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If you have a great idea for a business, come visit Singapore and find out why it's such a rewarding place for young and enterprising companies. Here's a guide to getting your business idea growing in Singapore's enterprise greenhouse.
The business.gov.sg also tells you what you need to know about starting a business. Click here to hop on to their website.
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1. Do your groundwork
Visit an EDB office overseas, or one of Singapore's embassies, high commissions and consulates around the world, to find out more about Singapore. Here's a list of EDB offices abroad, and of our Foreign Ministry's missions and consulates.
Better still, come to Singapore and see for yourself. Most visitors will get a social visit pass. But if you need to stay in Singapore for a longer period to explore business opportunities, you can explore the Social Visit Pass for Entrepreneurs. This can be extended if necessary. Find out more about entry to Singapore at the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) website.
If you need a longer stay in Singapore to explore business opportunities, you can apply for an EntrePass. This is designed to facilitate the entry and stay of entrepreneurs who are ready to start a new business and who will be actively involved in the operation of the company in Singapore.
EDB's Global Investor Programme has various schemes designed to facilitate your re-entry and stay in Singapore. Find out more here.
The Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE) brings together a diverse group of people who want to contribute towards the creation of a more entrepreneurial Singapore. Experiences are shared on their website.
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2. Take the first step
Once you've decided you want to start a business here, you need to apply for the EntrePass. It is valid for 2 years and is renewable as long as the business is an ongoing entity.
The application form can be downloaded here. Find out more about the EntrePass at the Ministry of Manpower's website.
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3. Register your business
You can set up almost any kind of business in Singapore. Special licenses are needed only for a handful of businesses, such as finance companies, banks, optical discs, and cigarette manufacture. EDB is the administrator of the Control of Manufacture Act (which licenses the manufacture of beer and stout, cigars, drawn steel products, chewing gum (other than medicinal gum and oral dental gum), cigarettes, and matches), and the Manufacture of Optical Discs Act, (which licenses the manufacture of optical discs, including master discs and stampers). Please contact our Client Services if you need more information on the above.
If you represent a foreign company you may want to establish just a representative office (RO). In this case, you register your rep office with International Enterprise Singapore (IE Singapore). IE Singapore registers ROs from the manufacturing, trading, trade logistics and trade-related services sectors for a nominal fee of S$200. You can find out where the nearest IE Singapore office is here.
However, rep offices can only undertake promotional and trade liaison activities on behalf of its parent company. It cannot conclude contracts, provide consultancy for a fee, undertake transhipment of goods, open or negotiate any letters or credit.
If your business plans are more extensive, you should register a business or a company with the Accounting & Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA).
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4. Find premises for your business
There's plenty of choice when it comes to where to locate your business. You can even run a business from your home. Find out what you may need to do to use your home as an office at these sites:
You can also check out the business premises offered by the 50 or so business incubators in Singapore. These incubators provide services such as "plug and play" facilities, technology collaboration, business building and acceleration, fund raising, networking and mentorship.
There are a number of international incubator centres such as the India Centre, Japan Business Support Centre, Korean Venture Acceleration Centre, Israel's TechMatch and the New Zealand Technology Centre. You can find out more about incubators here.
There is an island-wide belt of accessible, choice locations for technopreneurial operations called HOTSpots, "HOT" meaning "Hub of Technopreneurs". These HOTSpots link a community of some 50 incubators and 400 technology startups and technopreneurs.
Events such as Elevator Pitches and Investment Seminars to raise funds, and Technology Seminars and Market Pitches to find business partners, as well as networking opportunities, are regularly held at HOTSpots. Organisations that organise or sponsor these events include the Singapore Venture Capital Association (SVCA), the Innovators and Entrepreneurs Association (IdEA), and the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS).
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5. Get some funding
Singapore is home to a vibrant and sophisticated venture capital industry, with more than 140 local and international VC fund management groups handling, at the middle of 2003, some S$16 billion worth of funds out of Singapore. These funds are invested globally across all industry sectors at all levels of financing.
The Singapore Venture Capital Association was formed in 1992 to promote the growth and development of the venture capital industry.
The DEALS Portal aims to match companies seeking venture funding to Singapore's venture capital community. You can register and upload your business plan at the DEALS Portal and it will automatically match and direct your plan to the appropriate VCs in Singapore.
