Anyone who has run security at a large Singapore organisation knows the routine. A vendor turns up with a slide deck, a slick demo and a quarterly target, and the talk is about the product long before anyone has asked what is actually keeping the security team up at night.

Raz Kotler has sat on the receiving end of that meeting more often than he would like. Now he is building a company that promises to do it the other way round.

Scouter, which launched in Singapore today, calls itself a “services-first” cybersecurity business. It pairs a short, curated list of security technologies with local engineers who help organisations choose, test, deploy and look after them.

Also Read: Singapore’s cybersecurity paradox: Leading in digital, lagging in defense

“Having spent years on the CISO side, including at PayPal, I know how frustrating it can be when someone tries to sell you a solution before understanding your problem,” Kotler said.

Most security chiefs will recognise the complaint. The harder question is whether Scouter can avoid becoming the thing it criticises.

From the buyer’s chair to the seller’s

Kotler is no newcomer to the region’s security circuit. Before Scouter, he had held several security leadership roles: Global Oversight CISO at PayPal, CISO at XM Cyber, head of security operations and engineering at an Israeli bank, and VP CISO at Deep Instinct.

Scouter is not a lone startup, either. It is the third Singapore business in a group that already includes Dart and Aleph, formerly known as Red Alpha. Together, the group claims nine years of work with Singapore enterprises, more than 30 government and enterprise customers, and more than 500 cybersecurity professionals placed through Aleph.

That history matters. Selling security to Singapore’s public sector and regulated industries is a relationship business, with long procurement cycles and very little patience for unfamiliar names. Scouter is new, but it is not starting from scratch.

What Scouter actually sells

The technology list is short: Wiz, Island, Oligo and Mate. The biggest name is Wiz, the cloud security platform that Google bought for US$32 billion in a deal that closed on March 11, 2026. Island makes an enterprise browser that puts security controls inside the browser itself. Oligo focuses on protecting applications while they run.

Around these products sit four service lines: Managed Detection & Response (MDR), which means outsourced round-the-clock monitoring and incident handling; Forward-Deployed Cyber Engineer; Architecture, Validation & Implementation; and Enablement & Lifecycle Support.

The forward-deployed engineer is the most interesting of the four. Palantir made the model famous: an engineer works inside the customer’s environment instead of handing over a product and leaving. In security, where tools often sit half-configured on a shelf, that could make a real difference.

Also Read: The demand for SMB cybersecurity is inevitable, the supply was never built correctly

The core pitch is validation before implementation. Scouter says it will show that a tool works in a client’s own environment before the client commits to it, and then support it after deployment.

The timing helps. Attackers are getting cheaper and faster, with AI agents now able to break into companies for pocket change. Regulators are also paying closer attention: the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Association of Banks in Singapore recently formed a taskforce on AI-driven cyber risk. Buyers have less money and less time for tools that disappoint.

The independence question

There is a tension here that the launch announcement does not address. Scouter presents itself as starting from the customer’s problem. But it also has a curated portfolio of four vendors, and that is still a catalogue. An adviser that also earns money reselling the products it recommends has a conflict of interest, however good its intentions.

The release also leaves out several things a buyer would want to know: how Scouter makes money, what it charges, who its first customers are, how many people it employs today, and whether it has outside funding. It is fair to ask what Scouter will tell a client whose best answer is not on its list, or whose best answer is to buy nothing new at all.

A crowded middle market

Scouter is entering a busy part of Singapore’s security market. At the top end are the heavyweights: Ensign InfoSecurity, ST Engineering’s cyber arm and Singtel-owned NCS. These firms bundle advisory, managed services and integration for government and large enterprises. Global managed security providers and value-added resellers compete for the same budgets. Regional distributors supply much of the hardware and software. The vendors themselves increasingly sell professional services directly, and Wiz now sits inside a Google Cloud that also owns incident-response specialist Mandiant.

Scouter’s advantage is meant to be focus: a buyer’s-eye view from a former CISO, a deliberately small portfolio, and engineers embedded with the client rather than a sales team. Whether that is a lasting position or just a niche will depend on how many of the group’s 30-plus existing customers decide to sign up.

The talent bet

The part of the launch with the most potential is also the least detailed. Scouter says it is building Singapore’s AI security capability by training its current staff, which is already underway, and by hiring more engineers. It has not given any numbers for either.

The need is real. In 2025, Red Alpha itself pointed to an estimated shortfall of nearly 4,000 cybersecurity professionals in Singapore. AI security is a newer field still, and few people in the region have hands-on experience securing models, agents and the data pipelines that feed them. Singapore has written strong rules, but reports suggest it struggles to enforce them, and that the skills gap remains the bottleneck.

