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Singapore-based ecosystem builder Tribe and government-linked Digital Industry Singapore have teamed up with Nvidia to launch the Ignition AI Accelerator – Southeast Asia’s first AI startup accelerator.

Now accepting applications, the US$3 million project aims to support AI startups and create a vibrant AI ecosystem in the region, among other things. Through a four-month initial program, 15 startups will gain technical insights from Nvidia and attend training workshops developed with Tribe.

In addition to covering the startups’ GPU needs, the program will also offer funding support to select startups via the Startup SG Tech scheme. Nvidia and Tribe will also help startups gain accreditation from Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority, which would make them contenders for government and large enterprise contracts.

The partnerships come as Singapore’s rapidly growing AI sector gains traction, attracting attention from global majors. Earlier this week, IBM said it would be partnering with AI Singapore (AISG) to improve the latter’s large language model, Sea-Lion.

Meanwhile, Google also recently announced a partnership with AISG to improve datasets for Southeast Asia-focused LLMs.

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BLOCKCHAIN ecosystem builder Tribe, Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and Temasek have launched a new initiative to groom 100,000 developers over the next two years.

Unveiled at the Asia Tech x Singapore event on Thursday (Jun 8), the Global Developer Hacker House initiative aims to provide a space for developers to network and gain new skill sets in technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality/virtual reality, blockchain and quantum.

Companies that are partners of the programme include Meta, Google Cloud and Circle. They will provide participants with mentorships, networking opportunities and technology assets.

The programme will be both online and offline and consists of developer quests, hackathons and meet-ups in cities around the world, including in Singapore.

Ong Chen Hui, assistant chief executive at IMDA, said that the initiative will help developers upskill in diverse tech areas and strengthen Singapore’s talent core, which will enable the country to attract new investments, jobs and opportunities.

“Building a capable pool of developers in emerging tech domains like AI is vital to secure Singapore’s place in the digital economy,” she added.

Mitesh Agarwal, a managing director at Google Cloud, said: “Asia-Pacific is fast becoming a global hub for Web3, and platforms like Global Developer Hacker House play an important role in helping fuel innovation and skills development in the ecosystem.”

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Singapore’s first government-backed blockchain network, Tribe, has garnered new strategic investments from international venture capitalists to further the development of both its Accelerator and Academy programs. Tribe Accelerator also announced Wednesday that its participating startups have raised over $70 million, and its list of network partners now includes Pfizer.

Venture capital firm Korea Investment Partners (“KIP”) has made a strategic investment in Tribe, marking its first direct investment in Singapore. Mandiri Investment Management Singapore (“MIMS”), a subsidiary of Indonesia state-owned Bank Mandiri; Greg Kidd, an early Twitter, Coinbase and Square investor; and Hong Kong-based Stellar Partners have now also made strategic investments in Tribe.

The new funding will go toward expanding Tribe’s services and outreach to promising blockchain startups through its Tribe Accelerator. It will also support Tribe Academy in its efforts to increase access to education for underprivileged students and attract new talent to the blockchain space.

Accelerator partnerships foster blockchain startup growth

Additionally, Tribe Accelerator now includes pharmaceutical heavyweight Pfizer among its list of network partners who contribute guidance, expertise, networking and resource support to its participating blockchain startups. It joins existing partners HSBC, Infineon Technologies, SBI Ven Capital, BMW Group Asia, ConsenSys, IBM, Intel, Nielsen, PwC, R3 and more.

“We are supporting a range of cutting-edge blockchain startups from around the world, with a total valuation of over USD$1 billion, that are solving global problems from food security to medicine deliveries,” said Tribe CEO, Yi Ming Ng. For example, Accredify has developed a blockchain-based digital health passport that allows users to access and store test results via mobile app for travel declaration.

To date, blockchain startups participating in Tribe Accelerator have raised “over US$70 million to date from investors including SGInnovate, Greycroft, SV Ventures, and other global investment firms,” according to a company statement.

The accelerator’s alumni include companies like Quantstamp, a full-stack cybersecurity firm, and Sentient.io, an AI and data services provider.

The platform was launched in March 2019 and is now accepting applications for its fifth cohort.

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Tribe, a blockchain accelerator backed by the government of Singapore, has received a strategic investment from Korea Investment Partners (KIP) and Mandiri Investment Management.

Greg Kidd, an early investor in Twitter, Coinbase and Square, besides Hong Kong-based Stellar Partners, also co-invested.

This marks KIP’s first direct investment into Singapore.

Tribe will use the funds to grow its accelerator and academy programmes into newer markets, including the US, Korea, Indonesia and Hong Kong.

Additionally, Tribe has also announced a partnership with American drug giant Pfizer to provide startups with support like technical expertise, resources and access to networks. Its other notable partners include HSBC, Infineon Technologies, Citibank and Ubisoft.

