When a delivery robot wheels into a lift lobby, calls an elevator, clears access control, and rides up to the correct floor without human intervention, most bystanders see a novelty. Alan Ng sees an infrastructure problem that has barely begun to be solved.

Ng is the founder and chief executive of QuikBot Technologies, a Singapore-based robotics and AI company that aims to do for autonomous machines what TCP/IP did for computers: give them a common language to operate safely in a world that was never designed for them.

“Robots are beginning to move through our cities, but our infrastructure was built for humans,” Ng said. “The Ambient Permission Plane allows robots, buildings, and digital systems to interact safely in the real world. It is the trust infrastructure required for the Physical AI era.”

That framing — trust infrastructure — sits at the centre of everything QuikBot Technologies builds. The company’s flagship orchestration system, QuikSync, allows autonomous machines to coordinate in real time with elevators, access control systems, and building management platforms.

The result is what the company calls the Autonomous Final-Mile Delivery Platform-as-a-Service, or AFMDPaaS: a managed layer that enables robots to perform secure, floor-to-floor deliveries across smart buildings and urban districts without requiring bespoke integration at every site.

Also Read: The new growth metric: AI Share of Voice

The practical applications are already in motion. QuikBot Technologies is operating commercially in Singapore and has expanded internationally, with deployments in Dubai supporting autonomous delivery services alongside FedEx, DHL Express, UPS, and Aramex. For those logistics giants, the value proposition is straightforward: the ability to extend last-mile delivery into the interior of dense, multi-storey buildings without adding headcount.

For QuikBot Technologies, the ambition extends further. The company positions itself not as a robotics hardware maker but as the connective tissue between the physical world and the growing ecosystem of autonomous systems — what the industry is beginning to call Physical AI. As robotics platforms proliferate across offices, hospitals, campuses and logistics hubs, the absence of a shared trust and permissions layer becomes a structural bottleneck. QuikSync is QuikBot’s answer to that gap.

The company’s approach has drawn recognition beyond its immediate commercial traction. Earlier this month, QuikBot Technologies was named Southeast Asia Startup of the Year at the Global Startup Awards, earning a place in the Global Grand Finale scheduled for May 7–8 in Valletta, Malta, alongside the EU-Startups Summit.

Also Read: Half of APAC consumers are tired of poor-quality AI content from brands: Report

The award places QuikBot among the region’s most closely watched deep-tech ventures and marks a signal moment for Singapore’s standing in robotics and smart city innovation.

“This recognition highlights Singapore’s growing leadership in robotics, autonomous delivery, and smart city innovation,” the company said following the announcement.

At the Grand Finale, QuikBot Technologies will compete against regional winners from around the world for the title of Global Startup of the Year. The company is encouraging members of the innovation community to support its bid through a public vote at the Global Startup Awards website.

The timing is not incidental. Singapore’s 2026 national budget has committed more than S$1 billion to AI infrastructure, talent and adoption through to 2030, and a newly established National AI Council is tasked with providing strategic direction for the country’s technological development. QuikBot Technologies sits squarely within that policy context — a homegrown company working on the kind of foundational infrastructure that determines whether Singapore’s smart city ambitions translate into operational reality.

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Image Credit: QuikBot Technologies

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Singapore’s cybersecurity conversation tends to orbit cloud breaches, phishing links and ransomware gangs. But new figures suggest an older, less glamorous attack route is quietly regaining ground: malware that rides in on USB drives and other removable media.

Kaspersky said it detected and blocked 3,888,967 on-device threats on computers in Singapore in 2025, a 16.2 per cent jump from 2024. The company’s telemetry shows that worms and file viruses accounted for most of the detections: the kind of malware designed to spread quickly from one machine to the next, often without requiring a user to click on anything.

Also Read: Singapore’s cybersecurity paradox: Why we must act now

That matters because “on-device” attacks don’t depend on someone being tricked into opening a dodgy link. Once an infected removable device is plugged in, malicious code can run automatically if the system is misconfigured, unpatched, or simply caught by a strain that security tools fail to stop. In workplaces where files still move around via thumb drives — from small businesses to highly controlled environments that restrict internet access — that’s a straightforward way to bypass perimeter defences.

The numbers also challenge an assumption common in hyper-connected markets like Singapore: that offline malware is fading away in a cloud-first world. Instead, the data points to a persistent and growing exposure surface that is easy to overlook precisely because it feels old-school.

Kaspersky’s Adrian Hia, Managing Director for Asia Pacific, argues that everyday habits are part of the problem, particularly the default trust people place in removable media. “Most users rarely second-guess plugging in an external device despite the fact that such on-device infections remain a very real threat,” Hia said.

