On 13 January 2022, Hewlett Packard Enterprise in partnership with e27 successfully hosted the first episode of “Fast Forward with HPE” — an initiative designed to identify, support, co-innovate, and go to market with the next generation of digital disruptors in the Asia Pacific startup ecosystem.
“Fast Forward with HPE” aims to bolster and embolden startups from the region in ways that can help them scale, grow, and ultimately co-innovate technologies for the digital future. While start-ups are known for disruptive ideas, it often takes the experience and global reach of a technology heavyweight to get that innovation into the hands of customers. That’s what Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Fast Forward initiative aims to do: Fuel the best of start-up culture with the insights and support needed to ensure solutions can be rolled out at scale.
Fast Forward with HPE spans three episodes with the first two rounds already broadcasted last 13 and 27 January, culminating in the final live pitch round to be held on 17 February.
Fast Forward with HPE!
Fast Forward aims to partner with the winning cohort of startups to help drive engagement for their offerings with a targeted focus. The journey encompasses many modes but may include: customer & partner introductions, solidification of joint value propositions and selling motions, or enablement of the winning startup’s product. The journey evolves with time to enable joint success; customer engagement, solution creation, GTM integration, and field enablement for scale and a robust partnership. Unlike any other existing start-up programs, the initiative is focused on building a strong community of start-ups that provides B2B services/solutions in APAC.
The competition featured a judging pool made up of leading experts including Huey Lih Heng (General Manager, Channels, Service Provider & Ecosystem Sales, APAC, HPE), Paul Glaser (Corporate Vice President & Global Head of Pathfinder, HPE Venture Capital Fund), Amit Gupta (CEO & Founder, Ecosystm), Santhosh Viswanathan (Vice President & Managing Director, Sales Marketing & Communications Group, APJ Territory, Intel Corporation) and Suchitra Narayan Director, Advanced Manufacturing & Venture Building, SGInnovate.
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Over the past three years, HPE has been on a journey to rapidly transform to better align with changing technology trends and evolving customer needs. A critical element of this transformation has been the re-ignition of its innovation engine. HPE CEO Antonio Neri talks about a strategy for HPE that’s edge-centric, cloud-enabled, and data-driven. As HPE helps customers build their technology landscape—both for on-premise data centres and extending out to the edge—it is looking for partners that can help provide that software layer, that extends the reach of HPE’s product portfolio across that hybrid cloud experience for customers.
Ranging from AI-powered cloud solutions to supply chain operating systems, the startups in Fast Forward with HPE!’s 2022 cohort all prove to be disruptors and innovators ready to shape not only the digital landscape of Asia Pacific but of the world. After over 200 applications from across the region, here are the 10 startups carefully selected to compete in this year’s Fast Forward with HPE!
Cloudpick
In the summer of 2017, Cloudpick started the development of a smart store solution designed to power a small one-room, cashier-less convenience store. From that humble beginning, Cloudpick continued to develop and enhance its solution, bringing AI-based technology that has since become the retail industry’s leading provider of contactless, cashier-less retail shops and conveniences stores.
Cloudpick’s technology is currently used in more than 160 locations in 11 countries.
The founders of Cloudpick had a single focus in mind: to create technology that allows shop operators, owners, and entrepreneurs to transform their brick-and-mortar stores and compete with cashier-based and e-commerce stores. As experts in computer vision and machine learning, the founders of Cloudpick believe they can use the power of AI to create stores with the ability to “understand” customers’ shopping behaviours and patterns that can help operators understand which products sell best and why, more easily manage their inventory, reduce costs and human capital, and fully automate the retail experience.
Transcelestial
Transcelestial is building a space laser network to deliver a step-change in internet connectivity globally. This will be the fastest way to bring the rest of the world up when it comes to the bandwidth and connectivity curve. Right now, the company is using the same technology on the ground as “wireless fibre optics” — with a much lower TCO than fibre for Telcos and enterprises.
Transcelestial has won numerous industry and global awards such as SPIFFY San Andreas Award for Most Disruptive Technology by Telecom Council, Forbes 30 Under 30 foe their CTO, Dr Mohammad Danesh, and The Most Ambitious Start-Up in Photonics Award by The Optical Society (OSA), among others.
Founded in December 2016, the Transcelestial team is located in Singapore and is backed by major investors such as Wavemaker Partners, SEEDS Capital, Entrepreneur First, 500 Startups, AirTree Ventures, SGInnovate, SparkLabs Global Ventures, Michael Seibel (CEO of Y-Combinator), Charles Songhurst (Microsoft’s former Head of Corporate Strategy), Josh Manchester (Champion Hill Labs) and other investors.
DataVLT
DataVLT is a young, dynamic company that helps organisations advance their intelligence progression. From automating intelligence to building data analytics and AI systems as an outsource solution for all types of enterprises, the team Is always ready to pick up the gauntlet — from foundations to advanced requirements.
As an award-winning Data Science and Engineering outfit, DataVLT applies design thinking to solutions and can begin any AI building journey from as early as data feasibility audits, infrastructure, data processing, and modelling to visualisation. With quality validated by heavyweight industry peers, DataVLT has gained quite a few industry leaders as clients and partners.
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Supporting the fundamental growth of analytical knowledge and ‘know-hows’, the team is also giving back to society by providing Data Science and Analytics training to MNCs, government agencies, and educational institutions around the region.
With DataVLT, any company can gain access to advanced analytics without the depth of expertise or high costs.
H3 Dynamics
H3 Dynamics is a workflow automation company that is digitising civil engineering inspection and rectification processes across several industry verticals — with the main starting emphasis on real estate and buildings.
