Ultiracer Heads to Osaka: Korea-Japan Business Seminar at QUINTBRIDGE, 30 October 2026

On Friday 30 October 2026, RealDesignTech CEO Joongsik (John) Lee will step onto the main stage at QUINTBRIDGE in Osaka to pitch Ultiracer to an audience of Japanese and Korean business leaders, investors and founders. The occasion is the Korea-Japan Business Seminar & Networking Event (韓日・日韓ビジネスセミナー＆交流会), an afternoon dedicated to Korean and Japanese startups taking on overseas markets. We are there as one of three Korean startups recommended by Jeonnam-Gwangju Integrated Special City, and we could not be more excited about the invitation.

For many readers in Japan this will be the first time they hear about us, so this post introduces the event, the venue, the people who made our participation possible and the Ultiracer system itself - in short, what John will be presenting on the day.

The event: Korea-Japan Business Seminar & Networking at QUINTBRIDGE

The seminar is jointly organised by QUINTBRIDGE, KOTRA Osaka, the Osaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Jeonnam-Gwangju Integrated Special City, with the support of the Kansai Association of Corporate Executives, the Kansai Economic Federation and the Osaka International Business Promotion Center. Its theme, "Korean and Japanese startups taking on overseas markets", says exactly what it is for: helping companies from both countries find partners, customers and investors across the strait.

The programme runs from 15:00 to 18:40 on the 1F Main Stage (event page, Osaka CCI listing):

• 15:00 - 16:00 Opening and speaker session
• 16:00 - 16:30 Talk session
• 16:40 - 18:00 Startup pitches (Korea and Japan)
• 18:00 - 18:40 Networking

Attendance is in person, free of charge and limited to 80 seats, with registration through Peatix. Latecomers are welcome to join part-way through.

The venue: QUINTBRIDGE, Osaka's open-innovation hub

QUINTBRIDGE is the open-innovation facility of NTT West, located on the company's headquarters campus at 4-15-82 Higashinoda, Miyakojima-ku, Osaka, a short walk from Kyobashi Station. Since opening in March 2022 it has grown into one of Kansai's liveliest meeting points for startups, corporates, universities and local government, with tens of thousands of individual members, well over a thousand member companies and hundreds of events a year. The building itself won a 2024 Good Design Award for the way it turns a corporate campus into a shared, open space (Business Network). For a company like ours, whose work depends on bringing engineers, clinicians, care providers and local communities to the same table, there could hardly be a more fitting room to tell our story in.

Why Jeonnam-Gwangju matters to this story

We are in Osaka thanks to Jeonnam-Gwangju. On 1 July 2026, Gwangju Metropolitan City and Jeollanam-do Province merged to become Jeonnam-Gwangju Integrated Special City, Korea's first integrated wide-area government, a region of roughly 3.2 million people with a combined regional GDP of about 159 trillion won (Twig24). One of the new city's first international initiatives is this seminar, where its Investment and Industry Division will present the region's business environment and startup support, and where it has recommended three Korean startups to pitch.

RealDesignTech is one of them. We are deeply grateful to the city for the trust it has placed in us, and to KOTRA Osaka and the Osaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry for opening the door to the Kansai business community. Taking a Korean health-technology company to a Japanese stage is exactly the kind of bridge-building that an integrated city of this scale is positioned to do, and we intend to make the most of it.

The companies on stage

Good manners at an event like this begin with knowing who else is in the room, so here is a brief introduction to everyone on the programme.

Part 1 speakers

• Jeonnam-Gwangju Integrated Special City, Investment and Industry Division - the region's business environment and startup support.
• Atsushi Okada, Hancom InSpace - open innovation between Korea and Kansai, drawing on his work in cross-border technology partnerships.
• Yoon Yong-seok, CAFE24 JAPAN - "A first step into Korea: cross-border e-commerce between Japan and Korea."
• Kim Yo-de, Kim & Chang - points to consider when entering and doing business in Korea, from the country's largest law firm.
• Lee Hyun, OceanJay Korea - how to build business relationships with Korea's major corporations, after 22 years at Samsung Electronics.

