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The Value of Entrepreneurship

Leading venture creation in Singapore since 2003, Expara takes pride in the ethos embodied in our logo. We help entrepreneurs and leaders in public and private organizations create their own successes through high risk high return ventures.Read

The Expara Advantage

Our involvement as a third generation incubation hub in Southeast Asia includes..

Experiential Training

We help companies, schools and R&D institutes commercialize their know-how through hands-on training in entrepreneurship and venture finance. More

Business Advisory

We contribute to technology transfer and innovation through advisory in fund raising, M&A as well as growth acceleration. More

Innovation Challenge

We help companies, schools and R&D institutes generate high quality innovations and spin-off activities through business plan competitions and innovation challenges powered by the Expara Innovation Engine™. More

Incubation and Funding

As one of the private i.Jam Reload incubators, we invest in the best teams and innovative technologies that boost local competitiveness and job creation. More

Financial Plan

Venture Financing

Internal Challenges

Douglas Abrams

CEO

Douglas Abrams is the founder and CEO of Expara and Expara IDM Ventures, an incubator fund and business accelerator for interactive and digital media companies. He is a Founding Partner and Managing Director of Extream Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund backed by the Singapore Government’s National Research Association (NRF). He was a previously a Founding Partner of Parallax Capital Management, a funds management company. All four companies are based in Singapore. Prior to coming to Singapore, Douglas managed information technology at J.P.Morgan for 14 years.

He is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Business School, where he has taught since 2001 and is a Visiting Professor in Entrepreneurship for the Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. He has served on the organizing committees or as a judge for numerous business plan competitions (BPC), including: Start-Up@Singapore, Stanford Global Entrepreneurship Challenge, Lee Kuan Yew Global BPC, the Wharton BPC, Asia Moot Corp, and INSEAD BVC. Douglas is a Director and former co- Deputy chairman of the South East Asia Business Angel Investor Network and has served on the board of the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA). Mr. Abrams graduated from the Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Communications and received an MBA from The Wharton School.

Partners

Douglas Abrams

Douglas Abrams is the founder and CEO of Expara and Expara IDM Ventures, an incubator fund and business accelerator for interactive and digital media companies. He is a Founding Partner and Managing Director of Extream Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund backed by the Singapore Government’s National Research Association (NRF). He was a previously a Founding Partner of Parallax Capital Management, a funds management company. All four companies are based in Singapore. Prior to coming to Singapore, Douglas managed information technology at J.P.Morgan for 14 years.

He is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Business School, where he has taught since 2001 and is a Visiting Professor in Entrepreneurship for the Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. He has served on the organizing committees or as a judge for numerous business plan competitions (BPC), including: Start-Up@Singapore, Stanford Global Entrepreneurship Challenge, Lee Kuan Yew Global BPC, the Wharton BPC, Asia Moot Corp, and INSEAD BVC. Douglas is a Director and former co- Deputy chairman of the South East Asia Business Angel Investor Network and has served on the board of the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA). Mr. Abrams graduated from the Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Communications and received an MBA from The Wharton School.

Suwida Kingmuangkow

Suwida is Managing Director at Expara IDM Ventures and sits on the investment committee. She has ten years of experience in financial services and entrepreneurship. Prior to joining Expara, Suwida spent five years as a trader at KGI Securities (Thailand) Public Company Limited (KGI), one of Thailand's largest proprietary funds. The average size of the funds under her sole supervision was more than THB 1 billion (USD 40 million). Despite trading through the turbulent years of the global credit crunch, Suwida consistently delivered outstanding returns and was one of the top performers for KGI throughout her tenure there.

In addition to managing her trading desk, Suwida has been actively involved in running an entrepreneurial venture as a Director at Designers Bathware (Asia) Ltd., a leading sanitary-ware supplier to major hospitality chains and prominent real estate developers in Thailand. The company now is in association with PARISI Bathware, Australia’s leading distributor of high quality bathware with a national network of major retailers.

Suwida graduated with a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering (2000) from Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok and an M.B.A. (2005) from the Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration of Chulalongkorn University with a dual concentration in Finance and Strategic. She is a certified FRM (Financial Risk Manager) holder. Other than her native Thai, Suwida is proficient in Italian, French and English.