Their technology turns unstructured images, videos, or LiDAR data into cloud-based intelligent inspection reports as a service for asset owners, operators, contractors, certification bodies, or insurance firms. While various data acquisition methods can be used (portable or fixed cameras, ground robots, and drones) the company developed an autonomous drone docking station for fully autonomous, remote aerial scanning operations at the client site.
Hence, the company’s cloud-based ecosystem tied to robotics stations at client sites can enable remote inspections, incident response, and monitoring as a service.
STACS (Hashstacs Pte Ltd)
STACS is a purpose-driven Singapore fintech firm, with a vision to provide Transformative Technology for the financial industry. It has an award-winning blockchain platform that unlocks value and enables effective Sustainable Finance.
The team is led by industry veterans committed to resolving problems in the financial industry with game-changing technology. STACS’ clients and partners today include global banks, stock exchanges, and asset managers.
The company is a Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Global FinTech Award Winner, and also a two-time awardee of the Financial Sector Technology and Innovation (FSTI) Proof of Concept (POC) grant, under the Financial Sector Development Fund administered by the MAS.
tagSpace
7 years ago, tagSpace began its journey as a cross-platform, locational AR development kit for developers. At that time, there were no powerful offerings for both Android and iOS devices so the company sought to become the enabling development platform. Shortly afterwards, they also realised that there was a greater commercial opportunity in the Social B2C space, so they repositioned themselves as the World’s first Social AR platform.
The company got the platform to a Minimum Lovable state and then raised seed-stage investment capital to grow their product to a commercial state. Around that time, tagSpace started to see rumblings from Facebook about their AR play and realised 2 things; first, that they were not ready to compete with them, and second, that they had a LOT of videogame DNA in their core team but no Social Network development experience.
Paul Simon Martin, tagSpace CEO, also realised a greater opportunity in giving all businesses the ability to create and integrate locational AR capabilities into their existing products. So the company pivoted again to become the “WordPress for Locational AR”. Currently, tagSpace is a complete no-code, location-based Augmented Reality solution for city experiences, festivals, and big events.
Quincus
Quincus is creating the operating system for the supply chains of tomorrow. Based in Singapore with offices in Indonesia, the UK, the UAE, and other countries, Quincus is developing a modular, configurable platform that utilises data and machine learning to enable visibility, control, and optimisation throughout the supply chain.
Quincus technology is trusted by logistics players across the world, from Asia to the Middle East to the US and more.
viAct
With the mission of saving lives and ultimately enhancing the productivity of the construction business; Gary Ng (Founder) and Hugo Cheuk (Co-Founder) started viAct in 2016, combining their engineering and technical knowledge after identifying that construction businesses were ready for technology use. However, on exploring the then-existing market, they found that AI models were expensive and time-consuming to upgrade. So they started R&D in AI focusing on building tailor-made AI modules for scenario-based, real-time, on-site as well as remote monitoring of construction safety and productivity in minutes.
From then, the team started to expand initially in Hong Kong being the headquarters, viAct has now become one of its a kind by providing “Scenario-based Vision Intelligence” solutions exclusively for the construction industry all across Asia and Europe by successfully deploying around 30 sites. viAct’s smart AI modules have been successfully providing extremely granular insights on safety prepositions, productivity forethoughts, and environmental compliances in job sites by not only tracking objects but by transforming vision to practical actions.
The Seventh Sense
Seventh Sense was founded to bring Machine Learning based Computer Vision to the network edge, closer to the sensors/cameras generating pixel data.
Seventh Sense brings GPU level performance on small, power-efficient, and inexpensive devices. Navigating the speed-accuracy trade-off curve with research in both more efficient network architectures (Computer Science) along with more effective inference speeds on target hardware architectures (Computer Engineering) is at the core of Seventh Sense’s work.
Seventh Sense underwent several rounds of due diligence with various bodies in the Singapore Defence forces and finally obtained investment from Cap Vista, the strategic investment arm and a fully owned subsidiary of Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA), a statutory board under Singapore’s Ministry of Defence.
Seventh Sense is also funded by 500 Startups, a global venture capital firm on a mission to discover and back the world’s most talented entrepreneurs.
weR
weR sees a future where commercial, retail, industrial and residential users are immersed in Augmented Reality (AR). A future where man and the world around him are interfaced by the limitless possibilities of AR. weR is realising this future, starting with the retail space.
Bootstrapped since 2019, founders Amit and Tomer are experienced technical professionals with a proven track record in deeptech. In 1999, as teenagers, they published a marketing project mapping Tel-Aviv’s night scene. In the years that followed, they built successful careers in the fields of high-end, cutting-edge visual effects and financial forecasting machine learning.
Retailers and brands are struggling to keep up with the fast pace of digitisation, and are on route to ending up like books and music stores that lost a lot of business to better online shopping experiences. A gap exists between the Consumer and the Retailer. weR bridges that gap in a disruptive way.
From the Asia Pacific to the world
Fast Forward with HPE is designed to stimulate the growing culture of digital innovation in the Asia Pacific; but more than that, the programme will help benefit the participating startups as they take on the larger global market. With access to resources and insights from reputable institutions, these 10 groundbreaking startups stand a chance at taking on the world and applying their innovative products to address challenges across the globe.
See for yourself as these 10 startups showcase their best and brightest ideas in the live pitch rounds. You can view the first and second episodes to find out who made it to the cut! Register for Fast Forward with HPE! Pitch day live Episode 3 here to be broadcasted on February 17, 2022.
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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by HPE
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