SGX and Singapore’s top research agency to help bring tech startups to market

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Singapore’s stock exchange today announced a scheme to find promising startups and small businesses and help them find funding and market opportunities.

The Singapore Exchange (SGX) is doing this in partnership with Exploit Technologies (ETPL), the arm that commercializes research and intellectual property from Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A-STAR).

The partnership will target companies in medtech, biotech, cleantech, digital tech, and consumer tech.

SGX and ETPL want to identify companies with “growth potential” so they can attract interest from private and public capital markets.

Through the scheme, selected companies will be able to access A-STAR’s research and development capabilities, which include biomedical and physical sciences, technology, and engineering. Singapore’s premier research board has 18 research institutes and over 5,000 people including researchers and support staff, covers health and biomedical sciences, advanced manufacturing, urban solutions, and the digital economy.

SGX has been actively engaging startups and the technology sector to encourage more tech IPOs through the Singapore bourse. Last month, it announced a partnership with Singapore’s Infocomm and Media Development Agency (IMDA) to help pave the way for IMDA-accredited tech startups to the public markets.

Access to finance a ‘key challenge’

“Our partnership with ETPL is another step towards our vision of supporting innovative and high-potential businesses, bringing their ideas, technologies, and growth plans to fruition,” says Chew Sutat, head of equities and fixed income at SGX, in a statement.

Over the next two years, the partnership will target companies in medtech, biotech, cleantech, digital tech, and consumer tech. SGX and ETPL hope this will enable the sharing of information and help connect the research and technology community with the financial industry.

“Access to finance and in-house technological capabilities continue to be key challenges for entrepreneurs in today’s increasingly competitive business environment. The SGX-ETPL partnership will leverage each other’s complementary strengths to address these challenges, and help grow a pipeline of quality enterprises and promising intellectual properties,” says ETPL CEO Philip Lim.

The two companies have selected private sector partners to lend their support to the project, including law firms Virtus Law and Wong Partnership, audit firms Deloitte and PwC, and Catalist Sponsors and UOB Kay Hian.

The commercialization of promising research and intellectual property is a key mission for Singapore this year, emphasized both in the 2017 budget announcement and the Committee for the Future Economy report.

This post SGX and Singapore’s top research agency to help bring tech startups to market appeared first on Tech in Asia.

from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/sgx-etpl-a-star-partnership
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