Aleph’s background in training people for security jobs gives Scouter some credibility on this front. A promise to build local skills is easy to make, though. The real test will be how many engineers Scouter hires, how they are trained, and whether clients’ own teams end up able to run the technology without Scouter.

Also Read: AI is already inside the enterprise. Has security kept up in Asia?

Kotler has identified a frustration that nearly every CISO in the region shares. If Scouter’s engineers are willing to tell a client “you don’t need this,” it may stand out in a market built on selling. If they are not, it will be one more reseller.

The post Scouter enters Singapore’s crowded cyber market with a “listen first” promise appeared first on e27.

Ask a room of enterprise executives whether they can keep their AI agents in line and most will nod. Ask them what happens when two of those agents disagree, and the room goes quiet.

That, in essence, is the finding of a new report from OutSystems, the Lisbon-born low-code company that now markets itself as an “Agentic Systems Platform”. Produced with trade publication CIO Dive and consultancy KPMG, Engineering Business Outcomes: The Shift to Agentic Systems surveyed more than 850 IT decision-makers. Some 82 per cent said their organisations can keep pace with governing, integrating and monitoring AI agents as they move into production. Only 26 per cent said they were well prepared to resolve conflicts across agents, systems and automated workflows.

Also Read: The hidden economics of autonomous AI agents

That 56-percentage-point gap is the story. Confidence is cheap. Conflict resolution is not.

What an agent fight looks like

An AI agent, unlike a chatbot, does not just answer. It acts: it updates a record, triggers a refund, books a shipment. Put several of them inside one company and they start treading on each other’s toes. A procurement agent trims inventory while a sales agent promises next-day delivery. A risk agent freezes an account that a customer-service agent has just reactivated. Each is following its own rules. Together, they create a mess, and someone has to decide which action stands and how to unwind the other.

The report suggests most enterprises are not wired to make that call quickly. While 83 per cent rely on existing IT, security or compliance processes, specialised reviews or centralised policies to oversee agents that can act autonomously, just five per cent have automated controls, audit trails and formal human review points in place. Oversight, in other words, is still largely a person reading logs after the damage is done.

Southeast Asia has seen this film before

None of this will surprise anyone tracking enterprise AI in the region. In June, research by Sinch found that Singapore led Asia Pacific in deploying AI agents and also in pulling them back after going live, with 82 per cent of the city-state’s enterprises reporting a rollback or shutdown. In August, a Sumsub and Singapore Fintech Association study found that 94 per cent of Singapore businesses were using or piloting multi-step AI systems, yet only 29 per cent could produce an audit trail for AI-driven decisions.

The engineering floor is warier than the boardroom. The Agoda AI Developer Report 2026, which polled more than 800 developers across Southeast Asia and India, found that 79 per cent require human approval before AI-generated work goes live. Agents are trusted, but not with production. Thailand’s SCB 10X even caught agents confidently declaring tasks complete when the underlying code had failed its specifications.

Regulators have taken note. Last week, Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) unveiled a starter kit for testing agentic systems and an accreditation scheme for third-party AI testers, effectively building an industry whose job is to check the agents. One of the kit’s metrics, handoff accuracy, measures whether an agent passed a task to the right agent or human. That is precisely the seam where the OutSystems respondents admit they are weakest.

The data problem underneath

Agents collide most often when they are working from different versions of the truth. More than a third of respondents (35 per cent) cited data consistency and context sharing as a major orchestration hurdle, which is a polite way of saying agents are too often running on generic model knowledge rather than governed company data and live application states.

Also Read: Agentic AI is Singapore’s hottest job skill, and that should worry the people it replaces

Singapore has its own version of this headache. A Confluent survey in July found that 78 per cent of the city-state’s IT leaders flagged a lack of real-time data infrastructure, leaving agentic ambitions stuck on legacy systems and data quality gaps.

Buyers also want an exit door. Some 74 per cent prioritise integration with existing applications, 63 per cent want agent orchestration across systems, and 62 per cent value the ability to switch models, vendors and platforms over time. After a decade of cloud lock-in, enterprises are in no mood to marry a single AI supplier.

Read the fine print

A dose of scepticism is warranted. This is vendor-commissioned research, and its central prescription, that governance must be built into the platform and enforced while agents run rather than reviewed afterwards, happens to describe what OutSystems sells.

Tiago Azevedo, the company’s CIO, makes the pitch plainly: “Safety comes from building control into the platform, not reviewing it afterward.” KPMG Managing Director Michael Harper argues that logging and procedural governance were designed for static software, and that enterprises now need policy-as-code and runtime guardrails. Both points are reasonable. Both also lead neatly to a purchase order.

