Malaysian start-up Food Market Hub wins Asean competition in S. Korea

Participants and Asean-Korea Centre officials pose at the centre's headquarters in Jung-gu, Seoul on Oct 20, 2023. - The Korea Herald

SEOUL (The Korea Herald/Asia News Network): Malaysian start-up Food Market Hub took first place at an in-person pitching competition organised by the Asean-Korea Centre here on Friday (Oct 20).

Food Market Hub provides multifaceted business-to-business solutions for procurement, payment and inventory management within food and beverage industry.

The competition, aimed at supporting early-stage start-ups in Southeast Asia, saw start-up teams from Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, and Vietnam receiving recognition for their performances.

Thirty start-ups from a variety of sectors including artificial intelligence (AI), e-commerce platforms, fintech, education and tourism were nominated by the 10 embassies from Asean in Korea and the Asean Coordinating Committee on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.

Each start-up introduced business ideas to venture capitalists from South Korea.

The Malaysian winner, which was awarded US$30,000, will be invited by the Asean-Korea Center to attend NextRise -- Korea’s largest startup exhibition -- in 2024.

In second place was teaching service platform Teachmeguru of Brunei, followed by telemedicine platform ZumVet of Singapore and AI-based health technology platform Genetica of Vietnam in third place.

“We hope that this contest will create a growth foothold for promising Asean start-up companies and serve as an opportunity to promote cooperation between regions,” said Asean-Korea Centre Secretary-General Kim Hae-yong in his closing remarks.

The pitch contest was part of the annual Asean-Korea Start-up Week launched in 2018 to recruit promising Asean start-ups for networking and to engage in capacity-building with counterparts in South Korea.

Ahead of the contest, the Asean-Korea Centre also completed a two-week acceleration programme from Sept 11 to 22, to introduce the participating start-ups to potential business partners.

The Asean bloc is home to about 670 million people, and the average age of the population is relatively young, at 31.

As the spread of the Internet in the region has increased, and business-friendly policies have been implemented, Southeast Asia has become a promising region for upcoming start-ups.