Innovation Is Everywhere is looking forward to attend the InnovFest unBound event again this year on the 17th and 18th of May 2016 at Marina Bay Sands. These 2 days of conferences, startups competitions and exhibition is organized by NUS Enterprise and unBound Media, in partnership with the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore. It’ an anchor event of Singapore’s Smart Nation Innovations and it is one of our favorite events in Singapore as it gathers a large variety of innovators, from corporate and brand executives to startups, investors, government executives or researchers. In 2015, 3000 people had attended the event and 500 startups from all industries had showcased their product or service.
Breakdown of attendees in 2015 by job title
What we are looking for during the InnovFest event
During last year’s event, we had been really interested by the honest testimonials of two corporates, DBS and Orange Japan, which have worked with startups. They shared about the challenges and opportunities they have experienced when collaborating with startups through programs such as hackathons and accelerators. Again this year the hot topic of corporate innovation through collaboration with startups will be discussed and we are looking forward to it!
We were also impressed by the pitches of startups competing to disrupt the retail industry and those participating in the Unilever Scale Up Battle. We loved the winner of the competition, the startup Wobe that creates micro-business opportunities for women and minorities in Southeast Asia. The solution lets anyone with a basic smartphone and $10 to start a small business by selling phone airtime, performing ATM-like services and also conducting surveys. The Unilever Scale Up Battle will be back this year as well!
Most startups solutions for the retail industry were leveraging big data and analytics and trying to bridge the gap between the online and the offline world to improve the in-store customer experience. We picked 8 Asian startups we encountered during the InnovFest unBound last year here, including the startup Accufind with its software Buzzign which tries to connect social media with the physical stores or Graymatics, ABEJA and Trakomatic that are offering a better understanding of the consumer behavior at the physical stores by using technologies such as image and video recognition. .
Finally, to kick-off a new Modern Aging Singapore program to support entrepreneurs targeting the silver sector with a 50.000$ startup fund, launched during the InnovFest unBound 2015 by ACCESS Health International, a few conferences were focused on technology and marketing for the growing ageing market in Asia. This year the healthcare innovation and the smart city will be hot topics on the agenda again, as well as fintech, media and manufacturing innovations.
Innovation Is Everywhere is offering a 30% discount on delegate tickets for their reader. Register here and use the promo code “EVERYWHERE30SG”.