The outcome data is more revealing than the quotes. Error reduction (64 per cent) is the leading measure of impact, followed by compliance and risk reduction, productivity and cost. Yet only 12 per cent say agentic AI has sped up the launch of new products, services or customer experiences. Agents are tidying up existing operations, not inventing new businesses. Meanwhile, 81 per cent rate testing and validating agent behaviour as very or extremely important when choosing a platform, which tells you how little they trust what is already running.

Context matters, too. Last year’s edition of the same study, based on 550 software executives, found 93 per cent of organisations building or planning custom agents. The ambition has arrived. The plumbing has not.

A crowded referee’s chair

OutSystems is hardly alone in offering to referee. Salesforce is pushing Agentforce, Microsoft has Copilot Studio, ServiceNow and UiPath are pitching orchestration layers, and low-code rivals such as Siemens-owned Mendix and Appian are making near-identical governance promises. Each claims its platform is the safest place for agents to work together. The 62 per cent of buyers who want the freedom to switch suggest few are ready to hand the whistle to any single vendor.

In Southeast Asia, banks are drawing the line in their own way, as UOB’s research shows: AI agents can move money, as long as someone is accountable. Even model makers are wrestling with the problem; OpenAI shelved its GPT-6.1 Astra model this month amid concerns over how honestly the agent reported its own work.

Also Read: Moving past the chatbox: The hidden risks of agentic AI and MCP in enterprise infrastructure

The harder question is who referees the agents at companies that cannot afford a KPMG engagement. A mid-sized retailer in Jakarta or a lender in Manila deploying off-the-shelf agents will rely on whatever controls its vendors ship, plus free templates such as IMDA’s. As AI governance moves from promises to proof, that is where the next failures, and the next regulations, are likely to emerge.

Eighty-two per cent of executives believe they can govern their agents. The other number, 26, is probably closer to the truth.

The post Who referees the AI agents? Enterprises aren’t sure, new report shows appeared first on e27.

From October 27 to 29, 33 Taiwanese startups will exhibit at the Taiwan Pavilion at SWITCH 2026 in Singapore (Booth Q01, Sands Expo & Convention Centre), as part of Taiwan Tech Week in Singapore. The delegation is led by Startup Island TAIWAN, Taiwan’s national startup brand backed by the National Development Council (NDC), in partnership with Startup Terrace, Hsinchu Science Park Bureau, the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) and Taiwan Digi Gold Card.

Southeast Asia’s innovation economy is moving from experimentation to execution. Enterprises across the region are looking for technology that can be piloted quickly, integrated into existing operations, and scaled across borders.

That is the opportunity the delegation is bringing to Singapore. It spans four sectors: manufacturing and semiconductors, AI and software, healthcare and biotechnology, and energy and sustainability. Many of the startups are already running pilots or serving paying customers, and they are coming to SWITCH to meet enterprise partners, distributors, and investors from across the region.

A look at who’s exhibiting

Manufacturing, hardware and semiconductors

AiXaS (active interposerX as service)

Taiwan-based semiconductor startup AiXaS (active interposerX as service) supports physical-AI design. At SWITCH 2026, AiXaS is looking for system migration clients and chiplet supply-chain counterparts.

Alpenglow Tek

Taiwan-based AI chip startup Alpenglow Tek provides ultra-low-power AI chips that help device manufacturers enable always-on AI sensing and real-time interaction with 100x lower power consumption. In 2026, Alpenglow Tek won the Gold Award in the IC Design category for Startups and SMEs at Taiwan’s 2026 Smart Innovation Awards, and has 3 paying customers and 10 potential customers in its sales pipeline. At SWITCH 2026, Alpenglow Tek is looking to meet wearable device and robotics manufacturers looking to integrate on-device AI into their products.

Hyarks

Taiwan-based marine technology startup Hyarks develops modular autonomous Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) and integrated platforms to drive safe, sustainable, and efficient maritime operations for commercial fleets and offshore operators. In 2026, Hyarks secured deployment agreements for its TF-100 USV platform with 5 industry leaders. At SWITCH 2026, Hyarks is looking to meet investors.

Leafy Lab

Deterministic AI for every chip that powers the physical world. Taiwan-based semiconductor AI startup Leafy Lab serves 6 enterprise clients in 2 countries, with technology more than 10x faster than current manual processes. At SWITCH 2026, Leafy Lab is looking for customers.

