Daily Briefing: Singapore intensifies efforts to enhance startup ecosystem; Mobile payments firm Fave completes two strategic acquistions

And healthcare provider Alliance Healthcare Group (AHG) Limited seeks $4.5m in its IPO.

From Reuters:

Chng Kai Fong, managing director of Singapore’s Economic Development Board (EDB), the government agency tasked with negotiating some of those deals, said he is now gunning for “Jedi Masters” he hopes can finally elevate Singapore into a global tech hub.

Manufacturing, finance and insurance made up more than a third of Singapore’s US$356b economy in 2018 although the information-communications sector, into which tech firms would largely fall, was about 4%.

But it is growing faster than any other sector as Info-comm expanded at an annualised 6.6% in the first quarter of this year, whilst the next fastest of the nine sectors Singapore tracks was finance and insurance at 3.2%.

Lengthy tax holidays, hefty grants for research and development, co-funding for investments and land and rental deals are amongst the various government incentives and such deals have attracted some of the world’s biggest tech companies like Google, Facebook and Dyson.

The EDB has six offices in the United States, six in Europe, and locations in China, India, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia and says that 80 of the world’s top 100 tech firms have operations in Singapore.

Read more here.

From e27:

Singapore-based mobile payments and rewards platform Fave announced that it has acquired two table and takeaway ordering solutions including CutQ in Singapore and FoodTime in Malaysia, for an undisclosed fee.

With the acquisition, both companies will see its leadership team and product fully integrated into Fave’s regional platform.

Fave said that the acquisitions will provide the company with a localised foothold to increase its market share in Singapore and Malaysia. The company also hopes it will help its position as a loyalty food and beverage system provider for merchants and their customers in Southeast Asia.

Read more here.

From DealStreetAsia:

Singapore-based healthcare provider Alliance Healthcare Group (AHG) Limited is seeking to raise $4.5m (US$3.27m) in its initial public offering.

The listing and trading of AHG’s shares is expected on May 31, 2019 on the Singapore stock exchange’s Catalist board. The offering is priced at $0.20 apiece with 32.0 million shares on offer, including 1 million shares for the public.

AHG seeks to deploy the net proceeds to fund expansion of its network of clinics and for acquisitions, joint ventures, and strategic alliances.

The Alliance Healthcare Network currently has 16 GP clinics under the “My Family Clinic” name, one GP clinic under the “Lee Clinic Pte Ltd”, and five specialist clinics which it owns and operates in Singapore.

Read more here.