The YSI SEA Innovation Programme 2020 ended with a Virtual Demo Day where young aspiring entrepreneurs from across Southeast Asia presented their start-up solutions on the focus areas of circular economy, energy, and food and agriculture.
YSI SEA is a Temasek Foundation-backed and National Youth Council supported social enterprise incubator based in Singapore that empowers Southeast Asian youths to solve sustainability challenges with a measurable impact.
Established to support innovative youths in actualising their sustainability solutions, YSI SEA provides access to impact innovation programmes, innovation workshops, community events, mentors and potential investors through partnerships with companies and institutions.
To date, YSI SEA has produced 28 startups all over Southeast Asia and has an office in Singapore.
We couldnt have made it without our amazing partners:
Principal partner: Temasek Foundation
Ecosystem Partners: DBS, REAPRA, TBN Asia, Asia Institute of Mentoring, Social Collider, and Social Impact Catalyst
Media Partner: CinemaWithoutWall
PS. Thank you Amelia Seah for hosting the Demo Day with us!
Programme Highlights
Some interesting insights of 2020's batch consisting of 23 participants!
45% of the founders are female
8 different countries
70% have prior entrepreneurship experience
They have working experience ranging in financial services, consultancy, engineering, filmmaking, and etc
They went through 4.5 months of online programme, taking them through stages such as our Insight Factory, improving their prototype, and more that leads up to the Demo Day, with the help of our community and network, prototyping money, knowledge and tools, and mentors and partners.
Winners of the Demo Day will get post-programme support under REAPRA that is a venture builder based in Singapore, Tokyo, Vietnam, and Thailand. They've been around since 2014 and they have invested in over 60 different businesses across Southeast Asia and Japan. Their mission is to co-create new industries that have positive impact to society. Their philosophy is to build businesses from scratch so they are very excited work with founders at the idea stage.
"What we're trying to achieve is to solve complex problems in a very efficient way. We want to work with founders across Southeast Asia, and in the future in Asia, to be able to solve these complex problems of our society"
Priscilla Han, Chief Investment Officer of REAPRA
Opening thoughts by our Founder: Sai Surya
"Let's build a more vibrant ecosystem in Southeast Asia together"
The Demo Day started with Sai Surya, CEO, who shared about the challenge of hosting a Southeast Asia incubation accelerator program during a COVID-19 pandemic. YSI SEA has come a long way, starting 2018, to empower youths and young professionals to solve sustainability challenges with a measurable impact focusing on the UN SDGs, with this year focusing on food and agriculture, circular economy, and energy transition as these are challenges are that govern our everyday lives.
"We are able to create a strong community that could dive deeper into these challenges"
Amazing support from Janet Neo
"I want to encourage all of you that despite the very sudden changes that have hit all of us this year, you have not stopped on your journey to create impact"
Janet Sarah Neo, Board Director of Temasek Foundation Ecosperity advising on sustainable innovation and directing initiatives to enhance livability.
Her career is dedicated to spearheading sustainable businesses, green energy, water and waste management, ethical procurement, circular economy, community impact investment and partnerships.
Jeanette was recently named Global Women's Forum Rising Talents under 40, and received the World CSR Congress Global CSR Excellence Leadership Award.
"And one of the very big reason why Temasek Foundation supports YSI Southeast Asia is that we believe in you. We believe in young people, we believe that your ideas are worthy. And more importantly, we believe that the resources that we could give you, the tools that we could give you, will be the life skills that can help your dreams come true."
Heartful advice from Bidyut Dumra
"It's great when you get the enthusiasm and also the spirit of young entrepreneurs and founders, because where some people say they might lack in expertise, the ability for them to see these problems with new eyes, with the ability for them to look without the baggage behind them, I think that's what sometimes is the key differentiator for a very compelling solution that completely disrupts and changes the world."
Bidyut Dumra, Head of Innovation of DBS, shared two important wisdoms with us back in 2018 that were paramount in making sure that our incubation programs could gather momentum and helped us reached where we are today. He advised Surya at SG Innovate to "be sure of your ask", and "tell a vision".
"When I looked at the startups, what really struck me was, you've got super diversity in founders. You got people from Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines, Singapore, all coming together. And that in itself is brilliant from a creativity and innovation perspective because you've got a lot of diversity. To add on top of that, it was the ambition because you've got the diversity in the problem statements..."