Memorence AI

Taiwan-based industrial AI startup Memorence AI provides reliable instant-learning AI that helps high-mix manufacturers improve vision-language guidance, inspection, and traceability across real-world production environments. Memorence AI was named a CES Innovation Awards 2026 Honoree in Enterprise Tech and won the Embedded Vision category at the embedded award 2026. At SWITCH 2026, Memorence AI is looking for customers among manufacturers in electronics, semiconductors, medical devices, aerospace, and other high-mix, high-value industries.

NanoKnife Semiconductor Technologies Co., Ltd.

Taiwan-based semiconductor startup NanoKnife Semiconductor focuses on improving Through-Silicon Via, or TSV, fabrication for advanced semiconductor packaging. At SWITCH 2026, NanoKnife Semiconductor is looking for technology and R&D partners.

Nudesign

Taiwan-based aviation technology startup Nudesign develops innovative 4-stroke aviation powertrains that deliver superior fuel efficiency, reliability, and payload performance for drones and light aircraft. Nudesign has grown from one customer to 2 customers, with about a 10 per cent revenue increase over last year. At SWITCH 2026, Nudesign is looking to run PoCs with drone manufacturers, aerospace companies and urban air mobility innovators.

SiCEV

Taiwan-based power semiconductor startup SiCEV provides customised power device design services and works closely with customers to enhance product performance and accelerate time-to-market. SiCEV has raised NT$200 million and has been granted 12 Taiwan invention patents. At SWITCH 2026, SiCEV is looking to meet potential customers.

Tera Electronics

Taiwan-based optical interconnect startup Tera Electronics provides MicroLED optical interconnect solutions that help AI data centre and HPC system developers increase data transmission bandwidth and reduce power consumption. In 2026, Tera Electronics raised over NT$300 million to advance MicroLED optical interconnect development and commercialisation, and joined the NVIDIA Inception program. At SWITCH 2026, Tera is seeking Southeast Asian partners to advance joint development and commercialisation for AI data centers and HPC systems.

WEAVEN

Taiwan-based AIoT startup WEAVEN provides AIoT watch boxes generating Digital Health Resumes to help luxury watch collectors optimise servicing, helping reduce blind trading risks and maximise resale value. WEAVEN has accumulated over 35,000 unique movement health data points and co-hosted exclusive events with BVLGARI. At SWITCH 2026, WEAVEN is looking to meet channel partners and potential customers.

Also Read: Taiwan bets on Gen Z founders to move beyond its chip-supplier image

AI and software solutions

Aira

Taiwan-based AI startup AIRA provides CPU-optimised AI video analytics solutions that help enterprises, system integrators, and security operators enhance safety, operational efficiency, and intelligence using existing camera infrastructure. AIRA’s smart factory solution reduced attendance processing time from 16 hours to 1 hour, while increasing equipment utilisation by 50 per cent and production capacity by 53.26 per cent. At SWITCH 2026, AIRA is looking for local system integrators to enable on-site deployment and customer support.

Asiabots Limited

Taiwan-based AI startup Asiabots provides AI Ambassador, AI Voicebot and AI Chatbot that help enterprises deliver multilingual customer service across physical locations, phone calls and digital channels. In 2025, Asiabots received the 24th Startup Award from Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA). At SWITCH 2026, Asiabots aims to explore partnerships for local pilots and regional deployment with enterprise decision-makers in retail, hospitality, transportation and public services.

Cellbedell

Taiwan-based smart building startup Godspeed provides Cellbedell, a Smart Building OS combining virtual keys, edge verification and Nexus infrastructure to help commercial spaces automate access and unattended operations. By August 2026, Cellbedell had more than 250 partners and business clients. At SWITCH 2026, Godspeed is seeking Singapore enterprise partners and pilot sites to expand across offices, co-working spaces and hospitality in Southeast Asia.

eCloudEdge / NeoEdge

Taiwan-based industrial AI startup eCloudEdge provides NeoEdge, a data governance and industrial AI orchestration platform that helps manufacturers connect and govern OT/IT data, building domain-specific AI agents to optimise processes and reduce costs. eCloudEdge was included in STL Partners’ “50 edge computing companies to watch in 2026” list. At SWITCH 2026, eCloudEdge is looking for Singapore-based OT system integrators and industrial automation solution providers who can co-deliver NeoEdge to local manufacturers.

futurenest

Taiwan-based enterprise AI startup futurenest builds the foundational infrastructure for enterprise intelligence: Xerno governs what AI knows and Xparse governs how AI acts, so regulated enterprises can deploy intelligence at scale without surrendering control over it. futurenest has 12 signed enterprise customers, all contracted and in active deployment across three regulated domains: telecom, national defense and national transport. At SWITCH 2026, futurenest is looking for enterprise partners.

