psychological safety”

–  HBR

Be super-super explicit to everyone in the team that it’s totally okay to openly share their opinion (even if it’s different); it’s okay to disagree (as long as they have a strong reason), and it’s okay to debate on a topic (as long they are being respectful to each other).

As a manager, continuously remind people about this. Show an example of how to do it right, and reward people that promoting this value.

Also Read: Epsilo raises US$2M to expand its SaaS e-commerce marketing platform across Asia

Proactively ask for feedback from team members + act on it

Naturally, people hate feedback. But at the same time, we know it’s super valuable.

Make people understand why it’s extremely valuable to have this mentality in the team (Why?). Once they understand the why give them a regular example (day-to-day basis) on how to give good feedback + how to openly receive one.

The top recommendation when it comes to this is the book by Kim Scott, Radical Candor.

Encourage and trust your team to try and do an experiment

Most of you who read it probably works on tech companies, or if not working in a company that wants to be successful. So one of the keys is to continue innovating. Coming up with new ideas + test them out.

Observe any problem or challenges you have in your team and ask people “So do you guys think we can do about it?” Really listen to all the ideas and let them own it and test their solution.

Be very clear and explicit with what we expect from the team

Never ever assume people know what’s in our minds. They are not a mentalist. Want people to be punctual in a meeting? Tell them.

Want people to be respectful with each other? Tell them. Being explicit sometimes is not easy. But it’ll save a lot of time for everyone.

Celebrate wins and learnings

Whenever people learn something new or achieve something (small or big) celebrate in a team. Let people know that their hard work is important and people aware of it. Especially you as their manager.

Also Read: Why team-building exercises won’t make your staff more productive

Few ideas (during this COVID-19 period) 

  • Create a chat group to “celebrate wins and achievements”,
  • Publicly mention the work + the person on social media (LinkedIn/ Twitter)
  • Send small gifts (food)
  • Have a dedicated session to thank other people

Learn to tell jokes

The rationale is to bring fun elements into your team. You don’t need to be a stand-up comedian. Just learn to tell few jokes and be fun in the team!

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. Become a thought leader in the community and share your opinions or ideas and earn a byline by submitting a post.

Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community or like the e27 Facebook page

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Drivehub bags Series A to expand its car rental platform to Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore

Drivehub

Drivehub, a Thailand-based online car rental platform, announced today it has closed a “USD seven-figure” Series A funding round, co-led by Toyota Tsusho, CAC Capital, and KK Fund.

As per a press note, the fresh funds will be deployed to enhance Drivehub’s software and technological systems, as well as expand to new markets in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

Launched in 2017, Drivehub is an online marketplace where users can “instantly” check vehicle availability, compare prices and quality and transact. The Bangkok-based startup claims it is able to do that through its “real-time” connection to the fleet of rental car companies.

Drivehub shared that it also offers different payment methods for car rentals on its platform. Users can transact through a credit card for international service providers such as Hertz and Dollar, or choose to pay by cash for local service providers.

The ability to pay for rentals with cash is welcomed in Southeast Asia where credit card signups have remained low. Consumers in the region often resort to alternate forms of payments such as cash. In Thailand, 52 per cent of car rentals occur without a credit card.

Also Read: Do you take cash? 3 hurdles to a cashless Singapore

Drivehub claims it has grown by 50 per cent compared to the same period last year, despite sales setbacks by as much as 90 per cent in April 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Drivehub is in the process of using the funding to expand on a regional scale, while also seeking for opportunities to transform the conventional rental car service,” said Thatchai Chuaprapaisilp, CEO and Co-founder of Drivehub.

The company also announced a new partnership with Thai trading company Toyota Tsusho. With the latter’s capabilities in sale-purchase of new or used cars, auto financing and car insurance, Drivehub said it would be able to expand and tailor its solutions to meet the changing demand of consumers.

According to the startup, small local rental car providers will be provided with the opportunity to enhance and expand their business in a sustainable way too.

Image Credit: Drivehub

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Where is Taiwan’s AI ecosystem headed?

AI in Taiwan

2020 has finally come to an end. Although the world is still shrouded in the shadow of the Black Swan event of COVID-19, the crisis has reached a turning point. As the pandemic continues to affect all parts of the world, many organisations, companies, and startups have turned to big data and AI to transform and optimise the efficiency of business activities, directly accelerating the overall development of the AI industry.

According to IDC’s report, the global AI market in 2020 will amount to US$156.5 billion, with a growth rate of 12.3 per cent, of which 80 per cent will be attributed to software. IDC also optimistically expects that the market size of the AI industry, considered by some as a blue ocean, will compound at an annual rate of 17 per cent and exceed US$300 billion by 2024.

For various AI initiatives and applications to flourish, data centres must be fully developed to support the storage of data and training models, brain-like IaaS (information-as-a-service), and PaaS (platform-as-a-service) cloud services. After meeting the performance requirements of AI for cloud services, data in various fields such as finance and manufacturing can be used more efficiently to accelerate AI technology.

