Singapore is one of the most wealthy and developed countries in the world and its startup ecosystem matches this. Despite having a modest population of 5.4 Million, Singapore is considered the 8th most developed startup ecosystem worldwide. Startups in Singapore benefit from a government known for supporting and guiding economic growth, as well as the capability to use its desirability as a destination to entice foreign talent to either work or create new startups in Singapore.
Singapore has a unique amount of trade influence, owing to its history and location. As a result of this, the country has a large domestic and international VC Firm presence. Singaporean startups can benefit from later stage funding from one of more than 1000 VC funds operating locally. Early-stage startups in Singapore are also nurtured effectively, allowing for rapid growth as a result of initial funding and mentorship from one of nearly 300 accelerators and incubators.
The Singaporean government is known for its willingness to create a startup-friendly business environment. The government even goes as far as to found businesses in collaboration with global partners, provides a range of entrepreneurial grants and development schemes and also has a number of programs aimed at developing the professional networks of entrepreneurs in the country.
1. Ultiverse
Year Founded: 2021
HQ: Singapore
Size: 11-50
Founders: Frank Ma, Jimmy Liu, Joe Chou
Ultiverse is one of many examples of innovative and impressive startups in Singapore. It has created a one-stop shop to assist you as a video game developer or publisher, by allowing you to utilise artificial intelligence in order to optimise and get the most out of the games you create. This leads to better experiences for your audience and fewer bugs overall. Ultiverse is attempting to create the spark for the widespread adoption of Web 3.0 games using AI to improve them.
Artificial intelligence development comes at a large cost, especially considering the cost of talent in Singapore. As a result, Ultiverse has seen it as appropriate to go through a round of startup funding in order to get the capital to expand. This took place in February 2024, when it raised a total of $4 Million to drive itself forward.
2. Beoble
Year Founded: 2021
HQ: Singapore
Size: 1-10
Founders: Chanhyeok Yim, Jungwoo Yun, Sung Min Cho
Beoble is a Singaporean startup attempting to improve the way you socialise in Web 3.0. They're achieving this by creating a messaging app that allows you to communicate with others using both of your Web 3.0 wallets. By using the app and chatting with people, you also generate real fiscal rewards for doing so, in the form of points. If you get enough points, you will be entered into a free token airdrop as a way of thanking you.
Beoble has recently been accelerating its ambitious growth plans, which is evidenced through the completion of two startup funding rounds in less than four months. In the first of these two, it raised $2 Million and in the second, during February 2024, it successfully raised $7 Million. Samsung is one of the investors that have been heavily involved in the project.
3. Moonshot AI
Year Founded: 2023
HQ: Singapore
Size: 51-100
Founders: Yang Zhilin
Moonshot AI has enjoyed a meteoric rise in its short trading time, the startup headquartered in Singapore helps you to make the most out of your e-commerce store, with the help of AI. By integrating it with your store, it will track every aspect of what you are doing and automatically make adjustments to make sure that everything is structured to maximise your profit levels. It is currently already trusted by a number of global leading companies, meaning that you can trust it with your store as well.
In February 2024, Moonshot AI completed a massively significant funding round. To further develop its platform and drive intense globalisation, it has received investment worth $1 Billion in the round led by Alibaba and Hongshan. This investment places Moonshot AI cleanly in the bracket of a unicorn, with a valuation of more than $2.5 Billion on that investment.
4. AMP
Year Founded: 2022
HQ: Singapore
Size: 51-100
Founders: Cameron Priest, Patrick Barnes
AMP is a Singaporean startup that was founded in 2022 and operates in the e-commerce space. It helps you to achieve better optimisation and results from your stores by offering you a suite of useful tools that you can use to increase your conversion rates. Scaling is made easier due to the fact that you can seamlessly grow traffic to your e-commerce sites, whilst also addressing any problems that lead to a decrease in your click-through and conversion rates.
E-commerce businesses are particularly attractive for investors at this time and AMP combines this market with a workable value proposition to customers and a strong business model. These factors have contributed to AMP securing a Series A funding round worth $18.5 Million in September 2023, which has allowed it to consolidate its position in existing markets and prepare to enter new ones.
