The Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) is expanding its corporate venture building programme to help more companies incubate innovative business ideas that have the potential to grow into globally competitive businesses from Singapore.
The Corporate Venture Launchpad 2.0 (“CVL 2.0”) builds on a S$10 million pilot programme that was launched in May 2021. Under CVL 2.0, an additional S$20 million will be committed to early-stage venture building, doubling the amount of programme funding available. EDB will work with selected companies over the next two years to jointly create new ventures in high-growth areas that are beyond their existing core business.
At Least Six Ventures To Be Launched From CVL Pilot
Today, Singapore is home to close to 80 corporate ventures, almost double the number of corporate ventures in January 2021.
EDB’s New Ventures team1 and the five venture studios appointed under the original CVL pilot helped 13 companies to nurture their first venture concepts. Companies went through concept validation sprints designed to collect customer insights, test the desirability of business concepts, and determine the viability of the business before building the product or service. Their venture concepts covered areas such as sustainability, agritech, fintech, senior living and the metaverse.
Through the CVL, companies were able to adopt corporate venturing best practices and launch new ventures with the speed and nimbleness of a startup while banking on the competitive advantages of the parent company, which include customer relationships, deep domain expertise, technical capabilities, and strong brand recognition.
To date, six of these companies are launching new ventures. In total, they have committed at least S$50 million of follow-on seed investments to build these new ventures. More details of the new ventures are in Annex A.
Gaurav Julka, who led the venture sprint for Swedish global appliance company Electrolux described the CVL pilot scheme as “an amazing accelerator for our new business idea”. Mr Julka, who will head the resulting venture Levande, an all-in-one appliance subscription service, added: “In less than six months we were able to validate the desirability, feasibility and viability of our new business model. The venture studio brought commercial expertise, market data and new ways of working to the team and EDB enabled us with their industry network across multiple markets.”
Beyond validating venture concepts, the CVL pilot has also shifted the business mindset of companies. Kerry Mok, President and CEO of SATS, said: “Corporate Venturing is a high priority for SATS. We are always looking for new growth areas, and corporate venturing is a way for us to implement new ideas and business models and employ talents who bring new skill sets. We also look beyond just dollars and cents when we embark on corporate venturing. For SATS it is also a rewarding process of learning and experimentation to better benefit the customers and communities we serve.”
Michael Pareles, sprint lead for German multinational life science company Bayer, said: “Not only did the CVL enable Bayer to validate a promising venture idea, but it also helped to drive the venture mindset in our company, particularly in Singapore and our Asia-Pacific operations. What’s more impactful is how the CVL has helped us increase C-suite executives and employees’ understanding of the venture validation process and how it differs from more traditional corporate project and investment decisions.”
Expanded Programme To Support More Companies
While the CVL pilot focused on supporting large established corporates which are new to corporate venture building in Singapore, a larger pool of companies will be eligible to participate in CVL 2.0. These include regional businesses, high-growth companies and ventures in any industry that have breakthrough potential in global markets. CVL 2.0 will provide support to companies in different stages of their venturing experience.
Other key features of CVL 2.0 are as follows:
- Each concept validation sprint will be co-funded at up to S$500,000. EDB will also provide advisory and connections, as well as deploy its venture builders to be part of the sprint teams, where relevant
- An additional S$500,000 co-funding will be available for a “build and launch” phase for high potential ventures to accelerate setup, Minimum Viable Product development and hiring of a founding team
- A self-help toolkit will be made available to better scope venture concepts, evaluate organisational readiness for venture building and select the right venture studios
