As Southeast Asia continues its growth trajectory despite a challenging global macroeconomic climate, global investors and venture builders are increasingly looking to the region not just for profits and equity value, but also new innovations to bring to the global stage. In the 2023 report published by Asia Partners, there is a growing upstream opportunity set generated by early stage investors in Southeast Asia and this has resulted in over 900 upstream deals in the last five years.
In Singapore, the rapidly expanding startup landscape has led to a corresponding surge in incubators and accelerators to cater to the demands of innovation. The country now houses almost 250 accelerators, across a variety of industries and sectors. These accelerators are capitalising on the concentration of innovative startups in the region and supporting them with specialist expertise and global networks.
In this special issue of The Smart Move, we look at three industry-leading accelerators that hail from UK and Europe and are now running their Asian cohort programmes from Singapore.
