In the last 15 years, technological advancements have seen us evolve from using cellphones, cars that run on fuel, and battery watches to using smartphones, electric cars, smartwatches, and Ipads. The last five have seen advancements in self-driving vehicles, robotics, healthcare, and other vital sectors essential for human life. With the 4th Industrial revolution underway, investors, VCs, and large companies are looking for startups to develop technologies for the future.
The COMEUP festival was created to connect these startups and investors. The COMEUP 2021 startup showcase gives startups the chance to present their company to potential investors and get the support and funding they need to lead us to the new age. Today’s showcase included 42 Maru, Neubility, Dana green, Sir Loin, and Robo Arete presentations. The judges for the startup showcase were Dohan Kim, founder and CEO of Timewise Investments; Jeffrey Lim, Managing partner at Signite Partners; and Kyung Ho Lee, Director at DSC investments. From the startup that uses robots to make chicken to the search engine that gives you accurate answers based on your intentions, here are the promising startups that pitched today.
Neubility
Sangmin Lee, CEO of Neubility, began the showcase by showing off their urban self-driving robot delivery platform equipped with cameras and sensors to help it move. The robot Neubie is fitted with a small motor engine with its inbuilt camera and sensors, allowing it to travel through dense urban areas. Its sensors are built to detect and avoid oncoming traffic, buildings, people, and even skyscrapers. Due to its small size, it can easily weave through traffic reducing delivery time. In contrast, the lack of staff for delivery reduces salary costs and removes human error from its delivery system. The startup is currently working with KaoKao, 711, and Coupang to commercialize Neubie and plans to become a SAS and subscription platform by next year.
DaNAgreen
Kiwoo Kim, the CEO of Dana green, began his presentation by pointing out the sharp increase in food shortages in the last decade. “Food shortages have become a common thing in today’s world, with thousands of people dying from hunger daily. Our high population also worsens the situation leading to less livestock for many people,” he said. However, Dana green has developed a new method of producing meat without slaughtering or raising livestock. The firm has developed scaffolds that help scientists culture cells in 3D and utilize its service for cultured meat production. The cultured meat is meat using the startup’s cross-linking technology to culture the muscle cells of livestock, creating meat scaffolds. The firm is based in Singapore but plans to expand to the US next year after the FDA approves its cultured meat.
Robo Arete
Robo Arete creates one-person stores by replacing the workforce with robots. According to Jiyoung Kang, the startup’s CEO, the robot arms they equip in stores use the resolution to carry out various restaurant tasks. The robotic arms can make 100 portions of fried chicken in just two hours. Their invention stores only have to depend on one human worker to make deliveries and supervise the robots during working hours. The robotic arms enable restaurants to save money in several areas, such as remunerations, while increasing the efficiency of the stores by eliminating human error and employee dangers. The arms can not only be used in restaurants but also in departmental stores and other small stores
Sir Loin
Sir Loin seeks to connect bio and IT through creating a specialty meat commerce that offers the best quality meat to businesses and consumers. Byeon Junwon, the CEO of Sir Loin, got the inspiration to create his startup due to the complexities of purchasing meat online. Unlike other products such as beverages and fruits, which usually come pre-packaged, meat buyers have to consider the type of meat they want, its state, its quality, and other numerous factors. Sir Loin eliminates these worries by setting realistic standards to assess meat quality. The startup considers meat using vet aging, dry-aging, and other aging processes till it reaches a certain level of quality. It then processes the beef and sells it to customers or other businesses. It plans to expand to pork, lamb, chicken, and mutton by the end of the year.
42 Maru
42Maru is a deep-learning startup that provides solutions to cognitive searches by individuals and businesses. “Our company has developed high-powered search engines based on deep semantics to improve companies’ knowledge management. Our question-answer platform is equipped with natural language understanding technology that understands the user’s real intention to create a semantic presentation of what they want,” said Donghwan Kim, CEO of 42 Maru. These systems rely on machine comprehension, AI, and deep learning to offer direct answers to the user’s questions. Its NLU can understand the user’s intention when searching for something to provide specific solutions to their query. Kim plans to make his startup the first Q&A platform as a service offering monthly subscriptions for users and businesses.
