Singapore Press Holdings’ startup accelerator is officially dead

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SPH Plug and Play, the startup accelerator of Singapore’s largest newspaper publisher, has officially been declared dead.

SPH spokesman Yeo Siew Chi confirmed the news with Tech in Asia. Starting from this year, “the SPH Media Fund will focus on a direct investment strategy and we will no longer continue with the SPH Plug and Play accelerator program,” he said via email. The SPH Media Fund is the investment arm of SPH.

SPH denied the news of the shutdown last year when Tech in Asia first caught wind of it. The company told us then that the program was “under review.”

The spokesman did not respond when we asked him for the reasons behind the shutdown.

Yet earlier statements by a former SPH Plug and Play head Jupe Tan proved illuminating. He told marketing publication Mumbrella:

“We could see that the ecosystem was expanding very quickly and was becoming very crowded for early stage accelerators,” he said. “We started to see a situation where demand was chasing supply – there were more accelerators and more investors than startups.”

Corporate accelerators overhyped?

SPH Plug and Play is a collaboration between the newspaper company and Plug and Play Tech Center, a global incubator of startups. The accelerator has graduated 16 teams so far.

Plug and Play is still running an accelerator in Singapore, except that it’s now doing it with Mercedes-Benz. It now helps the carmaker run its Startup AutoBahn Singapore program.

SPH marks an early retreat in the acceleration space by a corporation in Singapore. With corporate accelerators now at the peak of a hype cycle, we might see more closures down the road.

Trouble brewing at SPH

Meanwhile, the legacy publisher faces an uncertain future. Its first-quarter 2017 net profit fell 47 percent against Q1 2016. It’s planning to lay off up to 10 percent of its staff within two years in a “right-sizing” exercise.

The bloodletting is showing no signs of stopping. SPH has not publicly articulated a clear digital investment strategy. But it did give a few bland statements to the media:

“We will focus on continued innovation and investment in the media business to stay ahead and stay relevant, improve cost efficiency with a leaner organization and wage restraint measures, and grow business adjacencies to diversify revenue streams.”

Contrast this with what the New York Times came up with.

This post Singapore Press Holdings’ startup accelerator is officially dead appeared first on Tech in Asia.

from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/singapore-press-holdings-startup-accelerator-officially-dead
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