Applications open for NEC Innovation Challenge 2023

NEC is looking for International and Japanese start-ups to collaborate with their partners and sponsors, on key domestic challenges.

If you have a solution that is relevant to their 4 themes (LLM, Healthcare, Smart City, Urban Agriculture) and are keen to establish your business in Japan, don’t miss this opportunity!

This is your golden ticket to unlock unprecedented opportunities in the Japanese market and win up to USD 15,000 of funding available for PoC development!

Themes

Large Language Model (LLM)

• Challenge Statement: Bring innovative ideas and solutions to explore LLM technologies (not limited to the LLM created by NEC this year) and work with NEC to expand the business of LLM!
  • Specifically with solutions which are one of the following:
    • Are Industry-specific (Vertical Applications): in the area of Healthcare, drug discovery, and finance.
    • Are Cross-industry (Horizontal Applications): in the area of Marketing and Robotics.
    • Are Solutions using NEC’s LLM.

Healthcare

• Bring innovative ideas and solutions to explore Healthcare with NEC!
  • Specifically with solutions which are one of the following:
    • Can contribute to the digitalization of the hospital with usage of technologies.
    • Utilize the healthcare data.
    • Can contribute to the marketing for pharmaceutical manufacturers and medical device manufacturers.

Smart City

For the NEC Innovation Challenge, they have picked two categories among these issues that are relevant topics in a ‘Smart City’.

• Child Safety & Protection
  • Challenge Statement: Bring them solutions utilizing smart technologies for child safety & protection in Japan and to create feasible businesses by working together with NEC! Such as:
    • Solutions that ensures physical or psychological safety of children, parents, and other stakeholders.
    • Solutions that promotes advanced communication between children, parents and educational facilities.
    • Monitoring solutions suitable for different scenes.
• Smart Retail
  • Challenge Statement: Bring them solutions utilizing smart technologies for Smart Retail in Japan and to create feasible businesses by working together with Japanese companies! Such as:
    • Solutions that can forecast the demand in store.
    • Solutions that can save labors in stores (using robots and AI).
    • Solutions that can create mechanism for supplying daily necessities in rural areas experiencing depopulation.
    • Solutions that offer new experiential store setups or business models.
    • Solutions that offer new retail business models that has not yet entered Japan.

Urban Agriculture

• Urban Agriculture refers to growing crops such as vegetables and fruits in the urban areas. In Kawasaki and Tokyo, as few of the largest cities in Japan, many farmers are operating agriculture taking advantage of the characteristics of the region on relatively small farm lands located in residential areas.
• They are bringing up the 2 main issues related to Urban Agriculture in Kawasaki City.
• The applicants will need to select either themes below.
  • Sustainable Use and Disposal of Agricultural Waste
  • Pest Control with Less Impact on the Environment

Funding Information

NEC award: Funding of up to $15,000 for PoC development.

Criteria

NEC will be evaluating the solution and the participant on a case-by-case basis, depending on the scenario of the solution. Overall, they will be looking at the following requirements and criteria:

• Business development phases are seed, early, middle or later.
• Co-creation project which can be applied in the Japanese market.
• Co-creating members who can communicate and work with NEC members in Japan. (Language barriers are not a problem!)
• Good business synergy effects with NEC.

For more information, visit NEC.