ICE71, the region’s first hub for cyber security entrepreneurs and start-ups, has strengthened start-ups’ ability to secure funding through ICE71 Accelerate, a three-month accelerator programme for early-stage cyber security start-ups. Since the programme’s inception in July 2018, 16 of the start-ups from the previous cohorts have collectively raised S$18 million, including funding from ICE71’s founding partners Singtel Innov8 and NUS Enterprise.
Today, nine cyber security start-ups from ICE71’s (Innovation Cybersecurity Ecosystem at BLOCK71) latest cohort were given the opportunity to pitch their companies and solutions to potential investors, partners and customers via a virtual Demo Day (view here). The event is particularly relevant given the increasing cyber threats related to data security and privacy as companies accelerate their digitalisation and more people study or work from home during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. These challenges have driven even greater demand globally for cyber security solutions that can help mitigate these risks.
Given the cautious investment climate during this COVID-19 pandemic, cyber security start-ups face greater challenges in getting investors to fund their ventures. With ICE71’s resources, start-ups can leverage its capabilities in mentoring and connecting them to an ecosystem of investors, partners and customers.
Mr Edgar Hardless, CEO of Singtel Innov8, said, “The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the start-up ecosystem, making it extremely difficult for start-ups to connect to investors to get funding and grow their businesses. This underscores the value of the cyber security community and network of start-ups, investors, partners and customers that Innov8 has helped ICE71 create over the past two years. ICE71’s virtual Demo Day provides our Cohort 4 start-ups a great way to showcase their technology and solutions to potential customers and investors, both locally and internationally.”
Professor Freddy Boey, NUS Deputy President (Innovation and Enterprise), said, “The emergence of new challenges in these unprecedented times has presented ample opportunity for cyber security entrepreneurs to create innovative solutions. As cyber security is even more crucial than before, we need strong synergy in our ecosystem to collectively address sophisticated cyber threats. NUS and Singtel have been working closely to help strengthen our defences, having made a breakthrough under the NUS-Singtel Cyber Security Lab last year. Through ICE71’s programmes, we continue our efforts in developing industry-relevant programmes and platforms to help our start-ups go to market more quickly. We will continue to offer the resources to help cyber security entrepreneurs accelerate in their growth and expand our ecosystem with support from the Government and our industry partners.”
Hailing from Singapore, Australia, Israel, the UK, the US and Poland, the current cohort of nine start-ups has developed a range of cyber security solutions that are applicable to businesses, governments and consumers. Please refer to the fact sheet in Annex A for more information on each of these start-ups.
To deliver the ICE71 Accelerate programme, ICE71 partnered with CyLon, a dedicated cybersecurity accelerator from London, UK.
To date, ICE71 Accelerate has supported a total of 34 cyber security start-ups through four cohorts, with the aim of strengthening Singapore’s growing cyber security ecosystem by attracting and developing cybersecurity start-ups with innovative competencies and new technologies. ICE71 will continue to support these start-ups through both the ICE71 Scale programme and ICE71 Community initiatives, giving them access to incubation facilities, leadership development and expert speaker programmes, networking events and the region’s leading cyber security community of investors, strategic partners, enterprises, government agencies and cyber security experts.
