NUS Innovation & Entrepreneurship Exchange with Tsinghua x-lab

An immersive experience in the vibrant start-up hubs of Beijing and Singapore

From 3–9 June, we welcomed a start-up delegation from Tsinghua University for the NUS Innovation & Entrepreneurship Exchange with Tsinghua x-lab. With a group of NUS-supported start-ups having visited Beijing from 25–31 March 2018, a reciprocal seven teams from Tsinghua University visited Singapore for the second leg of the week-long exchange. Seven new NUS start-ups were selected to participate in the Singapore leg of the exchange.

Participating teams in the NUS-Tsinghua Innovation & Entrepreneurship Exchange

Through company visits, networking and pitching sessions, participants learnt and exchanged knowledge of starting and growing new business ventures to commercialise innovations, and explored market access opportunities, connections and collaborations. They also gained a deeper understanding of the start-up ecosystems of the respective cities — Beijing and Singapore, and valuable network connections to grow their ventures.

Participating teams came from varied technology and social development fields such as data analytics, cybersecurity, fintech, digital media, healthcare, smart hardware, intelligent manufacturing, and social innovation.

Highlights of the March 2018 exchange in Beijing, hosted by Tsinghua x-lab:

NUS Enterprise start-ups at TusPark, an abbreviation of Tsinghua University Science Park, which has over 400 enterprises and institutions

• Lectures by esteemed Tsinghua University professors on topics such as “China’s Mass Innovation and Entrepreneurship”, and “Entrepreneurial Team Building in a Cross-Cultural Context”
• Mentoring on product localisation, business, design and marketing
• Sharing sessions by PwC and Zhen Robot
• Company visits to Toutiao, iSoftStone and Dark Horse
• Pitching sessions at Plug and Play Beijing and Tech Code

PitchSpot co-founders Goh See Ting and Ryan Chong making a presentation at Plug and Play Beijing

Highlights of the June 2018 exchange in Singapore, hosted by NUS Enterprise:

Tsinghua x-lab start-ups on a company visit to ShopBack

• Company speed-dating at BLOCK71 Singapore
• Participated in Innovfest Unbound 2018, Southeast Asia’s largest innovation festival
• Company visits to e27, ShopBack, Dignity Kitchen, and HADO
• Sharing session by NUS spin-off company ViSenze
• Pitching session to investors

The start-ups pitched to a panel of investors comprising James Tan (Quest Ventures), Koh Soo Boon (iGlobe Partners), Leonid Musatov (Sistema Asia Capital), Paul Choo (Karuna) and Victor Ng (Mistletoe)

The NUS-Tsinghua Innovation & Entrepreneurship Exchange is jointly organised and hosted by NUS Enterprise and Tsinghua x-lab, supported by the Ng Teng Fong Charitable Foundation (Hong Kong).