KPMG Private Enterprise Global Tech Innovator

We are pleased to announce PhaBuilder as the winner of KPMG’s second annual Global Tech Innovator China Competition. PhaBuilder will now progress to the global stage of the competition at the Web Summit in Portugal, to compete with tech innovators from 24 other countries in November. The winner of that stage of the competition will be crowned the Global Tech Innovator.

Groundbreaking ideas, talent, innovation and entrepreneurial spirit are what set PhaBuilder and all the other entrants apart. Congratulations to all of the exceptional finalists who made this journey so inspiring!

We would like to extend our hearty congratulations to the winners, runners up and all the finalists that showed exceptional prowess and innovative capabilities. They are:

Champion:
PhaBuilder

1^st runner-up:
Regen-αGeek

2^nd runner-up:
Smardaten Technologies Co., ltd 

Following the tremendous success of the inaugural competition in 2022, KPMG Private Enterprise is delighted to return to crown the 2023 China Tech Innovator. On 17 August 2023, we will host the national competition and find the next China Tech Innovator.

This year we have a variety of brilliant start-ups that will pitch to an esteemed panel of judges made up of investors, founders, leaders and advisors from our thriving tech community.

The finalists listed below have been chosen from an impressive pool of applicants. The stakes are high because only one will move forward to represent China in the global final in November to compete against over 20 finalists from around the world.

 (in alphabetical order)

AlphaInsight focuses on providing innovative  technological empowerment for the financial service sector. We adopt leading technologies such as natural language processing, knowledge graphs, big data analytics, to enable AIGC applications in various scenarios. Our core business approach revolves around information digitalization, data intelligence, and business smartification, ensuring intelligent applications are efficiently implemented. 

Bizibuz is a supplementary education marketplace that improves the educational outcome for kids by providing a range of unique tools to parents to drive better decisions and reduce daily frictions in managing after school activities. We have 145,000 users with over 800,000 activities from over 1,000 difference education centre branches across HK and are in the process of expanding to Singapore. Our monthly compound growth rate is 20% in account creations, 15% in revenue and roughly 30% of our revenue is recurring, demonstrating strong product/market fit. 

Butler is a cloud-based real estate SaaS company, powered by generative AI, that provides comprehensive management systems for real estate companies including building & resident management systems, sales systems and leasing lead systems to real estate companies. We disrupt the traditional and inefficient manual record-keeping practices in the industry by offering a virtual “butler” service, enabling digitization, automation, and documentation of tasks. Our aim is to become a key component in driving the future urban blueprint of metropolitan cities in Asia.

REGEN-αGEEK is a national award-winning research and development company that focuses on industrializing and promoting regenerative medicine. We specialize in the development of the DASEA™ Bioproduction Platform, which aims to "digitalized, automated, scalable, enclosed, activated" the production of biological products. Our ultimate objective is to make regeneration clinically accessible and affordable.

CELLOMICS is committed to providing a full range of precision diagnostic products and services for cancer screening and detection. The company is a national high-tech enterprise integrating liquid biopsy technology and product development, production and sales, and testing services, with research centers in Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Chengdu, as well as a GMP production base and a medical laboratory in Shenzhen.

Diginex is a fast-growth software company helping companies off all sizes with their ESG, Climate and Supply Chain data collection and reporting. It utilises the latest blockchain technology to lead change and increase transparency. We help organizations who want to do better and be more responsible, to realise the commercial benefits of ESG and make data-driven decisions to mitigate risk, build resilience and capitalize on growth opportunities. Organizations use Diginex’s technology to future- proof their business models and accelerate growth, while contributing to a better future.

EVIDENT is an investment platform for alternative assets with impact. We empower investors to access, invest, and trade in alternative assets they believe in Utelising tokenisation and blockchain technology, we turn real world assets into digital securities, as easy to invest in and trade as stocks.