Rosalind Tan

Rosalind is Vice President at Expara and Expara IDM Ventures. Since joining Expara in 2011, Rosalind coached and mentored 16 potential spin-offs from A*STAR, to which more than half has since spun-off or received follow-on funding. Two of the spin-offs that she mentored went on to receive the prestigious Demo Guru award at the 2012 Demo Asia event in Singapore. She has helped start-ups write business plans and financial plans for the purpose of raising funds. Prior to joining Expara, she has worked as a scientist in labs in the UK, US, Malaysia and Singapore. Rosalind also took on additional responsibility as a Business Development Manager at Doping Control Centre, Malaysia in 2007. She closed deals and managed clients in a range of industries including solar power, oil and gas, healthcare and food manufacturing companies.

Rosalind’s experience with entrepreneurship began in high school when she headed the newly established Youth Enterprise in fund raising and income generating activities. In university, she was actively involved in AIESEC, the world’s largest youth-run organization providing young people with an opportunity to participate in international internships. Rosalind and her team pioneered the organization and execution of a state-level NGO project and a student assessment centre.

As a PhD student in Glasgow University, UK, Rosalind, in addition to working her thesis project, made it a point to learn more about entrepreneurship through courses in Technology Venture Management at Strathclyde University, and was eventually sponsored to attend the Centre for Entrepreneurship Learning Summer School at Cambridge University. Rosalind has an MBA in Strategic Planning from Edinburgh Business School.

Cato Gullichsen

Cato is a Norwegian entrepreneur who has relocated to Singapore. He brings with him a decade of experience as an entrepreneur in the mobile services space. He is co-founder of Mobilskole AS which today is Norway’s largest SMS provider for schools. He is also co-founder of app-platform developer Antlers International and is currently Managing Director of subsidiary company AntlersLab in Singapore. He is also a board member with Suurve – a mobile customer feedback platform.

He is a much sought-after speaker and is often a panelist at various media conferences. Cato has been invited to speak at market-setting major events across southeast Asia including CommunicAsia, ad:tech and the Mobile Internet Marketing and Advertising seminar. He is also a co-author of the mobile marketing guide book “Introduction to Mobile Marketing” which was distributed in Norway and Singapore.

Cato was honored with the Entrepreneur of the year 2009 award from the Norwegian school of Entrepreneurship, Furthermore, he was crowned the winner of the prestigious business plan competition Venture Cup in Norway and been nominated for the Spirit of Enterprise award in Singapore.

More recently, he co-founded SeedForum Singapore - a non-profit group that organises the bi-annual SeedForum investor conference in Singapore. The conference has grown to be one of Singapore’s premier investor meeting points and is a sought after venue for local and foreign startups seeking to meet investors.

Cato has a law degree from the University of Oslo, Norway with a specialization in commercial and intellectual property law. He has also completed a Technopreneurship exchange at National University of Singapore.

David Ng

David is Advisor at Expara and Expara IDM Ventures II. He started his career with Defense Science Organisation as a defense scientific engineer and later worked for Miniscribe Peripherals as senior systems engineer in charge of robotic production lines. He has over 23 years of banking and wealth management experience specializing in treasury and capital markets, investment advisory and client management. He started his banking career in the late 80’s with Citigroup Private Bank, where he was responsible for asset and liability management, ABS origination (based in NYC), and equities risk management. He was head of investments at Banque Indosuez and responsible for institutional derivatives sales and structuring at Bankers Trust.

He rejoined Citigroup Private Bank in 1997, heading the global investment advisory for South Asia. During his 9 year tenure, he took on management roles in FX and derivatives, investment counseling, discretionary products, and onshore domestic locations. David sat on Citi’s pension fund investment committee while at Citi.

David later spent 6 years with UBS Wealth Management as Managing Director, starting as Asia Pacific Chief Operating Officer for Products and Services and relocated to Hong Kong in 2009 to take the role of Head of Taiwan International Markets ultra-high net worth clients. He sat on the global and regional investment advisory committees for investment strategy and new products. He returned to Singapore in 2011 to develop the bank’s sales and investment suitability framework in the face of heightened regulatory requirements.

David consults with SMU Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics on industry projects and is a trainer with the SMU Financial Training Insttitute. He is a business advisor with Red Dot Ventures through the Spring-SIM Business Advisors Programme.

