July 2nd, Shah Alam – Inference emerged as the champion for Pitch@Selangor 2nd Series: A.I. Arena held on 30th June at Dorsett Grand Subang Hotel, Subang Jaya. The closed-door event was live-streamed on Selangor Information Technology and E-Commerce Council (SITEC) Facebook main page.
A number of 1,067 guests registered to watch the live-stream through Eventbrite ticketing platform. The live-stream also witnessed peak live viewers of 494 and it reached to 6.5k viewers on SITEC Facebook page within 48 hours.
The event saw 12 leading start-ups from the A.I. industry showcasing their talents and innovations to compete for the grand prize. The event was officiated by Yang Berhormat Dato’ Teng Chang Khim, Selangor State Executive Councillor for Investment, Industry & Commerce and SMEs and Mr Yong Kai Ping, Chief Executive SITEC. Dato’ Syed Haizam Jamalullail, Principle Tuas Capital Partners was also invited to share his keynote speech.
Inference, an A.I. solution provider specialising in hardware-agnostic computer vision solution snatched the champion in Pitch@Selangor 2nd Series: A.I. Arena event. They went home with RM10,000 cash prize, trophy, certificate and RM1,000 worth of WORQ credits.
Izwan Zainal Abidin, COO of Inference stated that it was a tough fight especially with plenty of solutions and strong presentations presented however they are grateful to win. “We hope by winning this, we can get an accelerated entry into the State of Selangor for example, with the support of SITEC. We also hope to get some interest from Venture Capitals that are present today and we hope to get noticed more as we have developed a solution to the industry, however previously we were unknown. By winning this, we hope it opens up our chances to a bigger exposure,” said Izwan.
Pandai, an ed-tech start-up that helps school students learn merged as the first runner up where they won RM8,000 cash prize, trophy, certificate and RM500 worth of WORQ credits.
Meanwhile Extract AI, a start-up that allows enterprises to easily adopt Machine Learning via drag-and-drop platform with no technical expertise required, secured the second runner up place and walked away with RM6,000 cash prize, trophy, certificate and RM300 worth of WORQ credits.
The result of the competition was announced at the end of the event.
Champion: Inference (RM10,000 + Trophy + Certificate + RM1,000 worth of WORQ credits)
First runner up: Pandai (RM8,000 + Trophy + Certificate + RM500 worth of WORQ credits)
Second runner up: Extract AI (RM6,000 + Trophy + Certificate + RM300 worth of WORQ credit)
All 12 shortlisted start-ups will also receive promotional credit from Amazon Web Services (AWS) worth USD5,000 each.
Eight judges from Venture Capitalists, Tech. Incubators, government agencies and A.I. experts field have been appointed to judge the competition and they are Dato’ Syed Haizam Jamalullial – Principle, Tuas Capital Partners; Aaron Sarma – General Partner & Co-Founder, ScaleUp Malaysia; Thillai Raj T. Ramanathan – Chief Technology Officer, MIMOS Berhad; Rafe Azsnal Ropee Adman – Vice President of Growth, Skymind; Lin En Shu – Head of Solutions Architect, Alibaba Cloud Malaysia; Yvonne Yong – Head of Malaysia Digital Hub & Corporate Partnership, MDEC; Mohammed Fazalullah – Senior Solution Architect, Amazon Web Services and Yong Kai Ping – Chief Executive, SITEC.
Selangor State Exco Dato’ Teng Chang Khim highlighted in his speech that the Selangor state government have embarked on Smart Selangor initiative to transform Selangor into a premier Smart State in ASEAN by the year 2025.
In his opening speech, Mr Yong Kai Ping, Chief Executive SITEC, stated that the 12 start-ups chosen specifically for their strong core business nature in Artificial Intelligence related, Business Intelligent, FinTech and Security. The participation of eight judges on the other hand demonstrates how public and private sector stakeholders can work together to provide enhanced market access and new funding opportunity to start-ups.
Organised by SITEC, Pitch@Selangor 2nd Series: A.I. Arena is a business pitching event aims to assist SMEs in Selangor to amplify their entrepreneurship works and pitch their innovative proposals to various stakeholders including angel investor, mentors, potential business partners and even government.
Pitch@Selangor is an extension of the Selangor Accelerator Programme (SAP) that has successfully nurture 30 start-ups through four months of intensive entrepreneurship education since 2018.
Source: Sitec News