These four Singapore startups plan to take on the German market

We’re excited to welcome four Singapore-based startups who have joined Scaler8 Explore to dive into the German market for their business expansion plans. They are: Cogniant (MedTech), Incomlend (FinTech), SoMin.ai (MarTech), and uHoo (Smart Cities). Ranging from Seed stage to Series A, these startups have already gained traction beyond their home markets, demonstrating the global growth potential of their solutions.

Over 11 intensive weeks, Scaler8 is supporting each startup to formulate their market expansion strategy, build valuable connections with key opinion leaders and potential customers, and refine their product-market fit for Germany. Scaler8 is powered by German Entrepreneurship Asia, a partner of the Global Innovation Alliance (GIA) network – a joint initiative between Enterprise Singapore and the Singapore Economic Development Board.

Read on to learn more about their innovative technologies, and why they’ve picked Germany as the next market for overseas expansion.

Cogniant

Remote monitoring platform to predict and improve brain health outcomes

With social isolation measures imposed in response to COVID-19, pain points in mental health care related to treatment-seeking behaviors, treatment monitoring, and treatment adherence are being amplified. Cogniant is a remote monitoring platform for measuring and predicting neurological disorders. It has developed a clinically validated mobile patient engagement and reporting platform which makes mood disorder diagnoses proactive and brings benefits of early interventions to large patient populations using digital phenotyping. Cogniant’s solution is mobile, monitors patients, and provides a real-time view of the patient to the care provider and clinician, which is minimally invasive for the patient, easy to use, and scalable

With a growing base of enterprise customers and clinicians, ongoing clinical trials in Singapore, and collaboration partnerships in Australia and the U.S., Cogniant looks to establish partnerships in new markets in the coming year as as part of their international expansion strategy. Germany will be Cogniant’s first foray into the European market. “As part of taking Cogniant to the next level, we identified Germany as our next growth market. Scaler8’s value proposition to take our company to the biggest EU market really resonated with us,” says Neeraj Kothari, the company’s co-founder and CTO.

Industries: MedTech, Digital Health

Year founded: 2016

Core Team: Mairin Reid (Co-founder and CEO), Neeraj Kothari (Co-founder and CTO)

Stage of funding: Seed

Current Locations: Singapore, Australia

Incomlend

The first truly global invoice marketplace

Incomlend is a global invoice exchange platform that aims to democratise access to trade finance. Incomlend capitalised on fintech market opportunities, providing a product where companies from different countries can finance their export invoices by selling them to institutional investors at a discount. The platform’s unique features are offering trades in multiple currencies, originating deals from multiple country origins and covering transactions with Credit Insurance, while powering the transactions with a state-of-the-art digital platform.

Since its inception, Incomlend has grown to be one of Singapore’s most promising FinTech startups. To date, they have completed over 2,300 trades in 50 countries worldwide, onboarded over 400 clients and funded over USD 350 million in invoices on their platform. They have had a successful partnership with CMA-CGM, and in August 2020, raised a USD 20 million Series A round led by Sequoia India. The company is using these fresh funds to drive overseas expansion into Europe, Southeast Asia, and North Asia, while advancing their technology development.

“We offer innovative financing solutions for international trade of goods, and Germany is a huge player in this area. The community aspect of Scaler8, along with its comprehensive access to 360 degree expertise, is a key motivator for us to be a part of the programme,” says Jean-Francois Guillaumin, Managing Director of Incomlend in Europe.

Industries: FinTech

Year founded: 2016

Core Team: Morgan Terigi (Co-founder and CEO), Marc Mathenz (Deputy CEO), Jean-Francois Guillaumin (Managing Director – Europe)

Stage of funding: Series A

Current Locations: Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, Dubai, the Netherlands, Switzerland

SoMin.ai

Social media AI for better marketing

SoMin.ai is a revenue-generating DeepTech startup that optimises the performance of digital advertising and influencer marketing with the help of AI and Big Data. The platform predicts audience psychographics based on publicly available social media data, and runs automated, cost-efficient social media and search engine marketing campaigns for brands with hundreds of targeting and creative variations. Leveraging on international market opportunities, SoMin’s language and industry agnostic platform has enabled them to scale quickly, with traction in 13 geographical markets to date. Their over 40 loyal clients include global brands such as Citibank, Puma, Nespresso, McDonald’s, Nestle, Audi, and Hyundai.

SoMin seeks to expand their business by establishing strategic collaborations with large B2C brands and Digital Marketing Agency Conglomerates.

On why SoMin is looking at Germany as part of their potential market expansion strategy, co-founder Hendrik Schwartz shares that “Germany is the powerhouse of the EU economy. German clients are known to be picky and focus on quality. If we can get good projects and establish a foothold in Germany, we will be able to expand all over Europe from there. Besides, being German myself, it was a no-brainer for us to join Scaler8!”

Industries: MarTech

Year founded: 2017

Core Team: Aleks Farseev (Co-founder and CEO), Kirill Lepikhin (Co-founder and CTO), Hendrik Schwartz (Co-Founder & Sales Director)

Stage of funding: Seed, currently raising Series A

Current Locations: Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, India, Japan, Taiwan, UAE, Russia, the U.S.

uHoo

The world’s most advanced indoor air quality sensor

uHoo is the most comprehensive air health platform to monitor and manage your air quality to ensure health, safety and comfort in any indoor space – homes, commercial spaces and government. uHoo has also launched the uHoo Virus Index – the world’s first, real time assessment of COVID-19 survival risk and airborne transmission risk.

uHoo has had a spectacular 2020, with strong business growth and market opportunities spurred by an increased focus on healthy air quality in homes, offices and indoor public spaces due to COVID-19. In September, they recently closed an oversubscribed funding round led by Wavemaker Partners. Its founders, Dustin Onghanseng and Brian Lin, were motivated by their own chronic respiratory issues to use technology to improve the environmental conditions in which people live, work, and play.

The company sees great overseas expansion potential for their solution in Germany, especially in the area of customised B2B solutions. “With the heightened focus on creating healthy buildings brought about by the coronavirus pandemic, we’re expanding our footprint in the German market to offer business solutions to commercial properties, offices, schools, and hotels so they can reopen safely and provide confidence to their occupants, employees, and customers,” shared uHoo co-founder Dustin Onghanseng.

Industries: Smart Cities, PropTech

Year founded: 2014

Core Team: Dustin Jefferson Onghanseng (Co-founder and CEO), Brian Lin (Co-founder and CTO)

Stage of funding: Series A

Current Locations: Singapore, Hong Kong, the U.S.

At Scaler8, we seek to provide Singapore companies with the best toolkit and resources to venture into the German market and thrive. Applications are open year-round for Scaler8 Explore and Scaler8 Access. Visit this page for more information.

If you are keen to learn more about how Scaler8 can kickstart your business expansion into the German market, or how you can partner with Scaler8 to support Singapore startups, get in touch with us.

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