Meet the 5 startups that did battle at Pioneers Asia’s pitch event

Five companies were selected to compete in the finals for Pioneers Asia.

Pioneers Asia’s three day international startup event concluded yesterday with a pitch competition. Japan-born wheelchair alternative Whill took the top prize by “introducing an innovation into an unsexy market,” according to the judges.

Pioneers featured Japanese Taiko drumming, a bicycle performance by a BMX champion, traditional Noh theater streamed over 4K, and even a beautiful Japanese garden, but it was really all about the startups. Here are the five finalists selected from a group of 250 participating companies.

Top Prize / Challenger Award – Whill

Whill is a personal mobility company that makes motorized wheelchair alternatives. It was founded in 2012 and has been active in the Japanese startup scene for years.

Founder and CEO Satoshi Sugie rode the new Model M into the battle arena.

Co-founder and CEO Satoshi Sugie compared in his pitch the evolution of the telephone from 1932 until now with the basically unchanged wheelchair. A chance encounter with a man in a wheelchair who said, “I have even given up on going to the grocery store around the corner,” led the team to abandon a separate project and focus on personal mobility.

Whill came into the competition a day after announcing that it its new Model M was cleared by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States. This is the first step in getting doctors to prescribe the Model M as a medical device and in getting the costs covered by insurance.

As of now, 500 of Whill’s previous-gen Model As have been sold and between the US and Japan, and Whill already has 40 distribution partners in the United States. Satoshi hopes to focus more on marketing now that the company has FDA clearance.

The Model A could potentially feature location tracking, remote maintenance, and autonomous driving capabilities. Satoshi said that currently an eight hour charge will give a range of approximately 12 miles.

Satoshi estimates an approximate market size of US$3 billion for the powerchair and wheelchair market, but hopes to expand into more areas. Whill is currently working on bringing production cost of the Model M down. The suggested retail price is about US$14,000.

Whill received US$15,000 worth of consulting and legal fees, an article in the Nikkei Asian Review, Armani suits, and an investment meeting with Salesforce. Whill also received the Nomura Award, which gives it the chance to appear at the Investment Forum 2016 in Tokyo and the Investment Forum Asia 2016 in Singapore, both of which Nomura hosts.

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