How Temasek Foundation funds sustainability innovations and startups

Criteria for selection include desirability, feasibility, and viability of businesses.

Small businesses in Singapore that are entering the “valley of death” phase may still survive through the Temasek Foundation, which funds businesses that have innovations in sustainability.

But before they get funded, Temasek Foundation has set criteria for choosing which businesses to fund. Lim Hock Chuan, head of programmes at Temasek Foundation, said the criteria are: desirability, feasibility, and viability.

Under desirability, Lim said they assess the businesses’ aim to solve a particular issue. As for feasibility, it is important that the business can indeed develop the solution.

“Also, we look at whether there are regulatory issues that you need to address. What is the technology that’s out there from your competitors?” Lim told the Singapore Business Review.

The last criterion is the financial viability or affordability of a business solution or product, he said. “For example, if you say that I can produce a plastic bag that can solve all the problems we have today, but each plastic bag costs $5, then it’s not financially viable,” he explained.

When asked which of the three criteria is the most difficult, Lim said some applicants have a difficult time explaining the technical feasibility and business viability of their innovation.

But that does not mean Temasek Foundation will not help these businesses.

Another form of assistance Temasek Foundation can provide is to find a testbed for their product and navigate the regulatory environment.

This way, businesses will be introduced to experts or other organisations that could partner with them or mentor them in improving their operations, Lim said.

After these three steps, the businesses will then be introduced to investors to create an operational prototype.

“We help small businesses in the innovation space, and bring the ideas and research from the lab into the community to produce goods and services that will benefit the community,” said Lim.

Success stories

An example of a business that Temasek Foundation has helped is NEU Battery Materials, a startup that recycles old lithium batteries to produce battery-grade raw materials.

The company uses a patented scalable technology that employs electrochemical separation to recycle lithium batteries cleanly and sustainably.

According to Lim, the process has very minimal carbon emissions and waste. He added that the project addresses both energy and carbon footprint issues.

So far, since it began in 2016, Temasek Foundation has helped 55 businesses with sustainability innovations, providing them with a total of $44m in grants and attracting $424m in follow-on funding.

Businesses decarbonisation

This year’s edition of Temasek Foundation’s The Liveability Challenge (TLC), which was launched in 2018, helps support start-ups that have ideas for decarbonisation to fulfill Singapore’s net zero targets in 2050.

They contribute to this by launching the TLC every year, drawing 600 applications from 80 different countries. One of the applicants is the startup, Equatic, funded by Temasek Foundation, to help the business create a scalable process that removes carbon dioxide from the ocean.

“This is an example of a kind of project that tackles the removal of carbon and when we do that, we’re well on our way to meet our net zero emission target for Singapore,” said Lim.

TLC’s sixth edition included ocean ecosystem solutions as a focus area for the first time and doubled the grant funding to $2m – a million-dollar prize each for two tracks such as climate change and food & nutrition.

Under climate change, the focus is on disruptive innovations that can decarbonise energy generations and industries, and capture and use carbon to create scalable products for global markets.

Under food & nutrition, those considered are disruptive innovations that can establish circular urban agriculture or aquaculture, or alternative protein systems.

The finalist programmes represent a wide range of solutions that have the potential to significantly address the devastating impacts of the climate crisis, from decarbonising the economy, to improve the food and nutrition systems that Asia so heavily depends on.