Entrepreneurs, investors to connect Asian and European startup ecosystems at AsiaBerlin Summit 2020

The AsiaBerlin Summit is an annual conference hosted by the Berlin Senate Department, with a mission to connect startup ecosystems in Asia and Berlin. This year, the summit will take place from September 21-27 in Berlin, and will connect over 150 entrepreneurs, corporates, and investors from across the globe.

The panels will focus on internationalisation of startups across sectors such as urbantech, healthtech, fintech, AI, and Blockchain.

YourStory Founder and CEO, Shradha Sharma, will be on the opening panel on Day 1 to discuss corporate-startup cooperation. She will be joined by Cedrik Neike, Member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and CEO, Smart Infrastructure; Thomas Saueressig, Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE; Solveig Schulze, Co-lead and Director, Signals; and Sebastian Pollock, Founding Partner at Visionaries Club.

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The summit will also shed light on various perspectives of Asian and European investors who are investing in the Berlin startup ecosystem. It will also feature investors from Vidici Ventures, SAP.IO, Futures Industry Ventures Fund, SBI Holdings, Sunbo Angels, Asics Investment, Bamboo Capital, Signals VC, and Unifier Ventures, among others.

Due to the restrictions brought by the coronavirus pandemic, the Summit will take place in a hybrid form. It will give an opportunity for startups, investors, and corporates from Asia and Europe to join the event online using a networking tool to stream network panels and keynotes.

Some of the other panel discussions will be on topics like - how to internationalise one’s business and expand across borders, the challenges faced by Asian and European governments to incorporate rapid digitisation, the confluence of science and startups, the impact of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in our daily lives, and managing accelerator programmes, among others.

The list of speakers include Neha Jain, Co-founder of early-stage startup accelerator Z Nation Lab; Sharath Loganathan, Co-founder, Ninjakart; Urvashi Prasad and Prachi Gupta representing NITI Aayog; Sidhartha Mohanty, Founder, Powerly AI; and Agrima Munjal, Business Head of AI-based verification startup inVOID; among others. The event will also feature speakers from Berlin startups such as Blinkist, ShareFoods, BigChain, Forto, and Omio.

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Earlier known as the Asia-Pacific Week Berlin, the AsiaBerlin Summit 2020 focuses on connecting the startup ecosystems. It aims to provide a platform for the exchange and initiation of international startups into the Berlin startup ecosystem.

The forum was initiated in 1997 by Rainer Seider, who has 27 years of experience in international cooperation and projects. Started as a platform for dialogue with Asian partners, the platform expanded to Bengaluru, Manila, and Jakarta in 2016, and startups from China, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand joined in 2018.

"With the AsiaBerlin initiative including the AsiaBerlin Summit (former Asia-Pacific Week), events and delegation trips we are focusing on Asia, as we are aware of the shift of growth and innovation to this continent – and the needs of support of small enterprises in this – in many respects – far away region," Rainer said on LinkedIn.

Recently, SoftBank Group-backed Japanese startup investor SBI announced to invest 200 million euros in European startups from Berlin with the new “Future Industry Ventures Fund”.  

Registrations for all days of the Summit are open.