LMT

Taiwan-based fintech startup Light Momentum Technology provides ultra-low-latency FPGA trading infrastructure and AI financial automation that help financial institutions accelerate execution, optimise operations, and improve system efficiency. LMT has worked with leading Taiwanese securities firms on low-latency trading systems, helping optimise execution performance and system stability. At SWITCH 2026, LMT is seeking strategic partners for overseas deployment, co-development and market entry.

MantaGO

Taiwan-based AI startup Eslitec builds AI driven CRM ecosystem tailored for SMEs, making customer engagement simpler and more strategic. Eslitec has 2,280 clients worldwide and has partnered with 25 distributors. At SWITCH 2026, MantaGO is looking for distributors and channel partners.

Next Integral

Taiwan-based edge AI startup Next Integral develops NEXUO, a modular Edge AI platform transforming existing cameras into real-time safety monitoring and operational intelligence for factories, smart facilities, logistics, and care environments. Next Integral was selected for CES USA 2026, VivaTech France 2026, IFA Germany 2026 and Fly Asia Korea 2026. At SWITCH 2026, Next Integral is seeking Singapore partners to validate NEXUO in local environments through 60–90 day PoCs.

Optiqb

Optiqb AI Technology is a Taiwan-based AI startup specialising in 3D vision, bringing a new era of 3D vision in the mobile age through AI computer vision and optical technology. Optiqb won Best in AI and Robotics at the Global Deep Tech Battle at VivaTech 2025. At SWITCH 2026, Optiqb is looking for enterprise partners and content providers.

Speculum AI

Taiwan-based AI startup Speculum AI provides an AI runtime layer that helps organisations building and operating LLMs, agents and physical AI achieve greater stability, control and efficiency across cloud, on-prem and edge environments. Within six months of entering the market, Speculum AI secured an enterprise PoC with a major Japanese system integrator and established local operations in Japan. As it plans its expansion into Singapore, Speculum AI aims to grow its customer and channel partner network through SWITCH 2026.

KABOB Cloud- StreamActivate

Taiwan-based data analytics startup StreamActivate provides a real-time data management and analytics platform that helps enterprises turn live data into actionable insights, respond faster, and build an AI-ready data foundation. In 2026, technical validation with Coretronic demonstrated a 53 per cent reduction in combined inspection, measurement, and reporting time, from 1,616 to 755 minutes. At SWITCH 2026, StreamActivate aims to connect with regional system integrators and channel partners.

Tenfold AI

Taiwan-based legal AI startup Tenfold AI provides a civil-law legal AI platform LexGents that helps APAC lawyers research, draft, and review legal work with trusted local-law grounding. Tenfold AI serves 20+ corporates and law firms with 300+ users across 4 countries, and has raised US$300K. At SWITCH 2026, Tenfold AI is looking to secure PoCs with government, in-house legal teams and small law firms.

Also Read: Entering Taiwan: A practical resource map for foreign founders

Healthcare and biotechnology

Coherence Bio

Taiwan-based biotech startup Coherence builds Keystone, a benchtop continuous lab automation system that helps organoid producers and drug discovery teams keep multi-day cell and organoid experiments on one controlled timeline and record. In 2026, Coherence Bio signed a pilot agreement and letter of intent with a Korean organoid manufacturer and won first prize in the medical-device category for startup companies at the 2026 NBRP Demo & Pitch Day. At SWITCH 2026, Coherence Bio is looking to secure PoCs with organoid and cell-model producers, research institutes and AI drug-discovery teams, and to meet life-science and deep-tech investors.

EpiSante Biomed

EpiSante Biomedical is a Taiwan-based biotechnology company developing precision medicine technology based on DNA methylation platforms, including a liver cancer methylation test kit for early detection and disease monitoring. At SWITCH 2026, EpiSante Biomed is looking to meet investors.

Fluidiconic Biotechnology

Taiwan-based biotech startup Fluidiconic provides MedSelect®, a patient-derived tumor platform that helps drug developers evaluate treatment responses in human-relevant models and select promising cancer therapies for further development. Fluidiconic has 19 paying customers, including pharmaceutical companies and research centers, and its drug-response results showed 91.6 per cent agreement with animal-study outcomes. At SWITCH 2026, Fluidiconic is looking to meet investors and is seeking Singapore and Southeast Asian partners to bring patient-derived drug-response evidence into cancer research.

ible

Taiwan-based health tech startup ible Technology provides wearable air purifiers and air purification solutions that help individuals reduce exposure to airborne pollutants/ viruses and enjoy cleaner air wherever they go. ible has received two CES Innovation Awards recognitions and one German Innovation Award, and has established sales presence in Japan and Switzerland. At SWITCH 2026, ible is looking for distribution and retail partners to expand into Southeast Asia.

