7 rising Singapore startups in these sectors are exploring the German and wider European market in 2021
What are the top sectors of interest for Singapore’s startups considering the German market? The 7 startups in Scaler8’s current Explore programme offer innovative solutions in the eCommerce, Fintech, Industry 4.0, and Logistics and Mobility sectors, and are confident of making their mark in Germany.
We spoke to airVting (eCommerce), Curium (Mobility), Finbots (Fintech), FlixStock (eCommerce), Seashore Networks (IoT), Trames (Logistics), and Xnergy (Industry 4.0), who shared that it’s the advanced economy, strength in R&D, welcoming startup ecosystem, and German corporates’ interest to work with startups that makes Germany such an attractive market opportunity for their company.
Over 11 intensive weeks, Scaler8 is supporting each startup to connect with key opinion leaders and potential customers to validate and refine their product-market fit for Germany and possible go-to-market approaches. Read on to learn more about their innovative technologies and their plans for the German market.
AirVting
Promoting e-commerce through live-streaming
Industries: MediaTech, Marketplace, MarTech, AdTech
Year founded: 2019
Core Team: Christina Yip, Co-Founder
Stage of funding: Pre-Seed
Current Locations: Singapore & Berlin, Germany
Consumers’ change in behaviour as a response to the realities of the pandemic is reshaping the future of retail and leading to even more market opportunities in ecommerce. Live selling alone generated US$60B in global sales in 2019, and almost doubled in 2020 as consumers are more receptive to shopping via live streams.
airVting is using live-streaming as a solution to enhance the online shopping experience, generate relevant content and consequently increase engagement rates and sales conversion for merchants and businesses. The company’s main goal is to provide a seamless connection between merchants, influencers and shoppers on one platform. With its platform, it is offering an all-round live commerce experience. The technology itself can be integrated into the client’s website, Facebook, or used as a mobile app.
Germany is one of the most mature ecommerce markets in Europe and consumer adoption of ecommerce has been continuously high. Through utilising the Scaler8 Explore programme as part of their market expansion strategy, airVting aims to understand the competitive landscape, develop a clear value proposition and validate their solution with end-users and customers such as SMEs, agencies, corporates, and merchants.
Curium
Elevating to full autonomy
Industries: Autonomous Vehicles, SensorTech, Industrial IoT
Year founded: 2020
Core Team: Dr. Ali Hasnain, Co-Founder and CEO; Osman Ahmed, Director
Stage of funding: Seed
Current Location: Singapore
In the Autonomous Vehicle (AV) industry the key R&D focus has been on sensor technology to sense and map the road environment, and Artificial Intelligence to make decisions on the road environment. Automotive manufacturers and suppliers need to improve the accuracy and reliability of sensors to ensure safety, consumer confidence, and consequently the widespread adoption of autonomous systems.
Curium is a deep-tech company specializing in sensor calibrations needed to make autonomous vehicles a reality by developing an automated sensor calibration technology to help elevate autonomous vehicles to L5 autonomy. The company focuses on ensuring the reliability of the sensor technology by continuously monitoring and calibrating sensors so that the data being received from them is accurate.
The team is led by experienced co-founders with strong academic (including the field of optical sensors) and industrial experience. They see Germany as a key market opportunity for Curium, as it is a market leader in sensor technology, research and development, and in the automobile industry.
Finbots.AI
Accelerating innovation in Financial Services through AI
Industries: Fintech
Year founded: 2017
Core Team: Sanjay Uppal, Founder & CEO; Shripad Keni, CTO; Balaji Ramaswamy, Director Intelligent Design
Stage of funding: Bootstrapped
Current Locations: Singapore (HQ), Dubai, Hyderabad
Many financial institutions are using manual and outdated processes and are lacking the right tools to successfully improve operational efficiencies and save costs.
Finbots.AI found their market opportunity in developing innovative solutions for financial institutions that help drive enterprise growth, profitability, and sustainability. Their products are aimed at enhancing competitive advantage, augmenting decision-making, creating sharper value propositions, and delivering highly efficient processes. By embedding AI capabilities, all of their products are inherently self-sufficient to learn, adapt, and improve with the micro and macro changes to the business environment.
Finbots.AI was recognized among “Top 40 Global Fintech Finalists” and “Top-10 Singapore Fintechs” at the MAS Fintech Awards 2020. Their products are designed for financial institutions of all sizes, globally. Through the Scaler8 Explore programme, they aim to identify and validate the interest of banks, professional services firms and other financial institutions, and understand the regulatory and compliance requirements of Finbots.AI’s products.
