2023 Shanghai Yangpu Startups Competition Singapore Division Final Successfully Held

On December 7, 2023, the 2023 Shanghai Yangpu Startups Competition Singapore Division Final was successfully held at the National University of Singapore (NUS). The competition was guided by Shanghai Municipal Party Committee Talent Work Leading Group Office, hosted by Yangpu Municipal Party Committee Talent Work Leading Group, co-organized by Yangpu High-level Talent Center, Venture Cup China and Huang He Consultancy Pte Ltd, and supported by National University of Singapore and relevant investment institutions in Singapore.

As the earliest, largest and most comprehensive mass entrepreneurship and innovation event for talents at the urban level in Shanghai, Shanghai Yangpu Startups Competition has continued to exert the integrated effect of “attracting talents through competition” and “gathering talents through competition” since 2016. Until now, it has been held for seven consecutive years. This event introduces and cultivates a group of outstanding innovative and entrepreneurial talents every year through discrete, responsible and marketized evaluation, and has selected 818 “venture stars” from over 6,200 projects. Among them, 34 people have grown into foreign high-end talents in Shanghai, 10 people into state-level foreign high-end talents, 7 enterprises into little giants of science and technology in Shanghai, and 11 enterprises have been selected as little giants of mass entrepreneurship and innovation in Yangpu. The competition focuses on five major industry tracks, namely intelligent manufacturing, health tech, green tech, future tech as well as creative and media tech. This year, in order to further expand the influence of the competition and introduce high-level talents and teams from Asia to land in Yangpu, the competition has set up the Singapore Division, which has attracted more than 30 Singaporean innovative enterprises to apply. After the evaluation of the first and second rounds of the competition, 8 projects were finally promoted to the Final of the Singapore Division.

The final has followed a roadshow format of “6-minute pitch + 4-minute Q&A” to maximize the presentation of each project’s product advantages and features. The judging committee consisted of five senior investors from local investment organizations in Singapore. Combined with the market demand and innovation and entrepreneurship ecology of Singapore and Yangpu, the judging committee comprehensively examined and evaluated the participating projects in various dimensions, such as core technology, product service, application scenarios, business model, profit structure, target market, investment and financing plan, potential problems, risk control, etc., and put forward valuable suggestions.

At the beginning of the event, Kevin Leung, Program Head of Graduate Research Innovation Program (GRIP) of National University of Singapore (NUS), introduced the innovation incubation system, development history and successful cases of NUS, and expressed his expectation that the innovation projects in Singapore and Shanghai Yangpu will further docking, and jointly build a new bridge of “Innovate, Collaborate and Sharing”.

Jane Wu, Executive Director of Venture Cup China and representative of the Organizing Committee of Shanghai Yangpu Startups Competition, introduced the situation of the competition and the environment of science and innovation in Yangpu. She mentioned that Shanghai Yangpu, with a concentration of high-level talents and technology-based enterprises, has connectivity and commonality with Singapore in terms of innovation cooperation and talent introduction needs, and looked forward to further promoting in-depth cooperation and exchanges between the two places in the field of science and innovation in the economic field through this competition.

In the following final session, eight innovative Singaporean enterprises from fields of health tech, green tech, intelligent manufacturing, future tech as well as creative and media tech competed together for the top three places in the Singapore Division. The roadshow and Q&A discussions were lively and the atmosphere of the competition was strong.

To conclude the event, Kevin Leung, Program Head of Graduate Research Innovation Program of National University of Singapore (NUS), announced the results of the competition and presented awards to the winning projects. The top three projects are KroniKare (AI-based System for Assessment and Management of Chronic Wounds), Altent (Hydrothermal Biomass Energy Solution), and PharLyfe+ (Medicated Oral Films Development), which will go through to the grand final of the 2023 Shanghai Yangpu Startups Competition and compete with overseas high-level talents from all over the world for the grand prize.

As the overseas division of Shanghai Yangpu Startups Competition, the Singapore Division Final is committed to building a direct platform to serve high-level overseas innovation and entrepreneurial talents from Singapore and other parts of Asia to land in Yangpu. The platform will firmly establish the role of talent-led development strategy, promote in-depth cooperation between Singapore and Shanghai Yangpu in science and technology innovation and the introduction of talent, so as to boost the construction of Shanghai’s high-level talent highland with new blood and new ideas for the economic and social development of Yangpu District.