LongGood

Taiwan-based digital health startup LongGood provides digital rehabilitation that helps therapists, physicians, and patients keep on track with their rehabilitation journey. LongGood has customers across Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, and Hong Kong. At SWITCH 2026, LongGood is looking for distributors or channel partners.

ST Medical

Taiwan-based medical AI startup ST Medical Technology develops AI-powered clinical research and medical data platforms that help hospitals and biotech teams accelerate analysis, collaboration, and healthcare innovation. ST Medical serves 20+ enterprise, healthcare, and research clients across 4 countries. At SWITCH 2026, ST Medical is looking for distributors or channel partners as it builds new partnerships in Europe and Southeast Asia.

Also Read: AI could turn concierge medicine into the future interface to healthcare

Energy and sustainability

Ancillary Power Corp. Ltd.

Taiwan-based energy tech startup Ancillary Power provides an AI-powered Virtual Power Plant platform and green energy trading solutions that help industrial clients and RE100 enterprises to optimise electricity costs and achieve net-zero targets. Ancillary Power has aggregated over 270 MW of distributed energy resources, and its revenue grew from NT$133M in 2024 to NT$334M in 2025. At SWITCH 2026, Ancillary Power is seeking enterprise partners among telecoms, hotel franchises, energy companies and AI data centres.

Apollo Power

Taiwan-based energy tech startup Apollo Power delivers AI-driven energy management and renewable energy services, with an AI dispatch system that helps energy-intensive industries cut costs and strengthen supply stability. Apollo Power registered on Taiwan’s Emerging Stock Board on April 28, 2026, and it manages over 100 GWh of cumulative green electricity procurement and dispatch. At SWITCH 2026, Apollo Power is looking to secure PoCs with Southeast Asian enterprises, commercial property developers, and regional sustainability leaders.

AquaOptima

Taiwan-based water tech startup AquaOptima provides an AI Operator solution for water utilities that helps water treatment plants, pumping stations, and distribution networks run pumps autonomously — reducing energy consumption and minimising water loss. AquaOptima has 2 active deployments with Taiwan Water Corporation, and has achieved 15–20 per cent energy savings at the Yilan water treatment plant, with third-party measurement and verification by Carbon Trust ongoing. AquaOptima is actively closing its seed round, and investor introductions and meetings are welcome at SWITCH 2026.

CarbonClean Energy

Taiwan-based climate tech startup CarbonClean Energy provides modular CO₂ electrolysis systems that help industrial manufacturers convert captured CO₂ into syngas and green chemicals, enabling practical industrial decarbonisation and circular carbon utilisation. In 2026, CarbonClean Energy completed a 3-week continuous field demonstration using real industrial flue gas and established industrial collaborations with Tung Ho Steel and Chang Chun Group. At SWITCH 2026, CarbonClean Energy is looking to secure a PoC as it explores partnerships in Southeast Asia.

3Egreen (Extreme Energy Efficiency)

Taiwan-based energy tech startup 3Egreen provides Edge-AI energy monitoring IIoTand predictive maintenance solutions that help high-tech and industrial manufacturing plants optimise power efficiency and prevent equipment downtime. 3Egreen has deployed its Edge-AI energy monitoring and asset diagnostics solutions across leading high-tech and semiconductor manufacturing ecosystems, including Tier-1 global memory manufacturers and key regional system integrators. At SWITCH 2026, 3Egreen is looking to meet power and utility companies and ESG consultants.

Meet them at SWITCH 2026

The Taiwan Pavilion is open from October 27 to 29, 09:00–18:00, at Sands Expo & Convention Centre, Level 1, Booth Q01. Visitors can meet the founders, explore partnership opportunities, and view the startups’ one-pagers here.

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The post Taiwan Pavilion at SWITCH 2026: Meet the 33 Taiwanese startups heading to Singapore appeared first on e27.

Vingroup is opening a third Asian manufacturing front for its electric vehicle (EV) ambitions. The Vietnamese conglomerate, best known for EV maker VinFast, plans to invest US$500 million in a flagship EV plant in the Philippines, the country’s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) said on Wednesday.

The factory is designed to produce 200,000 vehicles a year at the outset, for both domestic buyers and export markets.

Construction is slated to begin in the first quarter of 2027 and take 12 to 18 months, which puts the earliest realistic start of production somewhere in 2028. Alongside four-wheelers, Vingroup also plans to bring electric scooters to the Philippine market.

