Tan Shao Yen and Kush Agarwal were a mentor-mentee pairing in the Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition. Their organisations are now collaborating to explore the application of new technology in the built environment
In June this year, Singapore-based startup WaveScan announced it had secured a seven-figure amount in seed funding. The company, which specialises in non-destructive sensor systems for building maintenance and defect detection, plans to use the money to build the first version of its scanner system that can be integrated with automated robotic arms and crawlers.
That it should attract substantial investor interest should come as no surprise. Just three months prior, WaveScan won the SMU Chancellor Cup award at the Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition (LKYGBPC) organised by Singapore Management University (SMU) Institute of Innovation & Entrepreneurship (IIE).
“We got a personal invite for participating in the competition from the organisers, but we were going to participate in any case,” recalls Kush Agarwal, WaveScan’s founder and CEO. “It's usually good to get feedback from the external point of view, and that's what happened. We managed to closely engage with certain VCs and domain experts from real estate infrastructure, and they gave personalised feedback which we are now incorporating into WaveScan's business model.”
The mentor-mentee relationship
LKYGPBC organisers assigned WaveScan a mentor that operated in the same built environment sector: Tan Shao Yen, Group Chief Innovation Officer at Singapore-based consultancy services, infrastructure, and building management firm CPG Corporation.
“I was introduced to them as a mentor to guide them with the competition,” Shao Yen tells Perspectives@SMU. “What was interesting about Kush's proposition is how they have adapted technology [that] was used for [personnel] security scanning. They applied it to the built environment so we've taken an interest.”
He adds: “Kush is more of a scientist, so he applied this technology and he has started integrating it with A.I.. But we know that there are many other issues to think through such as: Who are the current stakeholders in this whole process? What is the process like? What are the pain points? What are the revenue streams and costs associated with the current processes?
“And there’s the regulatory regime: What regulations cover all this? Does it pose a constraint or a challenge for new technology to be applied? This is where CPG as the veteran in this built environment space can add value.”
“Prior to this competition, we have been thinking about sales and software as a subscription,” Kush says. “Now we are also experimenting with other sorts of business model, even for hardware as a subscription.
“We brainstormed on business models and actual pain points with the help of Shao Yen’s decades of experience and expertise. During the competition we were not able to deep dive in terms of use cases or how this technology can fit into multiple domains of inspection, maintenance, all of that.”
After the conclusion of the LKYGBPC, CPG and WaveScan signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to collaborate by exploring the application of WaveScan’s technology and product in the built environment sector.
“I think the real journey starts after the competition,” Shao Yen explains. “We were able to connect Kush with our different subsidiaries, and together they are working through the process.
“We’ve paired up two subsidiaries with WaveScan. One of them is in construction activity and the other [looks at what happens] after completion since Singapore law requires periodic inspection of structural safety. So our facilities management people are also working with Kush to look at this use case.”
Pressing on to the next edition
Shao Yen, who is also the President of Singapore’s Board of Architects, signed up as a mentor for the LKYGBPC not only to give back to society but also as a way of professional development.
“One of my roles as CIO is to move around and network with the innovation and entrepreneurial circles,” he elaborates. “At CPG, we have come to recognise that we will need to leverage on technology to optimise our current value propositions, our capabilities.
“I think the LKYGBPC is one of the best forums. It’s a very intense process, and in a short span of time the participants as well as the people who are involved are able to get exposed to a wide range ideas and possibilities, and then network.”
Until COVID-19 necessitated the change into a virtual format, the LKYGBPC Grand Finals had been planned to be a fully physical event. In-person mentorship meetings were converted to virtual meetings. Following the first mentoring session that the LKYGBPC team helped facilitate, startups were encouraged to continue the conversation and set follow-up meetings with the mentor if both parties found it beneficial.
While Kush found value in his discussions with Shao Yen and has forged ahead with real-world collaborations, the COVID-forced postponement of the LKYGBPC Grand Finals from 2020 to 2021 caused some confusion: Should participants initially classified in the ‘0 to 1’ or ‘1 to infinity’ categories stay there a year from their entry?
“When we went in, we were going in from the perspective of 0 to 1, but later on, we were in the growth stage,” Kush recalls. “We saw a lot of startups whom we were competing against that had a lot of revenue traction or were already in the market. They had a frozen business model and an existing list of recurring clients.”
LKYGBPC’s organisers, the SMU Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIE), explains that teams that are pre-revenue teams were put in the ‘0 to 1’ category while those revenue generating, up to Series A funding, went into ‘1 to infinity’. With the postponement, the organisers did some re-grouping to reflect how some of the startups may have progressed.
Organisers and participants alike dealing with COVID-wrought challenges. Here’s looking forward to the next edition of the competition, free of COVID-19.
The Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition Grand Finals were held on 19 March, 2021. The LKYGBPC was organised by the SMU Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIE).
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Last updated on 30 Jul 2021 .