5. Bluesheets
Year Founded: 2020
HQ: Singapore
Size: 11-50
Founders: Christian Schneider, Clare Leighton
Bluesheets is making it so that managing your business finances across multiple platforms isn't stressful enough to make you put your head through a wall. By connecting Bluesheets into your banking and other software packages, you can automate key tasks such as bookkeeping and reporting. Depending on the size of your business, you could be saving months worth of finance work, allowing your teams to focus on other tasks, improving your productivity and bottom line.
Creating a platform that can integrate financial data from a range of sources and present it all accurately without conflict requires qualified talent and development time, which equates to a large cost. Bluesheets has also made clear its ambition to improve its AI infrastructure and accelerate the drive for its customers to truly digitise their finance, to this end it has completed a Series A round worth $6.5 Million in January 2024.
6. Decentro
Year Founded: 2020
HQ: Singapore
Size: 11-50
Founders: Rohit Taneja
Decentro is a startup in Singapore that operates in the FinTech market. Decentro makes it easier for you to create and deploy APIs in order to create faster and more accurate banking integrations across Singapore and beyond. The online payment aggregation platform allows you to connect to a variety of different banking APIs, which gives you the benefit of being able to go live at ten times the speed than would normally be possible, maximising your revenue potential.
Decentro has made strategic use of startup funding in the past to accelerate the rate at which it grows and allow it to position itself at the forefront of FinTech in Singapore. Across three funding rounds, 31 investors have backed Decentro, with $4.7 Million being raised as a result of this.
7. SoBanHang
Year Founded: 2021
HQ: Singapore
Size: 51-100
Founders: Hai Nam Bui
SoBanHang offers a platform that truly allows you to get the most out of your business by optimising your sales processes. For example, by using SoBanHang, you can access a wealth of new potential leads through the expansion of your online multi-channel marketing efforts. Additionally, its dashboard allows you to easily identify the profit and loss on sales, which allows you to tweak and optimise your sales process for the best possible results. Finally, it allows you to get paid quickly, which improves your overall cash flow position.
The overall ambition for SoBanHang is to be the complete financial operating system for SMEs and to ensure that the product is sufficiently developed to be this, it completed a Seed Round in March 2022 worth $4 Million, that allowed SoBanHang to complete necessary market research and develop its product based on surveyed customer feedback.
8. Meson Network
Year Founded: 2020
HQ: Singapore
Size: 11-50
Founders: Leo Li, Sherlock Shi
Meson Network is another example of Singaporean startups contributing to the Web 3.0 ecosystem. By using its critical network infrastructure, you can easily find and use spare bandwidth through its decentralised bandwidth exchange. The average latency when using the platform is 90ms and has a network capacity of more than 10 TB per second, providing a lot of power.
Meson Network is a well-backed Web 3.0 project, with 32 investors agreeing to fund it. This is the result of three funding rounds that have collectively generated $4.4 Million. The most recent of these took place in January 2024 and was led by Presto Labs. This investment will be useful for Meson Network as it will allow it to improve its decentralised exchange and also make strategic hires to improve its market position.
9. FlashIntel
Year Founded: 2022
HQ: Singapore
Size: 101-250
Founders: Yi Shi
FlashIntel is a startup in Singapore that was founded in 2022 and has seen its growth explode in the two years since then. Sales is the lifeblood of your company and FlashIntel provides a platform that makes selling painless. By integrating with a range of tools, including leading CRMs, you can use AI generated contact templates to find the best way to turn your leads into sales, find up to date contact information for your key relevant prospects and track social intent data to identify those that are most likely to make a purchase at that time.
FlashIntel has been proactive in securing funding to create an end-to-end sales platform, so you don't have to have multiple licences and payments for different sales tools. The most recent funding round took place in August 2023, when it raised $10 Million- which goes a long way in promoting expansion and the introduction of new integrations and features.
10. ZOTH
Year Founded: 2023
HQ: Singapore
Size: 11-50
Founders: Koushik Bhargav, Kunal Shah, Pritam Dutta
Zoth is a Singaporean startup working within DeFi. Founded in 2023, it has created a platform that allows you to use stablecoins in order to invest in real-world assets. This provides you with the opportunity to generate high-yield from your investment, up to 12% APY. Examples of some of the asset classes that you can invest in using Zoth includes government bonds, corporate credit and trade finance receivables. Zoth is currently building on Ethereum, Polygon, Celo and more.