Also Read: EVs gain ground in the Philippines as fuel costs squeeze drivers

The DTI pitched the project as more than a car factory, describing it as a possible base for Vingroup’s expansion into multiple industries in the country. Trade Secretary Cristina Roque said the investment reflects the Philippines’ growing status as a Southeast Asian hub for advanced manufacturing and green technology, and promised “end-to-end support” for investors.

The maths behind 200,000 units

The headline capacity deserves a second look. BMI Country Risk and Industry Research expects the Philippines to sell 423,750 vehicles in total in 2026, of which only 32,776 will be EVs, a figure that includes plug-in hybrids. On those numbers, the plant could build about six times the country’s entire projected EV market for the year, and close to half of all new cars Filipinos are expected to buy. Even BMI’s more bullish 2030 forecast of 91,730 EV sales leaves the factory with plenty of idle capacity.

The export clause, in other words, is the business case. ASEAN’s free trade framework allows vehicles that meet regional content rules to move across the bloc without tariffs, and the Philippines sits on busy shipping routes to the rest of Southeast Asia and beyond.

There is a policy wrinkle, too. Battery EVs imported into the Philippines are currently exempt from import tariffs and excise taxes until 2028, roughly when the plant is due to come online. That means a locally built VinFast would get little tariff protection against imported Chinese models in its early years. Its advantage must come from elsewhere: tax breaks under the CREATE MORE Act, which extends incentives such as enhanced deductions and lower corporate income tax rates for registered projects, and faster permitting through the “Green Lanes” set up under Executive Order No. 18 for strategic investments. If the import exemptions lapse after 2028, a local factory becomes considerably more valuable. The timing may be less coincidental than it looks.

A familiar playbook, now in its third country

The Philippine plant follows a template VinFast has already rolled out twice. In Indonesia, it opened a US$300 million factory in Subang, West Java, about 120 km south-east of Jakarta, in December 2025, and said it would spend US$1 billion to expand capacity to 350,000 vehicles a year. In India, where its plant is in Tamil Nadu, it announced plans that same month to invest US$500 million to triple output.

Manila’s courtship has been a long one. In January 2024, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr met Vingroup chairman Pham Nhat Vuong in Hanoi, where the conversation revolved around dealerships, battery production and nickel processing. Two and a half years later, it has become a factory.

Also Read: BYD co-founder-backed OMOWAY bags funding to join Southeast Asia’s electric motorcycle race

The scooter plan may prove the more interesting bet. Two-wheelers and tricycles are the workhorses of Philippine streets, and Marcos has repeatedly tied EV policy to replacing ageing jeepneys and tricycles. VinFast has form here: its ride-hailing affiliate Green SM has taken e-scooters into Jakarta’s ojek economy, and the company has experimented with rentals to get around Southeast Asia’s affordability problem.

Rivals already in the garage

VinFast will not have the road to itself. Chinese brands, including BYD, MG, GAC Aion and Chery, are already pushing EV prices down in the Philippines with affordable SUVs and crossovers. BYD has also built manufacturing capacity in Thailand, which has positioned itself as a regional EV production hub, while Indonesia has used its nickel reserves to lure battery and EV makers. Japanese incumbents such as Toyota and Mitsubishi, which assemble vehicles locally, still dominate the Philippine market and are leaning on hybrids, a format many buyers prefer while charging remains scarce.

At home, VinFast is a heavyweight, accounting for 42 per cent of Vietnam’s domestic car sales in August 2026, helped by its own charging network and taxi fleets. Abroad, it is a challenger with a modest brand, competing in a regional EV race that has become crowded quickly. Even its home turf is being contested, with Tesla now incorporated in Vietnam.

Can the balance sheet carry it?

The bigger question is money. VinFast reported unaudited second-quarter 2026 revenue of VND30,340.9 billion (about US$1.2 billion), up 85 per cent year-on-year. That is impressive growth. But its loss from continuing operations widened 128 per cent to VND31,189.2 billion (about US$1.2 billion), which means it lost slightly more than it earned.

The total net loss of VND1,414.9 billion (about US$54 million) looks far healthier, but only because of a gain from discontinued operations. That is an accounting effect, not evidence that the core business is turning around.

Also Read: Tesla establishes Vietnam subsidiary as EV rivalry with VinFast looms

VinFast has long relied on financial backing from Vingroup and its founder to fund its expansion, and the Philippine project is being announced under the parent’s banner. That may be deliberate. The DTI’s talk of a multi-industry base suggests the conglomerate, not just the carmaker, is putting its name to it.