Banks are generally unwilling to extend credit facilities to startup enterprises as they lack a track record and assets for use as collateral. We have thus designed programmes and schemes to help startups with funding.
Our sister agency, SPRING Singapore, manages two funding schemes for startups:
- The Micro Loan Program is a fixed interest rate financing programme for startup and small enterprises, particularly those that are asset-light and knowledge-intensive. Enterprises can use the loan to establish new businesses, modernise and automate operations, expand existing businesses, and augment working capital needs.
- The Loan Insurance Scheme offers loans that suit the risk profile of the borrowers, with the interest rate based on the startup's credit assessment.
Under the S$50 million Startup EnterprisE Development Scheme (SEEDS), EDB takes an equity stake in a seed company and matches, up to a maximum of S$300,000, every dollar the company raises from an independent third party investor or investors. The startup must be incorporated in Singapore, but its founders need not be Singaporean.
Other types of financing scheme for startups are available here.
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6. Get some technological help
You can get help to develop the core technology for your goods and services.
The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) fosters scientific and technological research, and nurtures scientific talent to enhance Singapore's knowledge-based economy.
Its research institutes cover fields as diverse as high performance computing, microelectronics, data storage, information technology, and biomedical sciences. They are keen to partner industry players in research and development.
Other possible partners for technology collaboration are the universities.
The National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have technology transfer units that can help you commercialise technologies. At NUS, the unit is called INTRO, and at NTU it's known as ITTO.
A*STAR has the T-Up programme which aims to build up the technological manpower capability of small enterprises in Singapore. It seconds research scientists and engineers to local enterprises for a year or two, and will co-share up to 70% of the researchers' salary during this time. For more information, go to the T-Up website.
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7. Protect your intellectual property
If you have a proprietary technology, you should file a patent to protect it. The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) is the agency that looks after this. It has a slew of initiatives that promote the creation and exploitation of IPs. For more information go to the IPOS website.
The Patent Application Fund Plus encourages innovation and the commercialisation of IP. It helps defray the cost of patenting, up to S$30,000, and is available to all Singapore-based small and medium enterprises. Find out more here.
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8. Develop your business
If you need help to commercialise and market your product or service, there are many avenues you can explore.
Business associations like the Singapore Business Federation and the Singapore Confederation of Industries represent and promote the business interests of Singapore enterprises. They can help you plug into Singapore's business networks via their seminars and events, and their trade partnerships and business matching efforts.
The Infocomm Authority of Singapore (iDA) has a Call for Collaboration initiative which encourages collaborative efforts in exciting areas such as mobile commerce and wireless multimedia. This creates opportunities for you to network, build up your referral base and profile yourself to potential business partners.
EDB has several programmes, such as Locally-based Enterprise Advancement Programme (LEAP) and Local Industry Upgrading Programme (LIUP), which help smaller companies collaborate with multinationals, larger local enterprises and other organisations.
The Management Development Institute of Singapore (MDIS) conducts programmes, courses and seminars on business, marketing and management that you might find useful.
The Institute of Public Relations of Singapore represents the public relations industry in Singapore. It provides an online one-stop solution to companies seeking PR consultancy and other services.
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9. List your company
At some point you may want to consider listing itself on the stock exchange to gain access to public sources of funding.
The Singapore Exchange (SGX) is an internationalised and integrated securities and derivatives exchange. It operates the SGX Mainboard and the SGX SESDAQ to help companies meet their capital-raising needs. Many foreign companies list here - some 40 per cent of SGX's total market capitalisation comes from foreign companies.
For more information, please visit SGX's website.
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10. Go regional
Singapore lies at a unique geographical and cultural cross-road, and it is an ideal base for expanding your business regionally, and even globally.
Virtually every corner of the Asian market of 2.8 billion people is within a seven-hour flight from Singapore, and there are many resources you can tap when you want to expand overseas.
A key role of International Enterprise Singapore is to help Singapore-based companies internationalise. You can plug into its global network and explore opportunities to expand abroad.
With Singapore's extensive list of free trade agreements, you can get preferential access to the world's key markets, including the US, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the European states of Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Iceland.
Incubators such as the India Centre, Korean Venture Acceleration Centre, New Zealand Technology Centre and business associations such as Singapore Business Federation can also help you grow your business abroad.
Once your company is ready to globalise, EDB has headquarters programmes that can help you use Singapore as a base from which to manage your regional or global subsidiaries and their activities.
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