The 9th annual Tochigin Business Plan Contest was held in Utsunomiya in March, with five groups selected from 42 applicants pitching their business plans to the panel of judges. Holographic Design, a startup led by Associate Professor Satoshi Hasegawa of Utsunomiya University, won the Grand Prize of 1 million yen.

Holographic Design was founded in 2023 developing a device that applies holography technology to project three-dimensional images in space and perform complex microfabrication using lasers. At the awards ceremony, Mr. Hasegawa expressed his ambition to use the prize money to accelerate research and development and grow the technology into something that can take off from Tochigi and go global.

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