David holds a CFA, CAIA, FRM professional designations and BEng(Hons) and MBA from the National University of Singapore. He is a member of Singapore Institute of Directors and has completed the Listed Company Director (LCD) Programme.

Seed Forum June 2013

When:

6^th June 2013 (Thursday)
(Registration is required)
Day Event: 8:45am-1:30pm
Evening Reception: 6-8pm

Where:

Taurus, Level 1,
Marina Mandarin Singapore,
6 Raffles Boulevard,
Marina Square,
Singapore 039594

Contact Us

+65 6323 3084
bonnie@expara.com

Supported By

Entrepreneurial Leadership

Invitational Challenges

Our Company

Expara at a glance

Expara is a venture creation company established in Singapore since 2003. Expara develops and teaches entrepreneurship, innovation and venture finance through experiential training programs and innovation challenges for entrepreneurs, corporations and public institutions in Southeast Asia. Douglas Abrams, the founder of Expara, has been investing in, teaching, training and mentoring entrepreneurs in Singapore since 2000 and has been focused on the Interactive and Digital Media space since 2003.

Expara funds and incubates startups through Expara IDM Ventures Private Limited. Expara IDM Ventures was one of the first private incubators to be appointed under the Media Development Authority of Singapore's i.Jam Microfunding Scheme in 2007 and i.Jam Reload scheme in 2012. In 2012, Expara IDM Ventures became the first incubator in Southeast Asia to provide companies an incubation network spanning Singapore, Thailand and Europe.

Expara is currently expanding its enterprise reach across the Southeast Asian region to include new verticals like social impact, bio-technology and renewable technology. Our existing partner network spans in Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Czech Republic and Norway.

Expara has close ties with two entities: Extream Ventures Pte Ltd, a S$20 million early-stage venture fund supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) under the Early Stage Venture Funding Scheme and Red Dot Ventures Pte Ltd, one of the appointed NRF-TIS incubators (Technology Incubation Scheme) in Singapore.

Expara’s focus on delivering results has benefited companies and organizations including:

Portfolio

Expara IDM Ventures

EIDMV has to date invested in 16 start-ups, that have raised more than S$5.24 million in follow-on funding. The estimated increase in the portfolio value from 2007-2012 is 19 times, based on most recent transaction values. Successful companies in the current portfolio include:

2C2P

Launched as a spin-off of leading Thaibased payment security provider SinaptIQ, 2C2P provides a suite of next-generation e-commerce and m-commerce payment solutions as a service in Asia-Pacific. Shortly after launching in 2008, 2C2P received funding support from EIDMV and began to establish its presence in Singapore. Since then, 2C2P broadened its offerings, moving to the mobile payment space by leveraging on its existing e-commerce payment infrastructure. In 2009, 18 2C2P won several awards in recognition of its valuable contributions in revolutionizing the nextgeneration payment industry, including Red Herring Global Top 100 and Red Herring Asia Top 100. Aung Kyaw Moe, 2C2P’s founder and CEO, was also recognized by BusinessWeek Magazine as one of Asia’s Top 25 Best Young Entrepreneurs (2009).

First Meta

First Meta is a leading virtual currency exchange platform. Within six months of incorporation, the company raised two rounds of seed funding, built a ten-person team and launched its first product, MetaSavingsTM, in Second Life on 31 July 2007. In February 2008, First Meta launched its second product, the MetaPoints Rewards Program. In August 2009, First Meta launched First Meta Exchange (FMX), an online multi-world currency exchange for trading both real and virtual currencies. In January 2010 alone, FMX processed S$80,000 in transaction volume and is growing at 70% per month. As of January 2010, FMX has over 9,000 users and 5,723 unique visitors, growing at 15% per month. The company has recently closed a Series A investment of S$600 thousand.