Founded in 2018, Tribe works closely with global corporations, government agencies, blockchain companies and late-stage startups to build a community that promotes blockchain collaborations and innovations.

Its goal is “to generate greater public awareness of the benefits and relevance in the everyday use of distributed ledger technology through the usage of decentralised applications (dApps) or backend digital solutions”.

Also Read: In brief: Singapore’s blockchain accelerator Tribe goes virtual for batch 3

“We are supporting a range of cutting-edge blockchain startups from around the world, with a total valuation of over US$1 billion, that are solving global problems from food security, education efforts to medicine deliveries,” said Tribe CEO, Yi Ming Ng.

“The pandemic has placed a spotlight on the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry, and in the process speeded up its digital transformation,” added Bei Goh, Digital Client Partner Lead Emerging Markets Asia, Pfizer, added.

“There is huge potential for blockchain in the pharmaceutical sector, from the tracking and authenticating of vaccines and medicines to making supply chains more efficient. Being a part of the Tribe ecosystem gives us access to promising blockchain and other deep tech startups as well as insights into the latest trends across the industry,” he shared.

Tribe also said that its participating startups have raised US$70 million since joining the programme. Some of its acceleratees are Accredify, AID:Tech, TADA and xfers.

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Ryan Chew is a co-founder and managing partner of Tribe Accelerator, the first blockchain accelerator supported by the Singaporean government.

From his favourite prata shop on Jalan Besar, Chew and partner Ng Yi Ming decided to create a global blockchain ecosystem with the aim of connecting blockchain start-ups with corporations, governments, and investors.

Backed by the likes of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Temasek, Citibank, IBM and Intel, Tribe’s start-ups have gone on to raise more than $30 million. It’s an amazing journey for the technopreneur who started his journey at 19, fresh out of National Service and spending his meagre $3000 savings to develop a gaming application.

Since that initial stumbling block, Chew has faced different challenges that required him to adapt and adjust his own thinking and work processes. During the early days of blockchain, he dove into Fixir, an app that allowed you to get quotes really quickly, from reliable and trusted mechanics.
One of the problems that they had hoped to solve was the issue of counterfeit car parts. Using blockchain as a ledger in conjunction with NFC chips, non-mechanics would be able to tell if car parts were the real deal. Yet despite its promise, recognition of the technical complexity of implementation convinced them to put off the project; and even though nothing came of it, the conceptualisation process brought new ideas.

Ryan Chew Tribe
Tribe Accelerator Co-Founder, Ryan Chew
“There’s more to blockchain than just cryptocurrency,” says Ryan Chew. “Why aren’t people talking more about other use cases? This could be very beneficial for humankind.” Going through several different accelerator programs, Chew used this experience to conceive of a new accelerator program to facilitate adoption of this technology across different industries and not just fintech.

So far, Tribe has supported more than 30 start-ups from two batches with a combined value of more than US$1 billion. We caught up with Chew, our latest August Mentor, a man with the vision of changing the world through blockchain technology.

What are some of the fundamental misunderstandings of about blockchain?
I had this master class with a bunch of SME bosses who owned coffee shops and retail chains and the biggest misunderstanding is that blockchain is synonymous with cryptocurrency. While it’s the most widely adopted use case, there are many different use cases of blockchain in general.

The technology is an enabler. It enables you to solve problems, but it doesn’t necessarily solve all the problems by itself. It still has to work with different components of the full technical stack.

Another common misconception is that blockchain is a single source of truth. People fail to understand is that while it can hold truth, it is only as good as whatever you put in. So if the source is false or falsified, it can be abused like any other instrument.

You mentioned regulators themselves had negative preconceived notions of the tech, how did you convince them otherwise?
There is a lot of negative perception because back then, there was a lot of ICO scams that were coming out to make a quick buck. Hence, the government took a more hesitant stance looking at blockchain. I think we started to gain more traction exploring different use cases exploring and imagining how this particular technology could be used in many different ways and many different verticals to accomplish many different goals.

Could you share what are some of the real-world applications so far?
Let’s start with local issues. Open certs is a government initiative to put our certification on the blockchain. For example, when we go for a job Interview how is the employer going to verify that what you say on your CV is true? With blockchain, they can go onto a portal that’s developed by GovTech and verify. In the old process, it would be expensive and time consuming where people have to make calls and send emails to verify. If you have misplaced a 10-year-old certificate, it would be costly and time consuming to replace as well.

MIT Sloan assistant professor Christian Catalini said it best: The benefit of blockchain is two-fold. First, it reduces the cost of verification. Next, it reduces the cost of networking. We see a lot of use case in the cost of verification portion.

