The
Innovation Xchange World Tour event (
www.ixsingapore.com) successfully kicked off earlier today at INSEAD, with a dozen Israeli start-ups delivering their pitches to preeminent figures in the venture-capitalist and start-up scene here in Singapore and the region.
The investors in the room included big players from both the private sector as well as government-linked funds.
Comparing the two economies, Mr Adrian Daniels, an advocate with the Yigal Arnon Law Firm and the moderator of the plenary session entitled From Israel to Asia: Business Collaboration Ideas, commented that Singapore and Israel were both small and thus needed to set their sights on the global marketplace. “One of the factors attributed to why Israeli entrepreneurs are so successful is that [they] tend to be very creative and very happy to take risks,” said Mr Daniels, asking if that same spirit and culture could be applied to the Singaporean entrepreneur.
In reply, Dr Kuo-Yi Lim, former CEO of Infocomm Investments and Mentor-in-Residence at the Singapore Management University Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, related that he had been impressed by how National Service in Israel (mandatory for all citizens) created deep bonds that often led to successful start-ups, and hoped that Singapore, with its conscript model, would also be able to find “a good way of using that experience” as that would be an area with “quite a bit of impact.”
The start-ups range significantly in their core technologies: from ICT to Nanotechnology and Big Data Analytics to Children’s Toys. In alphabetical order, they are:
CellBuddy – Eliminates roaming charges for travellers
Correlor – Customer intelligence for Asian Telcos
Folloyu – Transfer uncompleted web activity across devices
Hubylon – Real-time networking for students
Mxmio – Mobile retail lets retailers earn
noknok – Free incoming calls on original number for travellers
Sparkup – Magical Book Reader for children
Tekoia – app to streamline all remote controls to the phone
Teleport – Global Stock Exchange for skills monetization
Vodio – Personalised video curator
XwinSys – Hybrid X-Ray and 3D Imaging for the Semiconductor industry