Wildfire

Wildfire is Asia’s award-winning innovator in social marketing and technology, helping brands harness word-of-mouth to drive sales, brand education, and consumer advocacy both online and in the real world. The Wildfire Social Capability Suite provides business intelligence, social response, and reputation management, providing iWOM monitoring, social CRM, and groundbreaking influencer activation tools. The Wildfire Influencer Network ensures digital and offline integration, with more than 100,000 brand advocates in 23 cities, who share millions of social recommendations, samples, and promotions to friends, family, and colleagues, without sampling wastage or media spillover. Wildfire was founded in December 2008. With offices in both north and south Asia, the company's client portfolio includes Kraft Foods, Unilever, Diageo, and Campbell's Soup. The company was awarded the Most Innovative Company under the Interactive Digital Media category at the Singapore Venture Capital Association 2011 Awards Ceremony. To date, Wildfire has secured S$3,495,000 in follow-on funding.

Rival Edge

Rival Edge Pte Ltd was founded in 2011 with a vision to become a leading digital media company with strong content IPs and proprietary in-house technology. The start-up first received iJAM funding in November 2011. Since then, the company has started developing Rival Edge Social API (codename: HappyCat API). HappyCat API was designed to provide cross-platform social gaming and multi-player experience between different mobile platforms. As an extension to HappyCat API, the company is now developing CloudyRec- an idea that came to mind whilst developing HappyCat API, a complete server-side backend platform for mobile apps and games. Rival Edge participated in Startups in Asia 2012 and DEMO Asia 2012 startup launchpad events and its products have been getting tractions both from clients and potential investors. The team behind Rival Edge includes 3 full-time founders/engineers and 2 internship students from Nanyang Polytechnic. Using in-house social gaming and server-side technology products, the team is also building a light scale social MMO game as part of the iJAM milestone fulfilment.

TinkrBox

TinkrBox is a platform which lets people easily collect, enjoy and share visual bookmarks on websites and other embeddable content (YouTube, Documents, Games and etc). It present new dimensions to the ability of cataloguing, viewing and organizing content you clip from across the web, where users can create custom boxes to store a mash up of their favourite content (video, images and etc) and these collections can be easily shared out to friends or for personal consumption.

Suwida Kingmuangkow

Managing Director

Suwida is a Managing Director at Expara IDM Ventures and sits on the investment committee. She has ten years of experience in financial services and entrepreneurship. Prior to joining Expara, Suwida spent five years as a trader at KGI Securities (Thailand) Public Company Limited (KGI), one of Thailand's largest proprietary funds. The average size of the funds under her sole supervision was more than THB 1 billion (USD 40 million). Despite trading through the turbulent years of the global credit crunch, Suwida consistently delivered outstanding returns and was one of the top performers for KGI throughout her tenure there.

In addition to managing her trading desk, Suwida has been actively involved in running an entrepreneurial venture as a Director at Designers Bathware (Asia) Ltd., a leading sanitary-ware supplier to major hospitality chains and prominent real estate developers in Thailand. The company now is in association with PARISI Bathware, Australia’s leading distributor of high quality bathware with a national network of major retailers.

Suwida graduated with a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering (2000) from Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok and an M.B.A. (2005) from the Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration of Chulalongkorn University with a dual concentration in Finance and Strategic. She is a certified FRM (Financial Risk Manager) holder. Other than her native Thai, Suwida is proficient in Italian, French and English.

Investor Presentation

Enterprise Innovation

i.Jam Reload Funding

i.Jam program was launched in 2007 under MDA's IDM Programme Office, to help innovative startup teams bring their interactive digital media technologies to the emerging Asian markets. The program is focused on building the multi-cultural teams between world-class engineers and entrepreneurs to shape original technologies into commercially viable products and services relevant for Asia.

As one of the private i.Jam incubators with the longest standing history, Expara has invested in some of Asia's most outstanding young entrepreneurs and technologies. Startups with a strong technical team and technology innovation in the interactive and digital media space may qualify for the i.Jam Reload funding scheme which funds development costs of up to S$255, 000.

Our investment process

• Screening by Expara
• Due diligence
• Negotiation of deal terms and signing of termsheet
• Submission of i.Jam application form for expert panel and IDMPO approval
• Signing of investment, shareholders and funding agreement

Our Mission & Strategy

Our Mission

Every aspect of Expara's business processes, technology innovation know-how and deep industry networks is dedicated to fostering an innovative and vibrant enterprise ecosystem in Southeast Asia.

Our Strategy

Singapore, due to its geographical proximity to emerging markets, open economy and infrastructure, has attracted businesses and people from all around the world. Growth-stage technology companies often find Singapore to be a strategic hub to locate their business operations and development centers, to cater towards growth markets and access a wide talent pool. Expara's offices are currently located in Singapore and Thailand.