It should then come as no surprise that leading international cloud players such as Google and Microsoft have recently announced their intentions to deepen their investments in Taiwan’s AI Infrastructure.

Last September, Google unveiled that it would build a third data centre in Yunlin, while Microsoft disclosed at the end of October that it would set up its first Azure data centre in Taiwan.

Also Read: Kollective Ventures and Joseph Phua’s family office acquire SoundOn, a Taiwanese startup with 35M monthly podcast downloads

As Taiwan’s future cloud infrastructure realises, developers will no longer need to build services through overseas data centres, which will accelerate AI innovations and applications by local teams, especially in areas that are more sensitive to data sovereignty, such as finance.

Every six months, AppWorks releases an updated Taiwan AI Ecosystem Map, distilling the latest trends and developments while highlighting various companies leading the charge. In the process of reviewing the overall ecosystem changes, we have observed the following trends in the second half of 2020.

Taiwan’s AI Ecosystem Second Half 2020 is produced by AppWorks and is updated every six months

AI in healthtech has attracted investors’ attention

Although the pandemic has negatively impacted economic productivity and overall investor appetite, it has unequivocally accelerated the adoption of AI innovation in healthcare.  Despite the rather barren investment landscape in the first half of 2020, aetherAI, which provides medical imaging AI development services and AI digital pathology systems, managed to close a US$6 million Series A round led by Quanta Computing.

In the second half of 2020, Deep01, which assists medical staff in interpreting computer tomography (CT) and provides an AI image interpretation system for cerebral hemorrhaging, successfully raised NT$80 million (US$2.7 million) in seed funding led by ASUS Capital. In addition, Heroic-Faith, which pioneered innovative medical devices such as an AI stethoscope and a smart respiratory monitoring system, also completed a US$4 million series A round of fundraising in 2020.

Also Read: What is the state of Taiwan’s AI ecosystem?

Moving forward, the next step for Taiwan’s healthtech and AI industry is to go global. As the main markets for medical AI-related products are still focused in developed countries such as the US, Japan, and Europe, Taiwan’s visibility coupled with the impact of the pandemic will have an effect on an international scale. Whether these innovative startups can successfully go overseas to scale will become the focus of attention in the future.

Corporates are accelerating their search for transformation and collaboration opportunities

For many traditional Taiwanese companies, big data and AI have been at the crux of their digital transformation initiatives and overall search for the next growth engines. In 2020, Commonwealth Magazine and Europe’s IMD jointly released the first digital transformation survey between Taiwan and Europe.

It pointed out that up to 52 per cent of Taiwanese companies have not yet been digitally transformed, and only 4 per cent of companies achieved or exceeded their digital transformation goals. Whether it’s in-house big data and AI project teams or looking for partners in the startup world, it has become the newest goal for companies to innovate.

The most direct model is creating corporate venture capital (CVC) arms to invest in new ventures with strategic value. In addition to investment, Taiwan’s major companies are also exploring other collaborative models. For example, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of IoT systems Advantech worked with StarFab to establish an accelerator.

Wistron, on the other hand, not only promotes upgrading the industry through partnerships with startups but also actively lays out future transformations. They collaborated with NCTU to establish embedded AI research centres, and jointly planned Wistron Lab @ Garage+ with Chia Hsin Cultural Foundation and Times Foundation to find growth opportunities in the next decade.

Taiwan’s AI ecosystem is bolstered by the successful prevention of the epidemic

Due to the success of the Taiwan government and all citizens and residents in fighting the pandemic, Taiwan’s AI ecosystem continued to flourish in the second half of 2020. On the startup accelerator side, AppWorks Accelerator has been recruiting specifically for AI startups since August 2018, fostering a total of 84 teams from both inside and outside of Taiwan.

Other community partners such as Microsoft for Startups, SparkLabs Taipei, and Taiwan AI x Robotics Accelerator also recruited a number of AI-related startups to inject new energy into Taiwan’s AI ecosystem. In the second half of 2020, due to the proper control of the coronavirus, it was relatively safe to host physical events in Taiwan. The largest startup event 2020 Meet Taipei showcased many startups using AI and big data to create more value-added services. 

Also Read: How Taiwan’s blockchain industry is powering through the downturn

Taiwan AI Academy, Taiwan AI Labs, and the Artificial Intelligence Foundation are Taiwan’s representative institutions in the field of AI education and research, and continue to inject talent and innovative technologies for the development of AI in Taiwan. With the support from the government, institutions, and overall ecosystem, Taiwan can continue to promote the implementation of AI in various industries and integrate innovation into traditional businesses.

This gives an opportunity for startups to leverage the resources that Taiwan can offer and connect with players in the ecosystem that are upgrading Taiwan’s AI capabilities.

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. Become a thought leader in the community and share your opinions or ideas and earn a byline by submitting a post.

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