Zoth has recently shown a requirement for external funding to grow its customer base and develop its underlying technology. It has been successful in achieving this goal, with two separate rounds taking place in February 2024. These rounds were backed by eleven investors, highlighting strong confidence in Zoth's business model. The total amount of funding from these investments has not been disclosed.
11. Locofy
Year Founded: 2021
HQ: Singapore
Size: 11-50
Founders: Honey Mittal, Sohaib Muhammed
Locofy is a startup in Singapore that is currently making waves in DevOps. By utilising its artificial intelligence technology, you're able to drastically increase the speed of your front end development by up to ten times by using a single click to take your product design and turn it into code. You can integrate it with a range of product development tools such as Figma and Adobe XD, as well as others. In addition to saving time, you will also save significant money in terms of saved coding hours.
Software that is capable of taking graphic designs and turning that into code with AI is a colossal undertaking and bringing the design to fruition requires a lot of expense. As a result, the management team of Locofy sought and successfully raised $7.3 Million in two funding rounds, with the most recent in May 2023 for $4.25 Million.
12. Particle Network
Year Founded: 2021
HQ: Singapore
Size: 51-100
Founders: Pengyu Wang
Particle Network is a Singaporean startup that was founded in 2021 and is creating a middleware platform specific to Web 3.0, in an effort to facilitate widespread adoption. The main way you benefit from this is through its range of Web 3.0 wallets that it provides, which can support your needs, whether you're an individual or a business. By utilising all of its available tools, you can develop great Web 3.0 apps without having to do the most laborious elements.
In an effort to rapidly increase the value it can provide to Web 3.0 developers, Particle Network has raised funding which has been used to this effect. In March 2023, it raised $7 Million. The stated use of the investment was to increase its headcount and improve the security behind its offerings.
13. Amperesand
Year Founded: 2023
HQ: Singapore
Size: 1-10
Founders: Anshuman Tripathi
Amperesand is an exciting Singaporean startup that was founded last year and is developing the next generation of electrical grid infrastructure. Its systems can be easily digitally managed and monitored, which allows for easy maintenance and troubleshooting and makes use of semiconductors to control and manipulate power on the grid. In addition, you can easily isolate parts of your grid in the event of a problem, minimising potential damage and allowing you to create a stable energy supply.
Ampersand has attracted attention with the use of its Solid State Transformer technology and this has resulted in investment from TDK Ventures. This funding is stated to be essential to remedying economic and logistical challenges that would otherwise ruin the development of this electrical infrastructure. This funding amounts to $12.5 Million and was raised in February 2024.
14. Oobit
Year Founded: 2019
HQ: Singapore
Size: 51-100
Founders: Amram Adar, Aharon Miller
Oobit is one of Singapore's leading cryptocurrency startups. Simply, it gives you the opportunity to pay for the majority of things in your life using cryptocurrency. All you need to do is download the app and set it up, from there you'll be able to pay in most stores using contactless payments with your crypto. Your crypto will be deducted based on how much is needed to meet the FIAT value of your transaction. You can also directly transfer money to your friends and family through the app too.
Oobit has recently secured startup funding in an effort to put in measures so it can target more mainstream customers. This round took place in February 2024 and it raised a total of $25 Million to facilitate expansion across the rest of Asia, into Latin-America and the UAE. All high-value potential markets.
15. Etaily
Year Founded: 2020
HQ: Singapore
Size: 101-250
Founders: Alexander Friedhoff
Etaily is one of the startups in Singapore that highlights its strength in e-commerce. It allows you as a retail brand to generate and build e-commerce solutions across all of your marketing channels. This allows you to win more customers by improving your conversion rates and minimising the amount of customer drop out.
Etaily's most recent investment round has been focused on generating capital that will allow it to expand further into other Asian markets, such as the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. This round took place in November 2023 and during this round, it raised a total of $17.8 Million.
16. Next Gen Foods
Year Founded: 2020
HQ: Singapore
Size: 51-100
Founders: Andre Menezes, Timo Recker
Next Gen Food, true to its name, is a Singaporean startup in the food market. If you want to make the switch to more sustainable, cruelty free-food but don't like the taste of current meat alternatives, try these. It has replacement products that mimic the crispness and flavour of chicken, as well as ice cream sundaes for if you have a bit more of a sweet tooth. It also has plans to expand new products into its production line in the future.
