Enterprise Singapore aims to catalyse over S$150m of investments in deep tech

ENTERPRISE Singapore's (ESG) investment arm is appointing more co-investors to catalyse over S$150 million worth of investments into deep tech sectors.

The investment arm, Seeds Capital, will appoint another 13 venture capital firms as co-investment partners to bring the active pool of partners to 46, said ESG's chairman Peter Ong on Wednesday.

The investments will go into sectors including advanced manufacturing and engineering, health and biomedical sciences, and urban solutions and sustainability.

Mr Ong highlighted the need to sustain the tech fundraising momentum that has emerged despite the pandemic. In the first half of 2021, Singapore's startups closed 355 deals worth S$5.3 billion. This is an increase from the same period last year, which saw 317 deals amounting to S$3.4 billion, ESG's data showed.

This was even as startups grappled with loss in revenue, reduced cash flow and layoffs during the pandemic.

"In addition, just within this year, we were able to see the birth of three new unicorns - Patsnap, Carro and Nium - which is no mean feat considering the challenging fundraising climate. These success stories give us the confidence that there are growth opportunities amidst the global economic crisis," Mr Ong said.

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He was speaking in a virtual address at SG Innovation Community Day, organised by ESG and the Singapore Week of Innovation and Technology (Switch).

Over the last year, global tech giants such as Facebook, Zoom and Sea have ramped up talent recruitment and development in Singapore to support regional growth, helping to attract top tech talent to the city-state.

"This is complemented by our efforts to grow the pipeline of tech and entrepreneurial talent. We hope to nurture more founders of the likes of Jeffrey from Patsnap and Aaron from Carro," said Mr Ong.

ESG's approach to groom talent is to work closely with ecosystem players. For instance, more than 8,000 Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) students graduate from institutes of higher learning every year. These students are exposed to broad-based innovation and entrepreneurship programmes.

One programme, the NUS Overseas Colleges, offers overseas attachments with startups. A 2018 survey of programme alumni showed that a third of students, including the founders of Patsnap, 99.co, Carousell and Shopback, had set up their own tech-based businesses within a year.

Mr Ong noted greater interest among Singaporeans to pursue entrepreneurship as a career pathway during the pandemic.

Last year, universities and private sector venture worked on a programme to support budding entrepreneurs by providing them with structured training.

The programme has trained over 680 aspiring Singaporean entrepreneurs, of which about half are mid-career PMETs (professionals, managers, executives and technicians) who were unemployed.

Deep tech incubators and accelerators have also partnered ESG through the Innovation and Enterprise Fellowship Programme (IFP). The IFP equips deep tech talent with complementary tech commercialisation and business development skills.

ESG will be appointing an additional nine IFP partners, including Innovate 360 in the food manufacturing space, NSG Ventures in the healthcare space, and GROW which focuses on agritech.

The government agency plans to appoint additional batches of IFP partners. The nine existing partners include both global and local accelerators such as Temasek Life Sciences Accelerator, Lightstone and Esco Ventures.

For more of our SWITCH 2021 coverage, go to bt.sg/switch21