Here are the cohort pitches!
ENERGY TRANSITION Startups in Southeast Asia
Light of Hope PH
Light Of Hope Ph is focused on improving the lives of the underprivileged, off-the-grid communities in Philippines by helping them transition to clean renewable energy technologies combined with IOT sensor/data analytics at a very affordable rate with a long term sustainable impact.
Datanam
Datanam, uses a Precision Vertical Farming method that combines the practices of the best local farms with the latest technologies to grow the best quality of produce in a systematic way. Datanam uses data to ensure that the demand and supply are matched in a manner that maximises sustainability.
FOOD AND AGRICULTURE Startups in Southeast Asia
Phytopia
Phytopia is a social enterprise targeting two beneficiary groups by developing a horizontally integrated supply chain. Phytopia connects small farmers with simple agtech to improve efficiency and offers the students and staff in universities with affordable and healthier food made from harvested produces in a form of salad box.
Frescue
The team envisions the creation of an economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable community through the development of a food waste management infrastructure that connects excess supply with the unmet demands for food by redistributing perfectly edible but unconsumed food products to the people and organisations that need them at different levels.
Solytair
Solytair provides renewables’ powered outdoor cooling systems that helps cities & businesses improve the health & wellbeing of public at scale.
Leaf.ly
Leaf.ly's ambition is to make digital farming mainstream in Southeast Asia. Leaf.ly wants to help local farmers and agripreneurs make better decisions with data. Their solution is a plant disease classification tool powered by AI, which aims to reduce farm expenses by shortening the waiting time and optimizing fertilizer input.
Hidroagro
Agricultural startup providing hydroponic and aquaponic solutions along with training and education to farmers to provide healthier, tech-driven ways of growing and consuming food produce.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY Startups in Southeast Asia
The Bamboo Company
The Bamboo Company is an enterprise that reimagines the future with bamboo as sustainable material. They aim to put bamboo in all parts of one's life, from houses to products, from food to furnitures.
Bali Recycle Up
Bali Recycle Up focuses on waste recycling from various waste generation areas, starting with waste generated from ceremonial offerings in temples in Bali. As Bali’s first temple waste solution, Recycle Up aims to recycle floral waste into valuable products such as organic incense. The ultimate aim of the startup is to ensure that no temple waste ends up as landfill waste by 2025.
Circular Blueprint
Circular Blueprint is about upcycling plastic waste into eco-building materials all in an effort to make housing more affordable, safer and better.
CinemaWithoutWall
CWW is a citizen media company which tells audio-visual stories captured by the people for the people. CWW uses cinematic reporting to communicate grassroot insights to key decision-makers with the mission of enabling better collaboration and cohesion of policies and business decisions with the opinions on the ground.
Archi
Archi is converting bio material from coffee ground waste and other agriculture waste to consumer products such as cups, mugs, etc. for F&B and hospitality industries. Archi’s aim is to set a benchmark of innovation in Circular Economy.
Recytic
An enterprise that focuses on completing the plastic lifecycle. From collecting the plastics using the washing recyclable bottles machine and breathing new life into these by turning them into functional lifestyle items. Recytic aims to remove as much plastic from our waste as possible.
Here is the event:
00:35 Introduction
03:30 Introduction by Sai Surya
09:25 Janet Sarah Neo, Board Director of Temasek Foundation Ecosperity
19:15 Bidyut Dumra, Head of Innovation of DBS
22:30 Light of Hope PH
27:30 Datanam
32:53 Phytopia
38:14 Frescue
43:25 Solytair
48:18 Leaf.ly
53:15 Hidroagro
58:00 Building a Startup from Home Montage
1:04:05 The Bamboo Company
1:08:00 Bali Recycle Up
1:13:10 Circular Blueprint
1:18:04 CinemaWithoutWall
1:22:40 Archi
1:27:36 Recytic
1:32:57 Priscilla Han, Chief Investment Officer of REAPRA
Interseed was born after hosting three years worth of pre-seed incubator for early-stage impact making startups in the Southeast Asia sustainability space under YSI SEA.
That is why we built app.Interseed.co! We wanted to start consolidating the many efforts of Southeast Asia and find a way to help individual entrepreneurs in the ecosystem so that everyone can help each other out rather than compete for resources.
This can be through our open-sourced market research landscape studies, letting sustainability players host events to bring different regional communities together, and more hopefully coming your way!