123.Design has been selected to be one of the 22 semi-finalists of its 2013 StartmeupHK Venture Programme. The " Invest Hong Kong's" (InvestHK) committee received 384 applications from 43 different countries to include the US, Israel, the UK, Canada, India, Malaysia, Korea and Japan. All entries were very strong, almost 70 ventures were based in Hong Kong targeting to be one of 12 Finalists to be placed in this year's Venture Programme. The outcome had 22 semi-finalists that included eight ventures from the US and three from Canada. Two were each from Hong Kong and Israel and one each from Denmark, France, India, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden and the UK. Ventures ranged from air pollution monitoring to sports coaching applications, robotics, sustainable packaging, interactive communications solutions and much much more. Each semi-finalist company was chosen by the jury for the scale of the problem/opportunity being addressed, the solutions effectiveness, its impact on the world, their venture's viability, sustainability and scalability. In addition to these criteria's there was also a focus on the economic benefit to Hong Kong in terms of knowledge and skills, job creation, social and environmental value, etc. InvestHK's Director and General Manager of Investment Promotion, Simon Galpin, said that he was delighted by the quality of the successful entrants and their geographic diversity not to mention their sector origins. " I am happy to see that the proposals are of such high quality and that they come from so many different countries and cities. I am particularly impressed with the creativity shown by many of these ventures. This is exactly the kind of business creativity we would like to further develop in Hong Kong, to help encourage our homegrown startup culture" , Mr. Galpin said