Our delivery model for entrepreneurship and venture capital in the region includes training, advisory, innovation challenges, incubation and funding.

Rosalind Tan

Vice President

Rosalind is Vice President at Expara and Expara IDM Ventures. Since joining Expara in 2011, Rosalind coached and mentored 16 potential spin-offs from A*STAR, to which more than half has since spun-off or received follow-on funding. Two of the spin-offs that she mentored went on to receive the prestigious Demo Guru award at the 2012 Demo Asia event in Singapore. She has helped start-ups write business plans and financial plans for the purpose of raising funds. Prior to joining Expara, she has worked as a scientist in labs in the UK, US, Malaysia and Singapore. Rosalind also took on additional responsibility as a Business Development Manager at Doping Control Centre, Malaysia in 2007. She closed deals and managed clients in a range of industries including solar power, oil and gas, healthcare and food manufacturing companies.

Rosalind’s experience with entrepreneurship began in high school when she headed the newly established Youth Enterprise in fund raising and income generating activities. In university, she was actively involved in AIESEC, the world’s largest youth-run organization providing young people with an opportunity to participate in international internships. Rosalind and her team pioneered the organization and execution of a state-level NGO project and a student assessment centre.

As a PhD student in Glasgow University, UK, Rosalind, in addition to working her thesis project, made it a point to learn more about entrepreneurship through courses in Technology Venture Management at Strathclyde University, and was eventually sponsored to attend the Centre for Entrepreneurship Learning Summer School at Cambridge University. Rosalind has an MBA in Strategic Planning from Edinburgh Business School.

About

Our Company

 

Our Team

 

Our Mission & Strategy

 

Our Track Record

 

Our Team

Douglas Abrams Alicia Lye Rosalind Tan Suwida Kingmuangkow Germaine Inez Bonnie Lam

Incubation

David Ng

Advisor

David is Advisor at Expara and Expara IDM Ventures II. He started his career with Defense Science Organisation as a defense scientific engineer and later worked for Miniscribe Peripherals as senior systems engineer in charge of robotic production lines. He has over 23 years of banking and wealth management experience specializing in treasury and capital markets, investment advisory and client management. He started his banking career in the late 80’s with Citigroup Private Bank, where he was responsible for asset and liability management, ABS origination (based in NYC), and equities risk management. He was head of investments at Banque Indosuez and responsible for institutional derivatives sales and structuring at Bankers Trust.

He rejoined Citigroup Private Bank in 1997, heading the global investment advisory for South Asia. During his 9 year tenure, he took on management roles in FX and derivatives, investment counseling, discretionary products, and onshore domestic locations. David sat on Citi’s pension fund investment committee while at Citi.

David later spent 6 years with UBS Wealth Management as Managing Director, starting as Asia Pacific Chief Operating Officer for Products and Services and relocated to Hong Kong in 2009 to take the role of Head of Taiwan International Markets ultra-high net worth clients. He sat on the global and regional investment advisory committees for investment strategy and new products. He returned to Singapore in 2011 to develop the bank’s sales and investment suitability framework in the face of heightened regulatory requirements.

David consults with SMU Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics on industry projects and is a trainer with the SMU Financial Training Insttitute. He is a business advisor with Red Dot Ventures through the Spring-SIM Business Advisors Programme.

David holds a CFA, CAIA, FRM professional designations and BEng(Hons) and MBA from the National University of Singapore. He is a member of Singapore Institute of Directors and has completed the Listed Company Director (LCD) Programme.

Cato Gullichsen

Advisor

Cato Gullichsen is the co-founder and CEO of InCent Pte Ltd, Singapore and Norway, a company that serves more than 100 clients including DHL, Walt Disney and Ford, by providing personalised mobile marketing solutions. He is also a mentor of Seed Forum. Cato has over six years of experience as an entrepreneur and a mobile marketing expert. He is an entrepreneur who has co-founded several successful companies within the mobile and new media space. These companies comprise of Mobilskole AS, which is the largest provider of easy-to-use SMS-services for schools in Norway and iMarket, an online price comparison search engine.