Flixstock
Effortless model imaging powered by AI
Industries: E-Commerce, Retail
Year founded: 2018
Core Team: Dr. Harindar Keer, CEO & Co-Founder; Ajay Khandelwal, Co-Founder & CTO; Doulos Jose, Product and Growth
Stage of funding: Seed
Current Locations: Singapore, India
Especially during the pandemic, merchandisers in the fashion and retail industry are facing many challenges. The restrictions of Covid-19, logistics issues and limited access to models are only adding to already existing challenges.
Flixstock automates ‘on-model’ product image generation using AI. It provides end-to-end digital image transformation for retail and ecommerce. Users can upload on-mannequin product images and download dynamic on-model images wearing the product.
Flixstock has already onboarded a major enterprise client from Germany and views Germany’s advanced economy, tech, and innovation ecosystem as a strategic advantage and perfect launchpad for their business expansion to Europe. As part of their German market exploration, they want to identify best use cases and validate with relevant corporates, SMEs and platforms in retail and ecommerce, as well as localise their value proposition and business model to meet local demands.
Seashore Networks
Private 4G 5G wireless networks trusted by industries
Industries: IoT, 4G 5G Networks
Year founded: 2019
Core Team: Ankit Dixit, Co-Founder & CEO; Parth Pokar, Co-Founder & CTO
Stage of funding: Seed
Current Locations: Singapore, India, Malaysia, France
Enterprises’ needs for private 5G/4G networks are accelerating. There is a high demand for more reliability, flexibility and control to scale Industrial IoTs, especially for places where no public cellular coverage exists. These include mining, ships, aircrafts, oil fields, but also underground tunnels, factory floors, ports, and more. Even places with stronger government policies and regulations.
Seashore Networks empowers industries with private software-defined 4G/5G wireless bandwidth that is modular, flexible, and scalable. They offer an elastic network-as-a-service to run thousands of wireless devices and applications with extremely high grade of reliability ready for AI, Edge Computing and I4.0 use cases.
Germany is known for its manufacturing and state-of-the-art industrial processes, and regulatory bodies that understand the value of Industrial IoT. Seashore Networks aims to map the best use cases, industries, potential customers and existing players in the market, to develop a clear value proposition, localise their business model, gain market access to Germany, and find new revenue streams.
Trames
End-to-end supply chain orchestration
Industries: Industry 4.0, Robotics
Year founded: 2018
Core Team: CF Tong, Co-Founder & CEO; Xiaolei (Mike) Hu, Co-Founder & CTO; Winston Koh, CSO
Stage of funding: Series A
Current Location: Singapore
The international freight market is highly fragmented and processes are very manual and paper-based, which results in very high shipping administration costs, inefficient operational processes and more time consumption.
Trames is a supply chain digitisation tech solution designed to improve collaboration and visibility between disparate stakeholders across long and complex supply chains. It enables tracking and visibility into bookings, cargo movement, live shipping events, supply chain and freight analytics for carriers, shipping and logistics partners and facilitates the communication of messages throughout the supply chain.
Despite being a young company of 2 years, Trames has commercialised its product with a fortune 500 MNC, achieved top 15 in OCBC’s Emerging Enterprise Awards in 2019 and won the GTR TradeTech showcase in 2020. Trames aims to tap on Scaler8’s partnership with Digital Hub Logistics Hamburg to bring their product to Germany, and rely on our myriad of industry experts to provide the right structure and guidance to enter the European market via Germany.
Industries: Logistics, Supply Chain, Trade and Transportation Tech, Information TechYear founded: 2019Core Team: Kevin Lim, Co-Founder & CEO; Alok Rajiv, Co-Founder & CTO; Zhongyuan Huang, COO, Strategy & PartnershipsStage of funding: SeedCurrent Locations: Singapore (HQ), India (Software Development)
Xnergy
Universal, contactless charging for mobile robots
Traditional charging technologies have limited flexibility and legacy issues to scale with diverse robots and battery types.
Xnergy provides cost-effective, fast-charging solutions that are safe as well as easy to integrate and scale to meet demanding robotic uptime and design cycles. They have developed a contactless charging technology for robots that works as one charger for all robots that run on any battery, and it allows non-precision docking and integration into fleets.
At Scaler8, we seek to provide Singapore companies with the best framework and the right approach to start a business in Germany, Applications are open year-round for Scaler8 Explore and Scaler8 Access. Visit this page for more information. Scaler8 is run 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.
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.