International Marketing
III Partners with SGInnovate for Deep-Tech Collaboration to Develop Talent Opportunities
Date:2018/01/03
As Singapore is known as the best city for innovation and startup hub in Asia, not to mention a survey has shown that 19% of Asia venture funds are gathering in Singapore, undoubtedly its startup ecosystem is something worth to learn. This year, Institute for Information Industry (III) is funded by Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) to collaborate with SGInnovate, a global startup hub based in Singapore to come up with a new training program. The program “TAG.PASS for Taiwan” is a 3-weeks accelerating program, combined with the matchmaking sessions, allows startups teams between Taiwan and Singapore to further explore the business opportunities in South-Eastern markets. Till the end of this year it has shown quite fruitful results. III have successfully assisted 2 teams - VAS Creative and StyleUP to launch business in Singapore.
In most of the early stages to develop a business, startups usually lack of global vision and have limited access to market opportunities. Hence, the partnership between III and Innovate is aimed at looking for potential deep-tech collaboration and to come up with a training system for startups. In the program “TAG.PASS for Taiwan”, consultants aided startups to win over venture funds and connect Taiwan tech talents and Singapore business talents. The program also aimed to facilitate startups to expand business in SEA market.
The Main focuses of this year will be in deep-tech areas with market potential such as Digital Healthcare, Cyber Security, Medical Technology, IoT, AR/VR, and AI. Consultants from Singapore and Taiwan has trained 18 startups during the 3-weeks training. After the training, a one-day Demo Day was held to matchmake both startup teams and 13 venture capitals from Singapore and Taiwan. SGInnovate also lead 4 Singapore startups to join the program and exchanged ideas with Taiwan startup teams.
Cross-border collaboration between III and Singapore brings promising results. VAS Creative, a Taiwanese video streaming platform technology provider, has successfully set up oversea office and a new media operational center in Singapore. StyleUP, a Taiwanese beauty shops and customers matching platform, has also broaden its business into Singapore. As for Singapore side, Nephtech, a Singapore health technology supplier, has visited Taiwan to discover solutions and decided to collaborate with a NCCU startup team which focuses on ammonia detection chips. The Non-disclosure agreement (NDA) has been signed and further collaboration is on the way.