Also Read: The AI arms race in cybersecurity: Is your startup ready?

The risk isn’t just nuisance infections. A compromised endpoint can become a staging ground for deeper intrusion, especially if it stores sensitive documents, cached credentials or access tokens. In an enterprise setting, a single infected machine can be enough to seed malware across shared drives, spread laterally within networks, or quietly exfiltrate data.

For startups and SMEs, a major slice of Southeast Asia’s digital economy, the damage can land fast: disrupted operations, incident response bills, and the reputational hit that follows any disclosure.

There is, however, a key caveat: these figures reflect what Kaspersky customers’ devices in Singapore detected and blocked, not a full census of the country’s computers. Vendor telemetry is useful for trendlines, but it is not a neutral, universal measurement — changes in customer base, detection engines, or reporting can influence year-on-year shifts. Even so, nearly 3.9 million blocked threats is a reminder that endpoint security is still doing heavy lifting, and that removable media remains an active delivery channel.

So what should organisations take away from this?

First, treat USB-borne malware as a current threat, not a museum exhibit. “Air-gapped” or restricted networks are not automatically safer if people regularly shuttle files between machines.

Second, basic hygiene still pays: keep systems patched, restrict autorun behaviours, and lock down administrative privileges so a single infection cannot rewrite the whole machine.

Third, have a recovery plan that works under pressure — particularly offline or isolated backups that cannot be tampered with by an infected endpoint.

For individuals, the guidance is even simpler: be sceptical about unknown drives, avoid installing software from untrusted sources, and update devices promptly. The most sophisticated security strategy can still be undone by a single “found” USB plugged in out of curiosity.

Also Read: Hackers using AI to mask identity behind cyber attacks, researchers say

Singapore’s digital economy is moving fast, but the tools people use to move data around often lag behind. The latest spike in on-device detections suggests attackers have noticed — and they’re happy to win the old-fashioned way.

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At Echelon Philippines 2025, a panel on impact-driven entrepreneurship brought together Enzo Pinga of Humble Sustainability, Priya Tachadi of Viligro Philippines, Frederic Levy of Lhoopa, and Marc Concio of KITA Agritech, moderated by Carlo Chen Delantar of Gobi Partners.

The discussion centred on balancing social mission with commercial discipline. Panellists were emphatic that purpose alone is insufficient: “Before you are an impact company, you are a company. Not an NGO. So you have to think as a company,” with one noting that “a successful company is one that solves a problem.”

Pricing emerged as a recurring challenge, particularly for startups serving low-income customers who need affordable solutions without compromising business viability.

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Singapore-based Virdalis has closed a US$700,000 pre-seed round led by Wavemaker Impact, as the biotech startup develops a feed-grade protein ingredient made from Wolffia globosa, a tiny plant better known as duckweed.

The pitch is blunt: most countries are still buying a critical food-system input from a small club of producer nations, and that concentration is a vulnerability.

Also Read: Asia’s biotech boom: Innovation, investment, and a new era of discovery

The company is going after a market it values at more than US$500 billion a year for global animal feed, with protein ingredients alone worth about US$300 billion.

But the bigger claim isn’t market size; it’s sovereignty. Feed protein is shipped across oceans, priced through volatile commodity markets, and exposed to geopolitical shocks. For Southeast Asia, where aquaculture and livestock supply chains are central to food security, that dependence is not theoretical.

Virdalis argues there hasn’t been a realistic way for most countries to produce feed protein domestically at scale without vast farmland and the right climate. Duckweed, it says, changes the constraints.

Why duckweed, why now?

Duckweed is not new to science, but Virdalis is betting it can be industrialised into a repeatable, scalable ingredient. The plant is tiny, grows fast, and can be cultivated without traditional arable land. Virdalis says Wolffia globosa can double biomass within 24-48 hours and reach 40-45 per cent protein by dry weight.

That growth rate matters because feed manufacturers don’t buy novelty; they buy volume, consistency, and cost curves. If a production system can run year-round and avoid the land-and-water footprint of conventional crops, it potentially turns feed protein from an import into something closer to local manufacturing.

Wavemaker Impact is leaning into that geopolitical angle as much as the climate story. Quentin Vaquette, the venture builder’s founding partner, said the appeal is that duckweed could be produced locally in places that currently have no realistic path to domestic feed-protein supply.

“What’s truly transformative is the geopolitical dimension: this is a protein source that any country can produce domestically, turning feed security from a trade dependency into a sovereign capability,” Vaquette said.

He added that duckweed-based systems could produce comparable protein with as little as 10 per cent of the emissions of conventional methods.

