SBR 20 Hottest Startups Panel Briefing 2018 welcomed over 150 delegates

Leading startup founders converged at the event.

Singapore Business Review successfully closed its 20 Hottest Startups Panel Briefing with a jam-packed event at Suntec Singapore on August 29 that gathered over 150 delegates.

Now on its sixth year, the event has brought together the biggest names in the startup industry to discuss latest developments, trends and best practices for homegrown startups seeking to conquer the global stage.

Ned Phillips of Bambu; Hari Sivan of soCash; Dmitry Voronenko of Turnkey Lender and Dr Ser Wah Oh of Whizpace discussed the growing saturation of the Singapore startup ecosystem.

In a related discussion, the lack of gazelles or disruptive startups with strong growth trajectories was tackled by Chee Tung Leong of EngageRocket; Atul Garg of SingX; Yoan Kamalski of Hmlet; Rhonda Wong of Ohmyhome; Alexia Sichere of Try & Review and Elena Ionenko of Turnkey Lender.

Meanwhile, the evolving role of accelerator programmes in the startup ecosystem was examined by Michelle Woo of Oracle Startup Ecosystem, Singapore; Elise Tan of Entrepreneur First; Kineret Karin of ImpacTech and Kumaran Pillai of Apple Seed Venture Accelerator.

The lack of later-stage funding was discussed by Ashley Kee of Bandboo; Kiren Tanna of ZEN Rooms; Prajit Nanu of InstaREM; Anshul Gupta of TabSquare and Nejla Matam-Finn of The Fifth Collection.

The discussion on funding was extended by insights from a panel graced by venture capitalists including Jeremy Berger of Life.SREDA; Bernard Shum of IncuVest; Rika Purnamasari of Quest Ventures; Michele Daoud of Monk’s Hilll Ventures and Yash Sankrityayan of Jungle Ventures.

Against a growing number of startups turning to digital token sales to generate capital, Dimitri Kouchnirenko of Incomlend; Damien Cummings of Peoplewave; Michele Ferrario of StashAway; Clemen Chiang of Spiking and Gaurang Torkevar of Indorse shared their insights on initial coin offerings as another viable startup funding method.

The Hottest Startups Panel Briefing is an annual half-day event organised by Singapore Business Review which gathers the biggest names in the local startup scene. Past speakers include Grab, Zalora and Guava Pass. Photos from the event can be viewed here.

Interested speakers and sponsors for the event in 2019 may contact Andrea Pascual at [email protected] or at +65 3158 1386 ext 212. Startups may reach out to [email protected] for editorial opportunities.

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia