CONNECTING THE NORDICS & JAPANNewsletter #1
June 8, 2020

Welcome to this first issue of the Innovation Lab Asia’s newsletter, providing the latest news
from the Nordic innovation ecosystem, specially curated for a Japanese audience. We cover theNew Nordic region - Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Estonia – and publish twicea month.
Why the Nordics? And why now?
The Nordic startup ecosystem is one of the most dynamic in the world. We have the highest
number of unicorns per capita in the world outside Silicon Valley and consistently rank top on arange of global indexes, including competitiveness, entrepreneurship, and innovation.
The Nordic tech strongholds include Greentech, Healthtech, Life Science, Smart Cities,Deeptech, and Robotics, which all support the basic tenets of the Japanese government vision ofSociety 5.0. The Nordic countries are politically stable, economically strong, highly internationalized, and provide a great starting point for anyone looking to establish a foothold on the European continent.
Not surprisingly, Japanese investors are increasingly looking for new opportunities in the Nordicregion.
Why us?
We speak Japanese, and truly believe in the value of creating partnerships of mutual benefit for
both Nordic and Japanese stakeholders.
We connect with community stakeholders across the Nordics and salute the opening of the new
Nordic Innovation House in Tokyo. They will provide a strong platform for Nordic startups looking
to engage in Japan.
We have a strong ecosystem knowledge, both in Japan and the Nordics. Recently we publishedthe first ever Nordic innovation ecosystem report in Japanese, which was printed and disseminated across Japan during the last two weeks of February 2020.
Feel free to contact us for further information and we hope you will enjoy the newsletter. We hope
to see you soon either here in the Nordics or Japan.

SHORT NEWS FROM THE NORDICS

NO

Nursing robot maker Halodi Robotics recently raised JPY 281 million and sells
first units to Toyota Research Institute.

DK

FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies teams with COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator to reserve manufacturing capacity and provide technical expertise
to deliver future COVID-19 therapies.

NONo Isolation, providing solutions for fighting loneliness, made JPY 216 million
in revenue last year.

SEBrightacts wins EU vs Virus Hack’s political and social cohesion track with app
against domestic abuse.

FIThe University of Helsinki and Reaktor has made their Elements of AI online
course freely available to all EU member states, thus enhancing the digitalskills of Europeans.

DKMarubeni Corporation and Nippon Suisan Kaisha invested JPY 790 million in
Danish Salmon A/S, a leader within recirculating Aquaculture Systems.

DKFintech startup Spiir has announced the completion of a JPY 538 million capital investment round.

SEModvion erects the first wooden wind turbine tower in Gothenburg, Sweden.

NORDIC COVID-19 UPDATE
Denmark was one of the first European countries to impose a COVID-19 lock-down, and one of
the first countries to re-open. Last month Denmark reopened schools, day-care centres andsmaller businesses, including hairdressers, dentists, physiotherapists and driving schools which
involve some level of physical proximity.
During May Denmark has reopened most parts of society, including shopping malls, bars, restaurants, cinemas, museums, amusement parks, libraries, churches etc. Borders have also been
opened for business travel.
Despite the gradual re-opening of society, the number of COVID-related hospitalizations continues to decrease by the day, and the death rate per capita is less than most European countries.
The population has generally been responsive to the public appeal for social distancing and goodhygiene, and the results have been achieved without mass testing and contact tracing.

INTERVIEW WITH AI-STARTUP CORTIWhat tech solution does your company
offer? Corti is an artificial intelligence platform for patient interviews, that delivers carediagnosis and triaging of patients over video orphone. Based on the callers’ voice patterns ourAI is able to evaluate and diagnose the patient
in real-time.
Why is the Japanese innovation ecosystem
and market interesting for your company?
Corti builds on the basic premise that patients
increasingly will be interacting with doctors
and healthcare professionals online, and that
there will be a growing need for digital accessto healthcare expertise. As we base our AI
algorithms on patient voice patterns, we are
keen to access markets, which have a large
population speaking the same language. We
are already active in Scandinavia, UK, US andAustralia, where English is prevalent, and we
see Japan as the next great potential market
to enter. Also, we expect that Japan is readyto take digital strategies within telemedicine
services to the next level, especially after theCOVID-19 crisis.

Name: 		Andreas Cleve Lohmann

Position:Co-founder and CEO

Organisation: Corti
Location:

Copenhagen, Denmark

Company:

Founded in 2016

Team size:

45Contact:

Dimitri Devillers		Head of Business Development		Mail: dd@corti.ai

What are the main barriers to accessing
the Japanese market? Local partners. We
need strong local healthcare partners to help
us adapt our product to the Japanese requirements. We are especially looking for partners
within the emergency management space,nursing advising lines or doctor telemedicine
services. We are also looking for medical directors, who work in building medical protocols
and practices.

NORDIC EVENTS - ONLY DIGITAL• 18.06

TechBBQ facilitates Startup Capital, matchmaking event to connect pre-seed,
seed-stage, and series-A Nordic startups with international investors.

• 22-23.06

Join StartupExtreme for their new approach to online networking.

EDITORSPeter Johansen
Project Managerpj@asia-house.dk

Innovation Lab Asia is a project collaboration
between Asia House and TechBBQ funded by
the Danish Industry Foundation.
For more information:

Julian Morié Hara Nielsen
Japanese Consultant
jni@techbbq.org

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