The newest batch at Chinaccelerator addresses problems in traditional (sometimes boring) industries such as tradeshows, hospitality, and catering

How Chinaccelerator’s latest batch is making traditional businesses sexy was written by Emma Lee for TechNode.

If you didn’t know it yet, tech is the new sexy.

There has been a surge in the development and take up of a wide range of new technologies. Many long-established industries are now using them to their advantage to make their offerings more convenient and efficient. The newest batch at the Shanghai-based Chinaccelerator has witnessed the latest addition to innovations in this trend, addressing problems in traditional (sometimes boring) industries such as tradeshows, hospitality, and catering.

After closely tracking Chinaccelerator’s development over the past four years, we also noticed that there’s a general trend towards enterprise-facing or 2B businesses in its project selection. A total of twelve teams pitched to a hall-full of investors and entrepreneurs last week, eight of which are 2B services, each of them targeting a vertical solving very specific problems.

ExpoPromoter – Tradeshows

Expos in China are a US$10 billion market. The success of Chinese trade shows depends on the value of exhibited products purchased, and yet, local organisers do not know how to attract relevant provisional buyers from overseas. Started by a Russian team, ExpoPromoter allows the buying and selling of booths online through targeted digital companies and its own affiliate partners network.

The company has signed contracts with 800 exhibitions and delivered one million attendees to date, according to Simon Zagaynov, China head of the firm.

Also Read: Corporate innovation accelerators are reshaping the Taiwan startup scene

Portier – Hospitality

 

Modern hotels have lost US$12 billion in revenue to Airbnb alone and are squeezed on revenue from online travel agencies. Portier provides hotels with a fully integrated hotel marketing platform, coupled with a service platform on cell phones to increase hotel guest revenue on products and services such as booking the hotel spa or ordering hotel meals.

“The majority of the communication between hotels and their guests happens around the hotel and if the hotel wants to take more advantage of this they need to build stronger relationships with each one of their guests. Today we see that relationship is built around the front desk or concierge desk, but that’s not enough,” said company founder Deniz Tekerek.

Freshchefs – Corporate event catering

 

Although online food delivery is in full swing in China, there are few online platforms that offer high-quality catering service to large-scale business events because upscale restaurants and chefs lack the service capacity and logistical network to deliver at scale. Freshchefs’ network of kitchens in Shanghai offer deliverable and tasty dishes from multiple restaurants around town. The platform can deliver from many restaurants in a single order. And best of all, it issues one receipt for the organiser for expenses purposes.

“To get every order delivered on time, we have delivery and capacity matching algorithms to match the size of the orders to the capability of delivery drivers as well as the restaurants,” said Clement Lee, CEO of the firm.

Hi-In – Career planning

 

There are more than 1.3 million Chinese students studying outside China. Since 2015, around 80 per cent of them, often referred to as sea turtle (海龟, a pun on 海归 meaning to return from overseas), have returned to China and yet 90 per cent of them are unable to find the jobs that they want.

Hi-In uses AI technology to create personalised career action plans for these students that intelligently match online and in-person courses and internships. Experienced mentors on the Hi-In platform guide these students to execute the action plan until landing their dream job. After uploading their resume and answering questions, the platform provides a visualisation of past and career future in real time and tells the user what they are missing.

A graduate of the University of Cambridge, Carter Zhou, founder of the company, has entrepreneurial experience ranging from the technical to the creative industry. He is also the founder of Air Media, which organises Asian celebrity events and student entertainment events.

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