Singapore’s tech start-up scene has grown lately, with the city-state ranked seventh in the most recent 2022 Global Innovation Index.
Huiying ore | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Global enterprise capital funds can have fallen in 2022, but Singapore’s state-owned investment firm is optimistic about 2023.
“2023 is prone to be a fairly decent 12 months for enterprise capital in Singapore,” said Hsien-Hui Tong, executive director of enterprise capital at Singapore.
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Unlike global markets more generally, Singapore’s enterprise capital scene is “still very energetic,” Tong said. That is because firms within the country are inclined to be in the sooner, nascent stages of development, and “there’s still a variety of liquidity within the seed and Series A stages. There’s a variety of capital there,” he added.
Global markets, alternatively, are inclined to be within the “more mature” stages of Series B and C, where enterprise capital has “dried up a bit”.
The Seed Funding round – also generally known as seed investment – is followed by various rounds generally known as Series A, B, C, and so forth.
Enterprise capital funding in the primary nine months of 2022 totaled $369 million, down 25% year-on-year. crunchbase.
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“2022 was 12 months for us, unlike another investment categories. It has been 12 months for emerging tech start-ups with many breakthroughs happening,” said Tong.
For instance, Singapore-based biotech company MiRXES launched its “T10 ultra-high-throughput sequencing platform” – which it says would help with early disease detection and precision medicine – within the Asia-Pacific region last month.
And cleantech firm SunGreenH2, which raised $2 million in August led by SGInnovate, is trialling its materials with global electrolyser manufacturers.
Tong added that Singapore was “protected against a lot of the consequences” of world macroeconomic difficulties. Consequently, Singapore was capable of “probably construct up its infrastructure a bit higher.”
He also listed the energy sector to observe in 2023 in light of breakthroughs in nuclear fusion and hydrogen.
“Quantum technology is one other area where I feel there shall be significant announcements and breakthroughs,” he added.
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