Expanding to Singapore - ESG Grants
Introduction
Many governments around the world welcome foreign investments into their country. This is done in several ways such as writing favorable legislation to increase ease of doing business or maintaining political stability. Another prominent way is to offer grants and assistance to help companies enter a new overseas market. This article's premise will be the details of the offerings of Enterprise Singapore, a statutory board under Singapore's Ministry of Trade and Industry to companies that are interested in expanding to or investing in Singapore.
Let-Lab has worked with an organization similar to Enterprise Singapore, the Israel Innovation Authority. There has had an incredibly fruitful partnership with the Israel Innovation Authority in investing in start-ups together. Let-Lab came across Enterprise Singapore when looking for similar organizations. Several prominent companies are partnering with Enterprise Singapore and working together like 500 Startups, Wavemaker Partners and Rainmaking.
Enterprise Singapore
Enterprise Singapore, also known as ESG's primary mission is to grow stronger Singapore enterprises by building capabilities and accessing global opportunities, thereby creating good jobs for Singaporeans. Their key priorities are to raise productivity, strengthen innovation and to accelerate internationalization.
ESG's Start-up centric wing, Startup SG offers a range or schemes and grants :
- Startup SG Founder: To assist Entrepreneurs in venture building
- Startup SG Talent: To support in hiring talents
- Startup SG Tech: To support companies in Proof-of-Concept/Proof-of-Value and IP
- Startup SG Accelerator: To support accelerators in running programs to nurture start-ups, mentoring start-ups and partial operating expenses
- Startup SG Equity: Co-invests in start-ups; Invests in a fund-of-funds
The first 3 grants listed above are generally targeted at start-ups to aid in them in various ways. There are also other schemes that can benefit start-ups expanding to Singapore or opening an office to act as an APAC headquarters. An unique scheme for deep tech startups would be the Singapore Israel Industrial Research & Development, SIIRD, program. It provides funding and connects Singaporean and Israeli organisations to embark on R&D together.
The Startup SG Accelerator and Startup SG Equity schemes are of particular interest to incubators, accelerators and venture capitalists. The Startup SG Accelerator scheme provides funding to support accelerators and incubators in programmes planned to nurture startups, mentoring entrepreneurs and even cover partial operating expenses required.
The Startup SG Equity scheme is particularly interesting. SEEDS Capital, the investment partner of ESG, will invest 70% of the first S$250,000 invested in a start-up, S$500,000 if it is a Deep Tech start-up. This provides tremendous value to companies.
Apart from providing such grants to attract investments into Singapore's buzzing start-up eco-system, Singapore is also a country that is focusing on becoming a global Industry 4.0 hub. Singapore is 2nd in the world for technology innovation according to the Bloomberg Innovation Index on 2021. The Singaporean government has also set aside more than USD$18 Billion for their Research, Innovation & Enterprise 2025 plan. Manufacturing is among the four focus areas for this fund. Singapore also has a goal of growing their manufacturing sector by 50% over the next 10 years. Their manufacturing sector has already contributed more than USD$79 Billion in 2020, accounting for 21% of Singapore's GDP.
To sum it up, Singapore has many options to provide help to companies that wish to expand and set-up offices there. Furthermore, Singapore has taken a special focus in Industry 4.0 and manufacturing as sectors of interest for their growth in the next several years. Coupled with the ease of doing business, this puts Singapore in a pole position to be the location any company should they be considering an expansion.