“(Doing this) requires companies to take on more entrepreneurial risk,” Choo added.
“EDB believes the best way for companies to do this is to borrow the startup approach of being lean, being agile, and moving with speed.”
The first round of the programme, CVL 1.0, was initiated in May 2021 with four venture studios – companies that specialise in building startups – and S$10 million of funding. The funds provided supported up to 50 per cent of the cost of a concept validation sprint.
CVL 1.0 helped 13 companies kick off the corporate venture process.
Of these, six have launched or are launching new ventures.
The companies have committed at least S$50 million of follow-on seed investments to build these new ventures, said Choo.
EDB announced CVL 2.0 in July 2022 with six venture studios appointed and an additional S$20 million in funding committed by EDB New Ventures, the corporate venture building arm of EDB.
Responding to feedback by participating companies and venture studios, the programme has extended the support period for the “build and launch” phase of new ventures beyond concept validation sprints. Eligibility conditions were also broadened to include a wider range of companies, with EDB keen on inviting more regional businesses to build their ventures out of Singapore.
“The goal remains to support companies to incubate and launch high-potential new ventures that can be scaled to become globally leading businesses from Singapore,” said Choo.
The venture builder is a relatively new concept, gaining traction in the last five years. Venture studios have built some notable companies, such as payment startup Ovo.
Ovo, built for the Lippo Group by BCG Digital Ventures, has since achieved unicorn status and is now majority-owned by Grab.
It is one of the 25 ventures built by the venture studio so far.
Next, a venture studio launched by consultancy Bain & Company said it is seeing a lot of interest from Singapore corporates since joining EDB’s CVL. “We’ve only been a part of it for the last four months, but we’ve had over a dozen conversations with companies looking to do something,” said Michael Egan, one of the leads for Next.
Corporate success
The combination of venture builder and corporate backer should, in theory, improve a new venture’s chance of success.
With corporate assets and data available from inception, ventures should be better at finding a product market fit, for instance.
If an insurance player spins off an insurtech startup, there is an advantage of having an instant underwriter for the startup’s products.
Experiments can be run quickly, and the startup can get data almost instantly to tweak its product or pivot to find the right audience.
“That’s massively beneficial,” said Sam Hall, Asia-Pacific Chief Executive Officer of venture studio Rainmaking. “If that takes you two weeks or one month in the wild, it can take you two days in a corporate venture. If you expedite the time to data and synthesise it, that expedites the time to validation and expedites the time to scale,” he added.
But before rushing in, experts say corporates should answer several questions – among them: How much control should the corporate mothership have?
And what is the ultimate purpose of the venture: as a spin-off or a spin-in, where the corporate buys it back later?
The business model for venture studios varies by the outcome of what the corporate wants.
