8 startups of the “Open Innovation Challenge TSUBASA 2021”

Following our North Star of “Creating Businesses and Changing Societies”, Dream Incubator (DI) has always strived to seek better ways of solving global social issues with corporate-startup, public-private collaboration and innovative financing schemes for nurturing socially impactful businesses.

“Open Innovation Challenge TSUBASA 2021” (TSUBASA: Transformational Start Ups’ Business Acceleration for the SDGs Agenda) forms part of a research project namely "Information Gathering and Research on Start-up Partnerships in Latin America and the Caribbean” of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and IDB Lab*), jointly delivered by Dream Incubator Inc., Padeco Co., Ltd., and Brazil Venture Capital. The said initiative is dedicated to helping Japanese start-ups and SMEs**) get their innovative business ideas off the ground in the Latin America and the Caribbean market as contributions towards achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the region.

To help tackle the most pressing social and environmental challenges there (social inequality, deforestation, environmental pollution, water supply and sewage treatment infrastructure to name a few), 8 selected start-ups will showcase their business ideas and solutions of choice with an introductory video to be released in January 2022 (Visit https://tsubasa-jica.jp/).

A business incubation and acceleration program running through February next year will prepare the project participants for business development activities in their target markets, in the course of which it will open doors to potential local partnerships.

List of 8 start-ups selected from 23 applicants:

• Ad-dice Co., Ltd.

• Allm Inc.

• Sustainacraft, Inc.

• Singular Perturbations Inc.

• Synspective Inc.

• DIVE INTO CODE Corp.

• Challenergy Inc.

• Music Securities, Inc.

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*The innovation laboratory of the Inter-American Development Bank Group

**SME: Small and medium-sized enterprise