From left: Materials In Works’ technical director John Ooi, ImpacFat co-founder and CEO Mandy Hon, Umami Bioworks founder and CEO Mihir Pershad, and Qarbotech co-founder and CEO Chor Chee Hoe. Photo: Samuel Isaac Chua/The Edge Singapore
Five startups are a step closer to receiving a EUR 100,000 ($145,451) investment from the EQT Foundation, along with 300 consultancy hours from Ernst & Young to improve their strategy and business development.
Chosen from a shortlist of 10 startups, the finalists of the EQT Impact Challenge’s Southeast Asia 2023 edition attended a closed-door Pitch Day on Nov 14, where they were coached on crafting compelling pitches.
“We’re using a lot of metaphors around how Hollywood does it, how you create compelling stories,” says Ted Persson, partner at EQT’s venture capital fund EQT Ventures, who led the training programme. “I think it’s all about empathising with the audience that you’re presenting to.”
The biggest mistake startup founders make is not connecting with the audience in their pitches, he adds. “They spend too much time rehearsing, thinking through everything, that they forget about the audience… They go into the pitch forgetting [the people] they’re presenting to.”
Founders with deep technical knowledge of their startups often lose their audience when going into specifics. They make the pitch too technical or try to cram in too much information, says Persson, “instead of thinking about what they want to achieve during the time they have to present”.
Instead, he adds that founders should employ “basic” techniques like establishing some type of rapport or talking about “trivial things” before moving on to the pitch. “The story being presented should be pretty simple; remove all the unnecessary, technical details and [have] an overarching storyline that [the audience] can relate to and buy into.”
Based in Stockholm, Persson joined EQT in 2014 and was part of the team that set up EQT Ventures. “When I joined, there were maybe 150 people, and now we’re 2,000 strong. So, I would say it’s a different firm now than it was back then. We gathered a couple of ex-founders and ex-entrepreneurs to create the VC investor we would have wanted when we were entrepreneurs ourselves.”
Persson observes that a lot has changed in the entrepreneurship space over the past decade. “The biggest shift — now it is proven that you can create tech startups outside of Silicon Valley; [it] doesn’t matter where you are in the world.”
He points to a “climate shift” some three years ago. “Up until then, everyone followed the formula around two guys in a garage starting a software company. Now it’s very different; it’s way more diverse and I would say that we’re tackling bigger problems — and in many cases, problems that the people solving them have experienced themselves.”
When creating pitches, founders should bear in mind that the average audience member tunes out after 30 or 40 seconds, says fellow trainer Tyler Crowley, who is credited with elevating Stockholm’s startup scene. “Honestly, you really only need about — I know this sounds crazy — three and a half minutes. That’s hard and it takes practice.”
The pitch is akin to a 30-second movie trailer, says Crowley, who was the brainchild behind Sthlm Tech Fest, Scandinavia’s largest annual startup event. “You’re not making a movie… The whole point is to get everyone in the room excited to come meet you as you go offstage. Your goal is not for them to understand everything, make a big calculation and do the due diligence about everything. No, your goal is [making your audience think]: ‘I want to go talk to that person and have a meeting with them.’”
The five startups will go through another selection round by a panel of judges. In partnership with The Edge Singapore and E27, the EQT Impact Challenge will unveil its winner at the Grand Finale on Dec 5 at EY Wavespace Singapore.
The first and second runners-up will receive an invaluable opportunity to engage with EQT Foundation’s investment team to potentially secure funding for their impact ventures.
1. Umami Bioworks
Among the startups is Umami Bioworks, a company specialising in sustainable food innovations. It aims to deliver a range of alternative protein products, emphasising both nutritional value and eco-friendliness.
Through clever use of its toolkit Alkemyst, which leverages computational biology, machine learning and digital twin technology, the company is able to accelerate the product development process of its nutritional and eco-friendly alternative protein products.
It focuses on farmable, ETP (endangered, threatened or protected) seafood species that are highly desired by consumers.
Despite the different showcases of innovation featured by Umami, founder and CEO Mihir Pershad highlights that the niche nature of the company can sometimes make it difficult for consumers to understand its appeal.
“I see a lot of value in trying to help our audience empathise with our customers and understand the problems that they have,” says Pershad, who founded Umami in 2020. “Because we work on manufacturing tech for big food companies, it’s often not expertise or experience most people have any empathy toward because they don’t know anything about it. I think especially in alternative protein and climate-related companies, it’s very easy to talk about the numbers of climate change — but that doesn’t emotionally resonate; it’s just a big number.”
Also read: YEAP partners with Sustainable Living Lab to support e-waste initiatives
In August, Umami announced a business partnership with Maruha Nichiro, Japan’s largest seafood company. As part of the agreement, Maruha Nichiro will invest in Umami, gaining access to its cell cultivation platform for producing and selling cultivated seafood. The partnership also involves a multi-faceted collaboration to scale Umami’s process.
“Our seminal partnership with Maruha Nichiro, a global leader in crafting beloved food products, is a pivotal step in achieving our mission of addressing the challenge of feeding a growing global population while minimising environmental impact,” says Pershad. “We have the development and production technology, but we require experienced partners with global reach that can help us manufacture and deliver cultivated products to consumers.”
2. Materials In Works
Similarly, startup Materials In Works (MIW) is a company born out of sustainability.