For the Philippines, which is still building out a network of only about 1,600 charging points, the plant is a welcome signal that it can compete with Thailand and Indonesia for EV manufacturing. Whether that signal turns into reality depends less on ribbon-cuttings in 2028 and more on whether the ships leaving Philippine ports are full.

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Indonesia’s D2C and inventory-heavy startup sector looks different in 2026 than it did before 2022. The cohort of platforms that scaled between 2018 and 2021 (Fabelio in furniture, several in F&B, fashion, and household goods) encountered a category of operational risk that the original venture playbook tended to underestimate. Some platforms have stabilised. Several have restructured significantly. Fabelio, which entered PKPU proceedings in 2022 and was subsequently declared insolvent, is one of the more publicly documented examples.

After 15 years inside Indonesian risk functions, I have watched this sector with more interest than the financial services focus would suggest. The operational risk patterns underneath the D2C failures of this period are not unique to those sectors. They recur in any business where the gap between cash going out and cash coming back is large, and the venture funding model assumes that gap can be financed indefinitely.

What the D2C generation aimed to do

The Indonesian D2C cohort that emerged after 2018 had a clean thesis. Indonesia’s rising middle class, expanding e-commerce infrastructure, and digital payment penetration created a window for direct-to-consumer brands to skip traditional retail intermediation. The implicit assumption was that unit economics would improve as scale increased: customer acquisition costs would decline, operational costs would compress, working capital intensity would moderate.

What turned out to be harder

Three structural factors made the path harder than the original models priced in.

The cash conversion cycle. D2C businesses convert capital into inventory, inventory into delivered orders, and delivered orders into recognised revenue across a cycle structurally longer than software businesses face. A platform that grows 100 per cent in revenue often grows working capital requirements faster than that, especially when product categories carry inventory and returns risk.

Also Read: The agritech credit paradox: Lessons from TaniHub and Indonesia’s first agritech generation

Inventory as a financial product. The inventory on a D2C platform’s balance sheet is not just stock. It is essentially a leveraged position on consumer demand at the price and SKU mix chosen six to 12 months earlier. When demand shifts, the inventory becomes more expensive to liquidate than to acquire. Platforms that priced inventory as a working capital line item rather than as a market exposure mispriced one of their largest risks.

Operational fragility at scale. Operational systems that work for a hundred orders a day break down at a thousand orders a day in ways not always visible until they break. The platforms that scaled fastest sometimes did so on top of operational systems that were not actually ready for the volume, with quality and customer experience consequences that compounded into churn and brand damage.

Lessons learned

Six principles emerge from the Indonesian D2C cycle.

Working capital is the business model. For inventory-heavy D2C, working capital management is not back-office. It is the business. Platforms that treated cash conversion cycle, payment terms, and inventory turn as primary metrics outperformed those that treated them as supporting metrics.

Growth without unit economics is a trap. The venture-funded D2C generation often raised on the assumption that scale would deliver unit economics later. Several categories never reached the inflection point because the cost structure was wrong from the beginning. The unit economics question should be answered before scale, not in spite of scale.

Inventory needs a hedging instinct. Holding inventory is taking a position on future demand. The platforms that built inventory planning, demand forecasting, and discount management as core disciplines absorbed inventory risk better than those that treated inventory as procurement.

Also Read: Same failure, better clothes: Matchmade.io on selling Indonesian finance tech in Singapore

Operational systems must scale before volume scales. The institutions that survived the volume ramp had invested in operational infrastructure before the volume arrived. The ones that scaled volume first and operations second produced the customer experience failures that drove churn.

Founder accountability matters more in physical businesses. In software, a founder’s bad month produces a feature delay. In inventory-heavy D2C, a founder’s bad month can produce a cash flow event that becomes an insolvency event inside a single quarter. The governance scaffolding around the founder matters more when the business has physical exposure than when it does not.

PKPU is a recovery instrument, not just a failure marker. The Indonesian PKPU framework is designed to give viable businesses a structured path to restructure. The companies that struggled most were the ones where governance and disclosure had already eroded before PKPU was filed, not the process itself.

The macro stakes

Indonesia’s D2C category will not disappear. The structural opportunity (large rising middle class, growing e-commerce infrastructure, persistent inefficiency in legacy distribution) remains real. The next generation will be more capital-disciplined, more operationally rigorous, and more humble about the difference between software-style and physical-goods-style business models.

For founders and investors looking at D2C and inventory-heavy categories in 2026, the question is no longer whether the opportunity exists. It is whether the platform has built the working capital discipline, operational infrastructure, and governance scaffolding required to convert the opportunity into a durable business, rather than into another addition to the post-mortem literature.

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