Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources speaking at the official opening of Techventure 2015
Organized by National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore
Techventure 2015, a leading Asian tech startup and investor event was officially opened by Singapore’s Minister for the Environment and Water Resources and Minister-in-charge of the Smart Nation Initiative, Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan yesterday at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Singapore.
The two-day event held in Singapore from 21-22 September 2015 is now into its 19th edition and has brought together over 1000 local and international participants, comprising of more than 160 startups and 50 investors, 19 organisations and 13 countries. The exhibition featured startups from various sectors of technologies ranging from biotechnology, clean technology, energy and engineering, to interactive digital media, materials, medical technology and manufacturing.
Techventure is a premier technopreneurial platform for global venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and startup founders from around the world to meet, network and build business partnerships, with the aim of translating innovative ideas into exciting and useful products and services.
The theme of Techventure 2015 this year was, “START HERE!”, highlighting Singapore as the startup destination of choice in Asia for businesses to start and grow. By providing a platform for startups and investors to meet, they aim to facilitate more deal flows through targeted meetings between investors and startups. Apart from the exhibition, the event also included an International Startup Challenge and various Panel discussions (SG Tech Can Lah!, Tech Up! From Start-Up to Scale-Up).
The event which has seen rising participation every year helps showcase Singapore’s innovation and enterprise ecosystem and the innovative technologies developed by local institutes of Higher learning and research institutes. It has also attracted pavilion booths from Australia, Russia, the United Kingdom and Taiwan this year.
While extolling about the role played by Techventure in exchanging ideas and promoting innovation Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, sincerely urged that this approach should be extended to the society as a whole. He suggested that the solutions to some of Singapore’s difficult challenges of the future can be faced by adopting an open, consultative, competitive, data-driven network approach – an open source society that is based on “innovation, not on political ideology”.
He said that we are in the cusp of a major technological disruption that is transforming the way we make, move and do things. From industrialization, to development of new age automobiles to the internet era, there has been a successive wave of technological breakthroughs. The latest technological advances promise exciting new possibilities for people, businesses and cities, but for that a strategic realignment involving the entire nation is necessary, such as the Smart Nation Initiative.
“Smart Nation is about improving the quality of life, creating more opportunities for everyone and building stronger communities in the midst of greater diversity through the intelligent application of technology and knowledge”, said Dr. Vivian.
Speaking to a packed room about the vibrant start-up ecosystem in Singapore, he mentioned that various technology events take place regularly in singapore be it hackathons, startups pitching, bootcamps, accelerators conducting mentorship classes or events like Techventure, where many successful entrepreneurs contribute back to the ecosystem through talks, mentorships and angel investments. There is a tremendous growth in financial activity with the formation of new start-ups and financing deals being reported regularly.
Singapore government’s commitment to furthering this ecosystem through seed funding, accelerator programmes, innovation grants and venture capital schemes has led to Singapore being ranked number 10 in the world and best in Asia for a startup ecosystem, according to the Global Startup Ecosystem Report 20152 by Compass.
There were three major announcements during his talk. The first one involved the formation of the LUX Photonics Consortium that will tap the knowledge and technical expertise residing in Singapore’s universities. The Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and the National University of Singapore (NUS) and A*STAR are engaged in research to harvest and distribute energy arising from light generation for imaging, lithography, data storage, and sensing, with potential applications in medicine, security and defence. This technology of photonics has been hailed as the solution which will likely be the backbone of many devices in the coming decades.
Besides NTU and the NUS, there are 7 founding members of the Consortium, which include DSO National Laboratories, Technolite, STELOP (pronounced as S-T-E-LOP), DenseLight Semiconductors, Coherent Singapore, Finisar Singapore, and II-VI (pronounced as two-six) Singapore.
Dr. Vivian spoke passionately about encouraging a culture of experimentation and building among citizens and companies to co-create solutions that will enable the Smart Nation and Future city initiative. The government has set aside areas like the Jurong Lake District, CleanTech Park and one-north for the test-bedding of innovative solutions to develop smart, connected and sustainable districts. The second announcement was about the use of these testbeds in the SG-UK Joint Test-bedding Initiative that will enable small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) from both Singapore and the United Kingdom (UK) to collaborate on new technologies for sustainable development under the theme of Future Cities.
Thirdly, he spoke about the launching of the third Early Stage Venture Fund (or ESVFIII) by the National Research Foundation (NRF) to catalyse the establishment of corporate venture funds by large local enterprises (LLEs). This fund will catalyse the growth of high-tech innovative companies through government co-investments with private sector LLEs. This facilitates the development of technology ecosystems, where smaller companies grow around a core of larger companies. Forty million (S$40M) has been set aside for this scheme and an open call inviting applications from eligible LLEs is expected in October 2015. Selected corporate venture funds with good proposals on how they can grow the local tech ecosystem will be awarded by the end of March 2016.
Dr. Vivian concluded by saying that the Government will continue to strive to translate ideas and innovations into products, services and businesses that benefit people and create good jobs for Singaporeans. By catalysing these innovations, we can collectively support Singapore’s transition to an innovation-driven economy.
Techventure is organized by the National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore, with support from partner agencies such as Exploit Technologies Pte Ltd (ETPL), the technology transfer arm of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), SPRING Singapore, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University and Intellectual Property Intermediary (IPI) Singapore.
The above article is based on a press release by NRF.
