Luuk Eliens, Founding Partner at Singapore Deep-Tech Alliance (SDTA)
Earlier this month, sustainability-focused deep-tech venture builder Singapore Deep-Tech Alliance (SDTA) hosted its annual flagship demo day, the Sustainable Innovation Asia (SIA) 2024.
As the third edition of SIA, this event aims to serve as a platform where deep tech meets sustainability to showcase the latest advancements of SDTA’s portfolio ventures.
“At Sustainable Innovation Asia 2024, our showcased ventures from the SDTA24 portfolio stand out for their innovative approaches to addressing pressing climate-related challenges. These ventures have undergone a rigorous nine-month venture-building programme, emerging with pioneering solutions that align with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). What distinguishes these ventures is not just their technological advancements but also their commitment to sustainability and their potential for meaningful impact,” explains Luuk Eliens, Founding Partner at SDTA, in an email to e27.
“We see many startups leveraging advanced technologies such as AI, IoT, and blockchain to address environmental challenges and drive sustainable solutions. This intersection of technology and sustainability presents exciting opportunities for innovation and impact, and it is something we are closely monitoring and supporting within our venture-building programme.”
In this interview, Eliens explains SDTA’s mission, its approach to supporting deep tech startups, and its long-term plan for the market.
Also Read: Deep tech startup Nibertex secures funding for sustainable textile technology
The following is an edited excerpt of the conversation.
Can you explain SDTA’s core mission and objectives in fostering a deep tech ecosystem in Singapore? What problem does it solve for deep tech startups?
SDTA is dedicated to becoming the world’s most impactful venture builder that uses advanced technologies to fast-track global goals. We partner with founders to swiftly develop, test, and grow climate tech startups focused on advancing sustainability in critical sectors such as energy, healthcare, manufacturing, and semiconductors. This is achieved through a strategic alliance involving corporations, investors, research institutions, and government and regulatory agencies.
The challenge with deep tech ventures is that they typically require extensive research and longer-term investment to go to market successfully. However, once market share is achieved, it’s challenging for competitors to replicate their innovations, leading to market disruption.
The key to our approach is the alliance model: We closely collaborate with all alliance members, from corporates to research institutes to government partners to entrepreneurs, and ensure all stakeholders have a vested interest in new venture creation. By doing so, we diversify risk so that we can build game-changing new ventures together.
How does SDTA collaborate with corporations, investors, research institutions, and government agencies to support the development and scaling of sustainable deep tech ventures?
We actively engage with corporates, investors, research institutions, and government agencies to pool resources and expertise, ensuring a holistic support system for our ventures. One key aspect of our strategy involves building diverse teams of entrepreneurs and technical talents around next-generation technologies sourced from leading research institutions worldwide. This facilitates knowledge exchange and ensures that our ventures are equipped with the best-in-class expertise to tackle complex challenges and drive impactful innovation.
Also Read: Uncovering the rise and challenges faced by deep tech startups in Singapore
This year, to extend the impact of our work at SDTA, we are furthering our partnership with Dentsu to extend our innovation capabilities to their networks. We aim to work with Dentsu to foster growth and innovation, enabling their partners to achieve tangible progress towards their sustainability goals and drive impactful outcomes.
Furthermore, SDTA is also deepening our partnership with Lenovo to provide more mentorship and guidance to SDTA ventures in mapping out their product development journey, with Lenovo offering strategic insights and access to its smart manufacturing ecosystem. As a long-standing co-innovation partner of SDTA since 2022, Lenovo’s sponsorship of Sustainable Innovation Asia 2024 demonstrates our continued commitment to jointly bringing sustainable innovation to market.
During Sustainable Innovation Asia 2024, SDTA announced Singapore Science Park (SSP), owned by CapitaLand, as its new home base. By doing so, SDTA gains access to world-class facilities, resources, and a thriving ecosystem of startups, researchers, and industry partners.
Together, SDTA and SSP are committed to driving innovation and sustainability across key industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, energy, and semiconductors. The partnership will foster collaboration, knowledge sharing, and entrepreneurship, paving the way for groundbreaking solutions that address pressing societal and environmental challenges.
How do you envision the organisation’s future? What is the long-term plan?
SDTA is the gold standard in impact-driven deep-tech venture building and our future is clear – to harness advanced technologies as catalysts for achieving global goals with unparalleled efficacy. Through collaboration with our esteemed Alliance Partners from both the public and private sectors, we are methodically cultivating a portfolio of sustainable ventures.
Also Read: Runa Capital plans to propel Asian deep tech startups onto the global stage
These ventures are not just addressing environmental and social challenges but are actively commercialising cutting-edge technologies to do so. Additionally, we are committed to nurturing entrepreneurial and technical talents, empowering them to transform these innovations into thriving ventures. Our long-term plan is to continue this trajectory, expanding our reach and influence and ultimately leaving a mark on the world’s sustainability landscape.
Can you share one important insight about Singapore’s deep tech ecosystem? What is the most notable trend you notice recently?
Deep tech in Singapore is coming of age. Singapore has been consistently investing in research and innovation for several decades now, and increasingly, the excellent research conducted in Singapore is finding its way towards the market.
As a testimony to this mega-trend, we have seen a sharp increase in the number of deep tech venture investment deals in Singapore, growing 31.4 per cent in volume from 2022 to 2023. This makes deep tech a category that is the fastest-growing segment in the venture capital space. Investors are starting to recognise that deep tech companies might require a bit more capital in the early days. However, once products are brought to market, in many cases deep tech companies have a long-term sustained competitive advantage because of the proprietary technology that underpins the businesses.
To dive a bit deeper, as of late, we’ve seen an increased push from both the public and the private sector to ensure more research ends up in the hands of everyday customers and consumers. Slowly but surely, all the right elements are in place to make Singapore Asia’s deep-tech hub from talented entrepreneurs to capital, to the willingness of universities and research institutes to enable technology commercialisation to the support of the government through grants and subsidies to enable deep-tech companies to bring technology to the market.
Finally, especially in the last year, we have seen that many of the technologies and ventures being developed have a strong focus on sustainability and clean tech. This trend was also evident at Sustainable Innovation Asia 2024, the SDTA’s annual flagship demo, where SDTA24 portfolio ventures working on innovative sustainability-related deep-tech solutions were featured.
—
Image Credit: SDTA
The post SDTA Founding Partner Luuk Eliens: Deep tech startups require more support, but have sustained competitive advantages appeared first on e27.