ORIGIN: Asia Tech Conference: Cultivating Innovation: Strategies for building an environment that fosters tech growth in Southeast Asia

Editor's note: ORIGIN: Asia Tech Conference, taking place on May 23, 2024, is a technology conference co-hosted by TNGlobal and the Macau Greater Bay Area Technology Exchange Association. It was also the BEYOND Week partner event of the recently concluded BEYOND Expo 2024, held at The Venetian Macao Cotai Expo, Macau.

“Nurturing Innovation: Strategies for Building an Environment that Fosters Tech Growth in Southeast Asia” was a panel featuring Bit Santos of Kickstart Ventures, Rachel Lau of RHL Ventures, and Clarence Tan of Origin Ventures, and was moderated by Pabpreng Liengsuk, Program Manager, Techsauce Media, ORIGIN: Asia Tech Conference.

Panelists from corporate venture capital, venture capital firms and venture builders shared their views on the standards and support needed to build a beneficial tech ecosystem.

The text below has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Bit Santos, AVP of Portfolio Operations, Kickstart Ventures:

As a Corporate Venture Capital firm (CVC), we believe startups can greatly benefit from working with corporations.

A big part of our work is helping the startups we invest in, and the many startups we work with, find win-win opportunities. By working with companies, they can leverage our expertise and reach to reach a larger audience and have a smoother, better path to success.

The Missing Piece – Talent

It's a difficult time to invest in startups these days. Since the economic downturn, hurdles like minimum profitability have been raised and companies have to be much more sustainable than before. I think there's plenty of capital out there, but investment activity needs to pick up again.

One of the biggest gaps is talent. I don't think this is a solved problem. It's a recurring concern. My view is that there is a lot of raw talent, especially in the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia. It's just not very well developed talent.

I think there's a lot of talent that's not getting the opportunity to see what's good. There's not a lot of talent in the more developed tech ecosystems that has the experience to train other talent. So what a lot of startups do right now is they try to bring in talent from more developed countries. We need to give the rest of the talent the opportunity to be exposed to these talents so they can level up. A rising tide floats all boats. So I hope this happens.

Rachel Lau, Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer, RHL Ventures:

We have diversified from venture equity into venture debt. We have been active in the market over the last five years and we have seen a lot of the growth in Asia being captured in Southeast Asia due to the state of the US-China trade relationship. So the recent growth has been very interesting and encouraging. We expect Southeast Asia to remain one of the largest growth engines globally.

I think a lot of it comes from regulatory and policy harmonization, but all

Southeast Asia is eager to cooperate with each other, and the political situation is stable. I think that in the next five years, we will already see changes in government and prime ministers in each country. For now, things seem relatively stable, so I think that's encouraging.

Featured Industries:

We've seen Uber and Grab revolutionizing transportation. We've had a lot of healthcare and insurance, but we've also been investing heavily in food and agriculture in the last few years because COVID-19 has disrupted the supply chain between consumers and businesses. But I think the most interesting and very hot thing these days is semiconductors. Malaysia is the sixth largest semiconductor country in the world.

We are also investing significantly in the semiconductor business and we see no doubt that Southeast Asia will be a major beneficiary of trade and technology transfer into our region.

Clarence Tan, Founder and Managing Partner, Origin Ventures:

We are a university-based company in the deep tech field. We operate in many countries except the Philippines. We have offices in Malaysia, Thailand, China, and Japan.

In the past two or three years since the COVID-19 pandemic, I've noticed a shift in VC interest. I've noticed a lot of VCs, not just in Southeast Asia, but also in China, Singapore, are shifting from general tech to deep tech. In deep tech specifically, in Singapore, they're looking at areas like agri-food tech, because we're a small country and we need to be self-sufficient, we need to grow on our own.

Producing a variety of food in a limited space. Agri-food technology is a field that is getting a lot of attention, especially in Singapore and Thailand. Another field is anything related to sustainability, such as advanced materials, new energy, and new types of batteries. Recently, thanks to the chat GPT, [popularity of] AI is coming back.

In Southeast Asia, several countries, such as Singapore and Thailand, as well as Japan and China, are experiencing an ageing population. So medical technology, biotechnology is another area. A lot of venture capitalists are looking for this type of technology right now.

The trend is heading in this direction, so when investing in deep tech, we focus on several sectors: agritech, foodtech, sustainability, new energy, AI, medtech and biotech.

Some key criteria for cultivating a successful ecosystem:

We need public support in the form of government assistance, subsidies, infrastructure and a network provided by the government to connect us with the right ministries and industries.

The second is academic. We're in the deep technology space, so we need IP from universities. And we need a lot of talent, not just scientists. We need management.

The last P is the private sector. To make this successful, we need venture builders, venture creators, accelerators, VCs, etc.

ORIGIN: Asia Tech Conference: Southeast Asia – a silver lining for VC investment amid global uncertainty?

Sources 1/ https://Google.com/ 2/ https://technode.global/2024/06/24/origin-asia-tech-conference-cultivating-innovation-strategies-for-building-a-conducive-environment-for-tech-growth-in-southeast-asia/ The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article

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