I2Cool Limited is a start-up technology company, incubated by HK TECH 300 in the City University of Hong Kong (CityU), co-founded by a research team supervised by Dr. Chi Yan TSO, assistant professor in the School of Energy and Environment, CityU. The team has strong research and development background and experience. Seven years ago, the team developed the 15-generation of passive radiative cooler (PRC) in Hong Kong. Over several years, tackling the issues of high cost and scale up difficulties, a passive radiative cooling paint (PCP) has been developed and commercialized. The team has participated in many inventions and entrepreneurship competitions using the PCP, gaining recognition. The competitions include Gold with Congratulations of the Jury in Inventions Geneva Evaluation Days; Champion in "TERA-AWARD“, etc. Additionally, media has widely reported the PCP, such as TVB Interview - Innovation GPS; RTHK; Sing Tao Newspapers.

iRegene Therapeutics aims to bring fast-acting disease-reversing therapies to treat “incurable” diseases like Parkinson’s disease and blindness. iRegene uses proprietary “Chemical Induction” system to accurately reprograms cells' fate and function via small molecules. The system allows for easy access to the cell to kick start synchronous footprint-less modification, and generates high purity cell products with straight forward manufacturing. This checks all the boxes for a breakthrough cell therapy: safe, effective, easy-to-use with low costs. In summary, iRegene builds market competitiveness from concept to execution. Combining a high value product with low cost, iRegene’s therapies are expected to be major drivers in the industry.

PhaBuilder is an innovative company with advanced technology in synthetic biology. With the core vision of "From Micro to Future", PhaBuilder has constructed a "low-carbon & intelligent manufacturing" model through the transformation and engineering application of halophilic microbes, to carry out platform-based & product-based development.

Royal Decarbonization Technology Co., Ltd. is a high-tech enterprise engaged in the recycling and utilization of industrial bulk solid waste resources to achieve the dual carbon goal. The team comes from top domestic universities and has been dedicated to the deep research and development of solid waste recycling in bulk industry for many years. We have carried out research and practical work on the integration and recycling of multiple fields, industries, disciplines, and varieties of solid waste, breaking the traditional concept of solid waste treatment technology, exploring the extraction of valuable substances from bulk solid waste, reducing harmful substances in solid waste, and turning waste into treasure resources and energy, Forming a technology and process system for the fusion of multiple types of solid waste to produce low-carbon lightweight insulation materials and other inorganic new materials; To achieve the goal of low energy consumption and low-carbon emissions.

Founded in 2017, Cloudpick is an international company providing real-economy-based industries with evolutionary solutions of digitized transformation. Cloudpick has offices in China, Japan, Germany and other countries and regions. 

With technologies of 3D computer vision, deep learning and multi-sensor fusion, Cloudpick is the pioneer to realize digital twin of "people, things, and places" in real space and provide digital solutions of unmanned retail, unmanned warehousing, teaching and training, industrial inspection, tobacco inspection, and elderly guardianship, assisting real-economy-based industries with digitized transformation and thus creating more social and economic value, improving the happiness of retailers and customers.

Currently, Cloudpick has implemented more than 400 smart solutions in 15 countries, including Singapore, Korea, Japan, the United States, France, Germany, Hungary, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States.  

META Pharmaceuticals, China's first immunometabolism-based small-molecule drug discovery company, was founded by a team of researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine. META Pharmaceuticals is developing first-in-class drugs with a new mechanism that effectively regulates the immune system by modulating cell metabolism. This strategy holds the promise of delivering treatment options with stronger potency and fewer side effects for a variety of chronic diseases.

As the leader of the 4th generation of bigdata powered NoCode, Smardaten has developed a cutting-edge, highly efficient platform that leverages intelligent data's auto modelling capabilities to construct complex, enterprise-class software and applications, all integrated with data throughout every step. This mechanism is able to provide a well-rounded bigdata platform as the bolstering foundation, therefore to shorten traditional software development process from 1-2 years to 3-6 weeks, while revolutionize the old-fashioned linear lengthy deveopment process with highly efficient, round table collaborative approach, while eliminating data silo issues, which is a major hindrance to digitalisation success.