Cato is also an invited speaker and panellist at various prestigious conferences and events including CommunicAsia, ad:tech and Mobile Internet Marketing and Advertising seminar KL, Malaysia. In addition to his entrepreneurial ventures, Cato is a co-author of the mobile marketing guide book “Introduction to Mobile Marketing” which was distributed in Norway and Singapore.

Cato was honoured with the Entrepreneur of the year 2009 award from the Norwegian school of Entrepreneurship, Grunderskolen. Furthermore, he was crowned the winner of the prestigious business plan competition Venture Cup 2004 in Norway. In light of his achievements, Cato is currently a judge of business plan competitions organised by National University Singapore annually. Besides that, Cato was a mentor at the prestigious Startup@Singapore business plan competition 2010.

Our Track Record

Expara - A*Star Enterprise Innovation Program™

Conducted in partnership with the A*STAR Exploit Technologies

From 2010 to the present, Expara has been conducting our Enterprise Innovation Program (EIP) for the Investment and Spin-Off Management (ISM) division at Exploit, the technology transfer office of the A*Star national research institutes. We provide intensive mentorship for research teams that are planning to spin-off from A*Star, including business model development, market research, business planning, financial modeling, grant application writing and fund-raising assistance. As of July 2012:

• Expara has completed 16 business plans for potential spin-off companies.
• Seven of our projects have received more than S$4.5 million in grants and funding.
• We have conducted 3 highly successful technopreneurship workshops, in which our Open Innovation Engine™ was deployed.

Expara has been conducting workshops for A*Star and Exploit since 2006:

• In Feb 2006, Expara conducted an Executive Summary workshop for the International Researcher’s Club (IRC).
• In July through Sept 2007, Expara conducted a series of workshops for I2R researchers and managers. More than 75 researchers and managers attended one of the three-day workshop programs. 93% of participants rated the workshop as Excellent or Good and 100% said they would recommend this workshop to others.
• In August 2007, Expara conducted two half-day workshops for Exploit.
• In Feb to March 2008, Expara conducted an Idea to Investment training and workshop program for Exploit, which included 1 two day and 3 full day. workshops plus 2 full day intensive coaching sessions.
• In January 2009, Expara conducted a training workshop at the Inaugural Technopreneurs’ Bootcamp 2009 organised by Exploit Technologies and Start-up @ Singapore.
• In 2012, Expara conducted a venture finance and VC fund raising negotiation workshop series for Exploit.

Idea to Investment (I2I) for the Media Industry

Conducted in partnership with the Media Development Authority of Singapore

The Expara-MDA Idea to Investment (I2I) for the Media Industry programme ran successfully from April 2007 until March 2010:

• 513 people from 366 local media and interactive and digital media companies were trained in our I2I workshops.
• 788 people attended one of our investor forums, company/investor networking or matching events.
• We facilitated 113 intensive one-on-one coaching and mentoring sessions. I2I is an end-toend program, including workshops, one-one-one meetings, intensive coaching and screening and selection for i.MATCH.

Czech Accelerator 2011 to 2014 Singapore

Conducted in partnership with CzechInvest

Expara was selected by CzechInvest, a Czech Republic government agency which supports SME’s in the Czech Republic to host the CzechAccelerator 2011 to 2014 program in Singapore. Expara joins 4 other Czech Accelerators worldwide in the US, Europe and Israel, and is the first in Asia. Through this partnership, Expara will introduce promising Czech start-ups and SMEs to the local ecosystem and enable them to enter the Southeast Asia market.

i.MATCH Program

Conducted in partnership with the IDM Programme Office, SPRING, iDA, BANSEA, SVCA, and TIE

The i.MATCH Program is an innovative platform originally designed to bring together promising media companies, private investors and public-sector funding programs in an effort to catalyze Series A level investment in the media space in Singapore.

This match-making process is done by first exposing selected companies to a rigorous workshop program consisting of an intensive business plan and investor presentation master class, one-on-one business plan improvement meetings and personal coaching sessions. Selected companies then pitch their projects at an i.MATCH Showcase.

i.MATCH was launched in July 2008 by the IDM Programme Office (IDMPO) and SPRING Singapore in partnership with Expara. Four i.MATCH cycles 2008-2010 yielded the following results.

