Hello Tomorrow Singapore, a non-profit organization dedicated to facilitating corporate innovation, recently organized the Singapore Regional Summit themed “Understanding and Collaborating for a better world,” running in line with the organization’s objective of accelerating the pace of deep-tech research and innovation globally.
Attendees of the event include 400 corporate innovators, researchers, investors, policy-makers and industry leaders, in addition to companies that are looking to discover palm oil alternatives and those who are in the midst of creating the future of energy storage. “Regional Summit is a platform for the deep tech ecosystem to find new ideas,” says Senior Parliamentary Secretary Dr. Tan Wu Meng at the event.
Many gathered to watch the competition of the top 10 deep-tech startups (selected from a pool of more than 200 applications). Hong Kong’s Lifespans Technology won the first place and will be given the opportunity to pitch their ideas in the global finals in Paris. This startup seeks to solve the complications amongst the elderly population who suffer from post-op complications after orthopaedic implants by using advanced materials.
The runner-ups of the competition are Singapore’s NDR Technologies and Indonesia’s Biteback. The former develops robots to assist surgeons during minimally invasive operations, while the latter is creating more sustainable alternatives to palm oil.
This event is part of a wider move to tackle the struggle we often see in the deep-tech space. It is often hard for profit-maximizing investors to get past the high research and development cost and extremely high product-market-fit risk present in deep-tech startups as opposed to other startups in e-commerce, financial technology where revenue sources are at least visible.
What if there is no market available after all the hard work? – is a common question that has yet to be answered. Nonetheless, regardless of the challenges, such breakthroughs are necessary to advance the future of mankind and perhaps more such events and platforms will sprout out to stir more interest, and maybe even set the foundation to educate people on the intangible benefits of deep-tech research.
Editor: Ben Jiang