Spectrumedics Medical is dedicated to tackling problems in the cardiovascular field through energy-based minimally invasive interventions. Our primary offering, the "Sonic Intravascular Lithotripsy System," is a globally acclaimed cutting-edge solution for vascular calcification lesions, and has been dubbed the "terminator" of vascular calcification.

SaaS & Generative AI platform helping Retail and Consumer brands to transact, market and promote their products like a Pro!

ZR Medtech is a technology-based enterprise committed to the research and development of new materials and the application of new technologies in the field of regenerative medicine. It has built a basement membrane technology based tissue regeneration technology platform, and innovatively expanded the application of regenerative medicine in clinical departments represented by oncology and gynecology as well as the upstream and downstream industry chain to meet the needs of disease treatment with higher regenerative demand.

Daniel Chan, National Head of Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) sector, is leading and supporting KPMG China network across all lines of service – Audit, Tax as well as Advisory - to provide one-stop professional solutions and services to companies in the TMT sector. Daniel is a practising member of both the Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Certified Practicing Accountants Australia. He has been working in KPMG for over 30 years and has extensive experience in providing audit services to TMT clients in Mainland China and Hong Kong.

Irene is a Partner of KPMG China with over 20 years of experience in providing audit and IPO services. Irene is the Head of New Economy and Life Sciences sectors. She has worked with a variety of industries including technology, consumer and retail, healthcare, life sciences, robotics and ecommerce. Since 2014, Irene has been supportive of Hong Kong’s start-up community and collaborates with government agencies, universities and corporates to support the development of Hong Kong’s innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Mr. Archie Fong accumulated over 23 years of experience in investment, financing and corporate management. He handled tremendous projects including direct investment, IPO, M&A, equity and debt financing with total deal sizes close to US100 billion. He assisted his served investment bank in securing no.1 IPO fund raising in HK and the globe. Mr. Fong actively cooperates with the governments and professional associations to organise financial topic related forums,activities and policy consultation works. He also contributes to the development of medical and healthcare industries in Greater China region.

Mr. Fong currently works as head of healthcare and corporate finance for Ping An of China Capital (HK). He formerly worked as general manager of Yue Xiu Capital and head of corporate finance for China Industrial Securities International, responsible for investment banking businesses. He served BOCI as sponsor principal and responsible officer, HSBC Securities, ICEA (currently known as ICBCI), BNP Paribas Peregrine, Orient Securities and Ernst & Young.

Mr. Fong graduated from the University of Hong Kong with a Bachelor of Actuarial Science Degree and was awarded with HSBC Scholarship for his excellent performance during the univeristy, he has actively participated in many public and voluntary work.

Shiyang is founder of 2718.ai. He also worked for other startup companies like COO of LynxAI, and AI/Cloud Advisor of kuaizi.ai. Before he jumps into entrepreneur’s world, Shiyang worked for Google Cloud as Business Advisor and Microsoft as Global Black Belt to incubate new business from 0 to millions of USD. Shiyang holds MBA and MSc IT degrees from HKUST. 

Dr. Qingzhen Yu is a Business Partner of GTJA Investment Group, focusing on investments in the healthcare sector. Dr. Yu was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, received a PhD degree at Tianjin University School of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology, and mini-MBA at Harvard Business School, where Dr. Yu’s entrepreneurial venture- AIdentimages was successfully selected into Harvard Innovation Lab. Dr. Yu has many years of investment experience in the Healthcare field. His investment cases include Kind Pharmaceuticals, Sunho Biologics, Cell-Origin, BioInno Bioscience, Huamai Medical, Asia Regenerative Medicine, etc.

The countries/regions/jurisdictions participating in the 2023 competition include: Australia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ghana, India, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom, United States and Vietnam.

The KPMG Private Enterprise Global Tech Innovator competition showcases entrepreneurs across industries who are innovating to become the tech leaders of tomorrow. Hear from the 2021 finalists here.

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