Based in Kuala Lumpur, MIW focuses on upcycling paper liner and polyester-based materials, such as the post-industrial waste from the packaging industry that is currently sent to landfills.
The recovered cellulose pulp is then sold to manufacturing companies to produce the end product to complete the upcycling journey. MIW was co-founded by technical director John Ooi, who recognised the waste generated through label production.
Ooi founded the company in 2018 with a group of packing material experts, who have a proven track record in Southeast Asia and Oceania.
“All the stakeholders, the manufacturer, the printers, the converters, the brand owners, all of them were suffering from one problem,” says Ooi. “When they produce labels for products, the waste left behind, the silicone paper — they can’t deal with it, so it contributes to landfills in Malaysia.”
Not unlike Umami, MIW faces challenges with communicating its business message and strategy in an engaging manner, an obstacle that Ooi is looking to overcome.
“Our normal presentation deck is five or six slides, which is quite boring,” says Ooi. “How I usually cope is to use a video to explain information, but that video takes one and a half minutes of my presentation time, which isn’t efficient.”
3. Qarbotech
Another of the featured startups is Qarbotech, a Selangor-based company with a patent-pending photosynthesis enhancer for plants. The technology, QarboGrow, is the first of its kind.
It helps increase plant growth and shorten crop cycles, leading to a higher process rate of carbon dioxide and release of oxygen.
This sped-up process helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions in cities and improve air quality.
Co-founder and CEO Chor Chee Hoe’s role in Qarbotech is “a total pivot” from his previous career. “I spent 10 years in the aviation industry, spanning aircraft maintenance engineering, business development and supply chain management.”
Also read: YEAP joins forces with Electrolux in championing sustainable living
During the pandemic, Chor took a career break and earned his Master of Business Administration (MBA), which was a collaboration between Bank Negara Malaysia and MIT Sloan Management School. “During my MBA, I got to know my co-founder and chief scientist today, Suraya Abdul Rashid, whose background is in chemical engineering. Together, we founded Qarbotech.”
In September, Qarbotech was crowned winner in the Food and Agriculture track at the grand finale of the Climate Impact Innovations Challenge 2023 in Indonesia, organised by East Ventures and Temasek Foundation.
4. ImpacFat
With an emphasis on health and nutrition, ImpacFat is a startup whose novel cell-based fish fat is “nutrition-customisable”. The company promises tastier, wholesome plant-based and cultivated meats, free of antibiotics and GMOs.
The fish cells are sustainably sourced from different fish species and then cultivated in a controlled environment to become healthy fat cells that are high in omega-3.
Founded in 2019, ImpacFat spun out of the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology at Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) two years later.
Co-founder and CEO Mandy Hon and her team aim to cultivate fish fat using stem cell technology to generate a sustainable source of food.
“Most of the protocols for growing fat cells are for human, mouse or rat cells,” says ImpacFat founder Shigeki Sugii. “Not many studies were done using cells from agricultural species such as livestock and seafood.”
According to the company, fish cells are sustainably sourced from different fish species, and then cultivated in a controlled environment to become healthy fat cells that are high in omega-3.
ImpacFat debuted the world’s first cultivated fish fat in December 2022. That same month, ImpacFat signed a memorandum of understanding with Japanese startups Next Meats and Dr Foods to advance the development of alternative protein products in both countries. Next Meats and Dr Foods are known for their plant-based wagyu beef and foie gras respectively.
With a background in pharmaceutical sciences and business, Hon spent a decade in the food and beverage industry before ImpacFat. The associate lecturer at Republic Polytechnic is also a certified judge at the annual World Coffee Championships.
While Hon has attended a few pitch training sessions, they were shorter and held over Zoom, she says. “My key takeaway is that it’s really all about the audience; how do you capture their attention and make your pitch relatable?”
5. EcoWorth Tech
The last of the five shortlisted startups is waste solutions company EcoWorth Tech, whose founder Andre Stolz could not attend the Pitch Day on Nov 14.
EcoWorth Tech has patented the process of creating carbon fibre aerogel (CFA), a highly absorbent, non-toxic and recyclable material with remarkable waste-absorbent qualities. CFA is able to absorb a wide variety of organic materials from wastewater and can be manufactured from a variety of cellulose-based materials, such as cotton or waste paper.
The company commercialises the CFA technology to focus on waste-to-worth-creating applications in industrial wastewater treatment, as well as oil and gas decontamination, providing financial, environmental and social benefits.
World’s third-largest PE firm
With assets under management of EUR210 billion last year, EQT is ranked the third-largest private equity firm worldwide based on funds raised.
EQT was founded in 1994 by investment company Investor AB in Stockholm, Sweden. It launched its first fund the following year, targeting industrial companies in the country and the surrounding region.
Also read: EQT unveils 10 shortlisted companies in the EQT Impact Challenge
Over the years, the company has gone from strength to strength with a strong track record of healthy investments, leading EQT to expand globally beyond Europe by the mid-2000s.
In 2010, EQT firmly established its commitment to sustainability through its signatory to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI), and by 2013, partners at the company owned 81% of EQT AB, with Investor AB owning the remaining 19%.
In September 2019, EQT was listed on the Nasdaq Stockholm Stock Exchange, formerly known as the Stockholm Stock Exchange.
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Photos: Samuel Isaac Chua/The Edge Singapore
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The article was produced by and first published on The Edge Singapore
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