Trying to mimic distinct flavours such as ice cream and fried chicken requires a lot of expensive trial and error, in addition to this the market for meat replacements is incredibly competitive, with new brands constantly appearing. Significant capital is needed to open up this kind of operation to new markets, which is why in 2022 it raised $100 Million to expand its chicken replacement products to the USA and other markets.
17. Zklink
Year Founded: 2021
HQ: Singapore
Size: 11-50
Founders: Vincent Yang
Zklink is a Singaporean startup that was founded three years ago in 2021. It has developed and maintains cross-chain decentralised exchange that utilises zero-knowledge rollups. This allows you to access unlimited liquidity and start building on the first ZK Aggregated Layer 3. It is currently linked to seventeen networks and has facilitated more than two million transactions.
Singapore is one of the friendliest environments for finding funding for blockchain and Web 3.0 projects and Zklink has benefited from this. During a round in May 2023, it raised a total of $10 Million. This investment was used to accelerate hiring for the team and facilitate further acquisition of new customers.
18. Rainforest Life
Year Founded: 2020
HQ: Singapore
Size: 51-100
Founders: Jason Tan, JJ Chai, Per Ola Röst
Rainforest Life is another live example of a successful e-commerce startup in Singapore. It provides you with an aggregation and brand building service. It aims to target businesses in the mom and baby market for either acquisition or partnership. It brings a wide range of technological and market expertise to facilitate the rapid growth of the brands that it works with into well-known household names.
It's obvious that the process of acquiring and working with D2C brands to build their profile requires Rainforest Life to have significant operating capital. It has secured a lot of this capital through startup funding. Its most recent funding round took place in October 2023 and it raised $21.5 Million.
19. Partior
Year Founded: 2021
HQ: Singapore
Size: 101-250
Founders: Temasek
Partior is an interesting Singaporean startup in that it was founded by the Singaporean government in partnership with JP Morgan and multiple other global companies. It provides a way for you to easily update and transform your financial infrastructure so that you can provide real-time processing and settlement of payments using unified ledger technology. This means you no longer have to do any manual reconciliations.
Due to the connections that Partior had right from the start, securing funding to develop its underlying blockchain technology and launch the platform has not been difficult. Most recently, it secured a $31 Million Series A that took place in February 2023. This round was led by the UK bank, Standard Chartered.
20. SquareX
Year Founded: 2023
HQ: Singapore
Size: 1-10
Founders: Vivek Ramachandran
SquareX is a startup in Singapore that was founded last year and is showing massive signs of promise. Its value proposition is simple, it offers you a hassle-free and easy to download browser extension that helps to protect you from malicious content on the internet. One of the key differences is whilst most similar products block the files and content entirely, with SquareX you can open and analyse these files without having to worry about contaminating your network.
SquareX had clearly identified that it required external capital in order to realise its go-to-market strategy and continuously research and develop the browser extension and associated service. As a result of this, it took part in a Seed Round in May 2023, when it raised $6 Million. This round was led by Sequoia Capital SEA.
21. Startale Labs
Year Founded: 2023
HQ: Singapore
Size: 11-50
Founders: Sota Watanabe
Startale Labs operates in the Web 3.0 market and is a rapidly growing startup in Singapore. Startale Labs wants to drive widescale adoption in the market and to this effect, has focused on creating infrastructure and creating useful DApps. In addition to this, it supports the market further by incubating projects that also accelerate innovation and adoption within the space.
Developing new applications and financially supporting new projects within the space carry a heavy financial burden and also require high-quality employees. As a result of this, Startale Labs raised a total of $7 Million from a range of investors, including Samsung and UOB Venture Management to facilitate this.
FAQs
What Are The Strongest Startup Industries In Singapore?
The strongest startup industries in Singapore are Blockchain/Cryptocurrency, e-commerce and FinTech.
How Much Funding Do Singaporean Startups Raise?
Singaporean startups, in aggregate, raised $5.5 Billion in funding during 2023.
How Many Tech Startups Are There In Singapore?
Current estimates state that there are more than 4000 tech startups headquartered in Singapore.
