KOTRA Supports 'Exhibition + Video Consultation' Simultaneously... 180 Companies Benefit in Q1

Our company participating in the 'One Plus One' service is conducting consultations online with Chilean buyers.

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyewon] KOTRA announced on the 28th that it provided the 'One Plus One (1+1)' service, which supports both exhibitions and video consultations, to 180 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and mid-sized companies that applied to participate in overseas exhibitions in the first quarter of this year.

The support targets companies that applied to participate in a total of 12 overseas exhibitions held or scheduled to be held in the first quarter, including the world's largest electronics exhibition 'CES 2021' and the German hardware exhibition 'Eisenwarenmesse'.

In the first quarter, companies participating in KOTRA overseas exhibitions were able to use not only the exhibitions but also video consultations. This is because KOTRA additionally discovered buyers and arranged separate video consultations for participating companies. For example, Korean companies that participated in the 'CES 2021' exhibition held online in January this year also conducted video consultations with overseas buyers.

Due to the spread of COVID-19, several exhibitions including Germany's Eisenwarenmesse were canceled, but KOTRA provided video consultation services to companies that applied to participate.

In addition, KOTRA recommended buyers to participating companies by utilizing the trade artificial intelligence (AI) big data platform. Through this, 180 Korean companies and 232 buyers from countries around the world such as China, Brazil, Kenya, and Poland conducted a total of 681 video consultations. The scale of consultations reached 170 million dollars. KOTRA forecasted that contracts worth 47 million dollars would be signed among these.

The CEO of packaging machinery company P, who participated in this exhibition and consultation, said, "The exhibition we applied for was canceled, so we were preparing for next year," and added, "Thanks to the video consultations provided by KOTRA, we were able to hold meetings with overseas buyers we wanted to meet."

Ryu Jaewon, head of KOTRA's Trade and Investment Infrastructure Headquarters, said, "We promoted the 'One Plus One' service in preparation for cases where exhibitions that domestic companies wanted to participate in were canceled," and added, "If the scale of exhibitions shrinks due to the continuation of COVID-19, we will actively promote non-face-to-face projects."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.