SU-based Tech Startup ‘Formosation’ Wins $1M Entrepreneurial Fund from Ministry of Education

Sponsored by Soochow Co-Site, an education center promoting creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship, a startup company Formosation was awarded an accumulated grant of NT$ one million in 2021 U-start Plan for Innovation and Entrepreneurship held by the Ministry of Education (MOE).

In the award ceremony and demo sessions at Huashan 1914 Creative Park on November 12^th and 13^th, the SU-based team also presented its winning project, a series of smart oral hygiene products, which earned the second-highest grant among the top 20 groups in this year’s competition.

Formosation, also known as Morph Co., Ltd., is spearheaded by SU alumnus Ivan Tsou (Class of 2018, Department of Business Administration), along with his family members Fan-Hsuan Tsou, Min-Chu Tsou, and Chia-Wei Chen. The technology startup has developed refillable floss picks “Morph Floss Pen” and dental plaque-detecting electric toothbrushes with easy-to-use designs and software integration.

U-start Plan for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, directed by Youth Development Administration, MOE, aims to support startup projects from young college students and graduates by providing abundant funds. In this year’s competition, 342 teams strived for considerable prize money in stage I; among them, only 20 outstanding groups were chosen in stage II. Formosation won NT$ 350,000 in stage I and NT$ 650,000 in stage II, respectively.

In addition to the ongoing optimization of the dental plaque-detecting technology, Formosation is also developing more oral health products with cross-disciplinary integration and building their own self-media platform to promoting brand recognition, all after it joined Soochow Co-site in Januarym 2020.

Formosation has been supported by Soochow Co-site’s mentor-in-chief Lu-Yin Wang (Class of 1977, Dept. of Business Administration) and other tutor members, including An-Po Lin (Class of 1988, Dept. of Business Administration), Shih-Kai Chen (Class of 2001, Dept. of Financial Engineering and Actuarial Mathematics), and Wei-Hsien Lin (Class of 1986, Dept. of Financial Engineering and Actuarial Mathematics)

Since its establishment at Downtown Campus in 2004, Soochow Co-Site has been not only dedicating plentiful resources to discovering students with creative, ambitious minds and helping them obtain their interdisciplinary knowledge and cultivate their entrepreneurship spirits, but also encouraging other entrepreneurial  talents like Formosation to take the first step and build their own business.