Part 2 pitches - Korean startups recommended by Jeonnam-Gwangju

• FINTKOREA - functional biodegradable composite materials for medical and beauty applications, made with a low-temperature sol-gel process, including bone haemostatic agents and microneedle patches.
• GHOSTPASS - passwordless, hands-free authentication that combines AI facial recognition with BLE beacons and deepfake detection, keeping biometric data on the user's own phone.
• RealDesignTech - Ultiracer - an integrated system that measures and trains balance, coordination and cognitive function, with a special focus on seniors. More on us below.

Part 2 pitches - Japanese startups recommended by QUINTBRIDGE

• issin - a University of Tokyo spin-out whose Smart Bath Mat, Smart Recovery Ring and "Wellie" health app make everyday health tracking effortless.
• Spice Cube - compact urban plant factories that make farming possible anywhere, from set-up and operations to produce sales, with CO2 capture built in.
• RAYVEN - "Tumiki", a governance platform that gives companies control over which tools and data their employees and AI agents can access.

We are especially glad to be pitching alongside issin, because their mission of health care that works without effort rhymes so closely with ours. Between the six of us, the afternoon covers medical materials, security, senior health, consumer wellness, food and AI governance - a good snapshot of what Korean and Japanese founders are building right now.

What John will be pitching: the Ultiracer system

If you are new to us, here is Ultiracer in a paragraph. Ultiracer is a real bicycle mounted on a motion platform that lets it lean, sway and steer, paired with a screen that runs riding courses and with sensors that read how the rider keeps the bicycle balanced throughout the ride. The rider simply pedals; our proprietary motion analysis does the measuring, turning the way the bicycle moves into live readouts of balance quality, sway and coordination. We call the result Neurocycling: exercise that works the brain's balance and coordination systems as much as it works the legs.

Ultiracer is already in use in senior welfare centres, fitness rooms and community events across Korea, where riders in their seventies and eighties ride beside their grandchildren and watch their own balance on screen. The system comes in a self-service kiosk version for public spaces and in multi-unit installations for wellness rooms, and the readouts help care staff see who might benefit from more balance work before a fall ever happens. Our research page collects the studies on cycling, balance and cognitive health that guide our work, including the growing evidence on cycling and the ageing brain.

Why Japan, and why now

Japan is the world's most experienced super-aged society, and it has long led the way in how to care for older adults with dignity. As of October 2025, 36.22 million people in Japan - 29.4% of the population - are aged 65 or over, and the Cabinet Office projects that share to reach 38.7% by 2070 (Cabinet Office, Annual Report on the Ageing Society 2026). In the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's most recent survey, dementia was the leading reason people came to need long-term care, and falls and fractures ranked second among women. Those two threads, cognitive health and balance, are exactly what Ultiracer was built to address.

We see enormous promise in bringing Ultiracer to Japanese day-care centres, rehabilitation facilities, fitness clubs and municipalities, and we are entering the market with optimism and humility. Japan's care providers know their communities better than anyone, and the best thing we can do is listen, learn and adapt. Our mission does not stop at any border: we want to help people stay steady on their feet and sharp in mind for as long as possible, to make fall prevention something people enjoy rather than endure, and to promote brain health for every age, from the child trying the saddle for the first time to the grandmother riding beside them.

Building new bridges between Korea and Japan

Korea and Japan share more than a sea. Both countries are ageing fast, both have world-class health-care systems under growing pressure, and both have founders who believe technology can make later life healthier and more joyful. Events like this one are where the practical partnerships begin, and we come to Osaka hoping for fruitful collaboration between Japanese and Korean companies: distribution partners, clinical and research collaborators, facility operators willing to pilot, and fellow founders who simply want to compare notes.

If you will be at QUINTBRIDGE on 30 October, please come and say hello during the networking session. John will be happy to talk through the system, share what we have learned from senior centres in Korea and hear what your community needs. If you cannot make it, or would like to talk before the event, we would be glad to arrange a meeting - in Osaka during the week of the seminar, online, or at our headquarters in Suwon - about distribution partnerships in Japan, joint research, or a pilot deployment at your facility. Please get in touch through our contact page. We look forward to meeting you in Osaka and to building new connections that outlast the afternoon.