“Built by operators” — and aimed at Southeast Asia

Virdalis was founded by James Aujero, previously an executive at Philippine fintech GCash. While headquartered in Singapore, the firm operates in the Philippines, positioning itself close to regional aquaculture and livestock markets where feed costs and supply shocks ripple quickly into consumer prices.

Aujero framed the company’s ambition as reducing dependence on a few exporting countries rather than replacing any single crop.
“Wolffia is the first protein source that frees nations from that dependency — it can be produced anywhere, at speed,” he said.

The startup says it is building proprietary cultivation and processing systems, plus a data-driven operating platform — language that signals an attempt to run biology like an engineered production stack, not a slow academic programme.

What happens next

With pre-seed funding in place, Virdalis says it is scaling pilot production, hiring technical talent, and pursuing initial commercial agreements with feed manufacturers across Southeast Asia.

For Wavemaker Impact, whose debut fund is US$60 million, the deal fits a familiar pattern: back early-stage climate-tech infrastructure plays with large industrial end-markets. For Virdalis, the hard part starts now: proving that duckweed protein can meet feed-industry requirements on unit economics, safety, consistency, and supply reliability, not just biology.

Also Read: ‘Meat’ing the needs of the alternative protein space in Singapore

If it works, the upside isn’t only a new ingredient. It’s a reconfiguration of where feed protein can be produced, and who gets to control it.

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Take a look around. The market isn’t just saturated; it’s drowning in sameness. Every industry, from enterprise software to artisanal coffee, is littered with products that are essentially identical twins, separated at birth by a slightly different colour scheme or a few extra lines of code. We are in the age of the incremental tweak, where a “new” idea often means little more than a slightly better user interface bolted onto a century-old business model.

This is the great deception: too many founders believe their competitive edge lies in what, the product’s feature set or the concept’s novelty. They fret over the perfect launch campaign, when their real problem is that their core operation is entirely generic.

Let me be blunt: Your idea isn’t special. And if it is, it won’t be for long. The speed of imitation in the modern economy is frighteningly fast. The true, lasting competitive advantage is never found in the visible, front-end shine. It resides exclusively in the invisible, proprietary architecture you build beneath the surface. It’s in the data, the hidden processes, and the relentless, glorious tedium of your systems.

The database is the new moat

When I examine a business claiming an “edge,” the first thing I disregard is the demo. The second is the financial projection. I go straight to the back end. I ask: What is your proprietary data asset, and what are you collecting?

In a world where algorithms rule, the only true fortress is a data moat. If the insights you use to improve your service can be replicated by a competitor purchasing standard industry reports, you have no advantage whatsoever. You are playing on a borrowed field.

Also Read: Why access to ecosystems is tech’s true equality problem

The companies that win aren’t those with the prettiest dashboard; they are the ones who collect unique, unreplicable behavioral data from their users and feed it back into their product cycle. This creates a virtuous, self-reinforcing loop. Every customer interaction, every tiny click, every point of friction becomes a data point that makes your service microscopically better for the next customer. This aggregated knowledge, this collective history of user behaviour, is the only thing your competitor cannot copy. They can build your app, but they can’t download your years of refined, proprietary user history. That data, that deep, unique fingerprint, is the only sustainable edge you can actually own.

The unromantic discipline of systems

This brings us back to the non-negotiable truth: the edge is built, not conceived. It is forged in the systems and processesthat govern every transaction, every customer support query, and every product iteration.

Most startups are driven by heroic effort. A charismatic founder or an exhausted sales team pulls off miracle after miracle. This is the surest sign of a fatal, underlying flaw: a lack of robust systems. Heroic effort is not scalable; it is a temporary patch on broken processes. It leads to burnout, inconsistency, and chaos the moment the volume spikes.

Also Read: AI is not about automation. It’s about when systems are allowed to learn.

A genuine competitive edge must be built on processes that are so meticulously documented, so consistently executed, and so flawlessly automated that they become invisible. This is the operational fortress. It’s the difference between a competitor who responds to a customer complaint in twelve chaotic, individual steps, and your company, which resolves it in two automated steps and one human verification, logging the feedback into the product roadmap all the while. This efficiency translates directly into lower cost, higher retention, and greater speed.

Your product might get you a meeting, but your systems are what win the war. They allow you to scale without self-destructing. They allow you to maintain quality control when growth hits hyper speed.

So, the next time you are convinced that your company’s salvation lies in a new feature or a marketing gimmick, stop. Take a hard look at the unglamorous underbelly of your business. Are you building a proprietary data engine, or just polishing the chassis?

If your competitive advantage disappeared tomorrow, what essential, internal asset do you own that would still force your competitors to struggle just to keep up?

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