The Youth Department of New Taipei City Government, in order to help start-ups explore southbound opportunities, held the "New Taipei City Startup Southbound Online Forum" with Rainmaking Innovation Taiwan at 2 p.m. on November 2, invited representatives from the Singapore Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE), IETO, Indonesia Prima and RSI Ventures to share southbound trends, future development and digital technology transformation, focusing on smart cities, biomedical, smart transportation and other topics. Representatives from 14 incubation centers of Taipei City and New Taipei City participated to stimulate innovative energy.

Naomi Chien, Commissioner of New Taipei City Government Youth Department, said that Indonesia and Singapore have a booming innovation ecosystem in recent years, which is the first station for many start-ups to enter the ASEAN market. Through this forum, the start-ups could understand the innovation ecosystem, regulations, and trends of the Southeast Asian market. The department hopes to make more start-ups interested in overseas expansion, and help them enter the Southeast Asian market in the future more certainty.

Naomi Chien emphasized that in order to encourage youth to start their own businesses, the New Taipei Youth Department is currently operating six startup hubs, which will be added to 10 startup hubs within two years and will continue to create a friendly entrepreneurial environment. “Recently, we have actively cooperated closely with foreign countries to help start-ups expand their markets overseas. In this year, we have signed MOU with six overseas accelerators, including Vietnam, Singapore, and Japan, to see the current economic development potential of Indonesia. We hope that through this online forum, we can lead start-ups from New Taipei City to Singapore and Indonesia, open up southbound innovation opportunities and create a win-win situation,” the commissioner said.