• 193 entrepreneurs from 157 companies attended an i.MATCH intensive workshops.
• 107 companies presented at a local i.MATCH showcase.
• 69 companies had the opportunity to present to international venture capital, angel and strategic investors.
• 687 investors and guests attended an i.MATCH showcase event.
• 70 investors joined the i.MATCH investor core group (ICG).
• International panelists at i.MATCH have included Google. Benchmark Capital, DFJ India, Intel Capital, JAIC Asia Investments, Ambient Sound Investments, i/o Ventures, Plug and Play Tech Center, Felicis Ventures, Dimensional Venture Partners, and Trident Capital.

Intrapreneurship and Venture Finance Workshops

Developed in partnership with the Singapore Media Academy and the Workforce Development Authority of Singapore

Since 2010, Expara has been providing a WDA-certified leadership training program for more than 200 Mediacorp managers and executives. Leadership across the organization is a three-day experiential learning program which trains employees across hierarchies to be intrapreneurs - entrepreneurs acting within the organization to lead change through vision and values.

Expara helped SMA roll out their WSQ Specialist Diploma in Interactive Media (Business Management) in October 2012. Expara has since been providing venture funding, financial budgeting and management courses for Interactive & Digital Media startups, researchers, media owners, publishers and other players in the IDM space.

DFJ-Cisco Global Business Plan Competition

Developed in partnership with Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Cisco

Expara was the local organizer for the DFJ-Cisco Global Business Plan competition from 2009-2010. In 2009, Expara led the screening and selection process that sent 4 Singapore start-ups into the global competition that included entrants from 16 other countries around the world. 16 finalists were ultimately selected to compete for a US$250 thousand investment by DFJ, one of the world’s leading venture capital funds.

Ventures

Partners

Portfolio

i.Jam Reload Funding

Incubation

Alicia Lye

Business Development Manager

Alicia is Business Development Manager at Expara and Associate at Expara IDM Ventures. Prior to joining Expara, she has worked as Teaching Assistant in the NUS Business School, Project Development Executive at Human Network Labs, and Project Coordinator at Synergy Global System Asia. While studying at NUS she served a 6-month attachment with a local technological startup as part of the iLead Programme run by the NUS Entrepreneurship Centre. She also ventured to Germany and Isreal for a two-week overseas study mission to exchange ideas and network with the founders of overseas startup companies. Alicia was a finalist in the 13th Startup@SG Business Plan competition for the Social Enterprise Category and top 5 in the Grameen Social Boot Camp 2012. She graduated from the National University of Singapore with 2nd Upper Class Bachelor (Hons) in Psychology and Technopreneurship.

Training

New Venture Creation

Venture Financing

Entrepreneurial Leadership

Enterprise Innovation

How we develop the Entrepreneurial Mind

Through years of experience in entrepreneurship and venture capital, Expara has identified key learning points that every entrepreneur should know in order to succeed in any high growth businesses. These critical success factors form the core of our entrepreneurial workshops and programs:

Germaine Inez

Associate

Germaine is an Associate at Expara and Expara IDM Ventures. She is a recent graduate from NUS Business School, with a Bachelor in Business Administration (Honours), specializing in Finance and Technopreneurship. Prior to joining Expara, she has worked as a Business Development Executive at eBiz Marketing and Recruit International. During her studies at NUS, Germaine has also taken up the roles of student journalist at the NUS Social Entrepreneurship and Philanthropy Center, and teaching assistant at the NUS Business School. She completed her final year thesis on "Singapore - the Hub for Impact Investments".

Advisory

Business Plan

Financial Plan

Investor Presentation

Bonnie Lam

Analyst

Bonnie is an Analyst at Expara IDM Ventures. She graduated from the University of Newcastle of Australia with majors in Accounting and Finance. Since joining Expara in 2011, Bonnie oversees the company’s operations, financial reports, budgeting, internal and portfolio audit, and facilitates the execution of the iJAM Reload program. She also works closely with researchers from Exploit, A*STAR in formulating their business plan and financial model. Prior to joining Expara IDM Ventures, Bonnie worked as business development executive for a Japanese MNC company. Her previous experience includes planning, executing and marketing.

Challenge

Open Challenges

Internal Challenges

Invitational Challenges

Events

Contact