One of the start-ups we are accelerating aims to track your digital health passport. It’s especially useful during this COVID pandemic. If you go overseas, it’s easy for people to verify that you’ve been tested negative. Without this platform, the costs are enormous from a government-to-government standpoint. An officer needs to be able to call the right person at the right Ministry to verify the right database, and it would probably take three days.

Furthermore, there’s a lot of manpower and coordination involved and that can potentially introduce human error. We have another start-up looking to digitise identity. People in the third world or developing countries might be unbanked because they don’t have identification, or their record keeping is spotty. How are they able to verify their identity when it comes to opening a bank account? How do people like that get a loan?

You’ve gone from prata shop ideas to a $51 million company, has this journey given you any new wisdom? Have your mindsets changed?
Yes, my mindset has changed, as have my stress levels. [Laughs] In terms of wisdom, there are many things I have learned about leadership. I have learned more about delegation. It doesn’t mean sending tasks to people. There are many facets to delegation: Is this person already overloaded? How do I piecemeal a task so that the right person with the right capacity, can do the right thing and deliver what is required.

There’s the communication aspect as well. More often than not, the leadership equation is assumed to be the transmission of instructions down the chain but I believe that there are more layers to just top to bottom communication. How do we as leaders aid inter-team communications?

Communication must take place within teams and between teams, how do we create the process for them to talk efficiently within all these different teams? Another aspect of communication is what I call the “push pull concept”.

When we are working as a small team, information flow takes place from a leader’s push perspective: we push information down information as we gather new insights but as we grow and more projects come in, there is a need for active participation which leads to “pull communication”.

As we get busier, it’s harder to manage information flow and team members receive information from everywhere.

If they have time, they will stop to process who this information is for. If they don’t have time, they’re just going to act on the information based on their own. So then there’s a need for other team members to actively “pull” that information: Hey, what’s going on? Heard you have an update on this? There’s a lot of nuance in leadership, it’s all contextual.

What kind of problems are you looking to solve yourself?
We are always looking to solve problems in the eco-system but it’s very high touch. There’s too much hand holding and so we wondered how we would scale this up. So we launched a portal supported by IMDA to reach the masses so they can better understand the use cases of blockchain.

The other problem was after matchmaking corporates to start-ups and then start to build Proofs-of-concept (POCs), we couldn’t find the manpower to build it. That’s when we realised the talent shortage needed to be solved with Tribe Academy. We aim to develop the net generation of talent for frontier technologies like blockchain, cybersecurity, data science, and so on.

We want to democratise the ability to build applications. No Code is my way of tackling the immediate talent shortage in the short term while we train more talent and groom existing talent.

Do you have any regrets?
All my mistakes have led me on the path today, so not really.

(Photos: Allen Tan; Styling: Amos Chin)

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SINGAPORE – Venture capital (VC) firms across South-east Asia have launched a ‘community-led’ initiative to help start-up employees laid off due to the fallout from the coronavirus outbreak find new opportunities.

The anchor of the initiative is a public database of affected employees who can opt to have their names, functions and contact details included in it. The database will be publicised on the social media platforms of the participating VC firms.

They include Saison Capital, FutureLabs, Jungle Ventures, Alpha JWC, Convergence Ventures, Patamar Capital, Rainmaking, TRIVE Ventures and Tribe Accelerator.

Interested applicants with at least one year of working experience can apply to have their names included on the database via a form. Their application will be verified by one of the supporting VC firms before being listed on the database.

The database will also include a list of companies that are still hiring in the region.

The initiative is spearheaded by Chia Jeng Yang, principal at Saison Capital; Simin Liu, an analyst at FutureLabs Ventures; and Rachael De Foe, a freelance communications consultant.

Mr Chia says the trio were inspired after seeing a similar effort by VC firms in the United States.

“People through no fault of their own have been laid off, and we want to create something that can help them here and now,” he said.

Said Joachim Vandaele, partner at FutureLabs Ventures: “Top talent is what makes or breaks ventures, so as an ecosystem, we have a collective interest and responsibility to keep the talent in South-east Asia. Customers come and go, financial capital flows in and out but human capital is what we need to hold onto.”

In the same spirit, Ms Elise Tan, a consultant who works with start-ups, has built a spreadsheet that matches start-up companies to volunteer mentors.

Interested volunteers or start-ups can fill up a form to have their names included. Once they have done so, they will be added to a LinkedIn group to be matched to each other.

So far, more than 60 individuals have signed up as volunteers and have pledged to mentor a start-up for one hour a week. 

Said Ms Tan: “Covid-19 has affected many companies around the world. Start-ups with little resources and funding will be even harder hit.

“We are all banding together to help these start-ups by contributing our time on a pro bono basis”.

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