Final “Booster Shot” for the Start-ups at THE HANGAR Booster Programme
Contributed by Rebecca Tan Li Qi
Invaluable questions, suggestions and directions from pitch mentors coupled with enthusiastic and confident responses from the start-ups filled the air on Zoom. A message of appreciation from our Programme Head and thank you texts from the start-ups flooded our Whatsapp group chat.
This was the scene on 6 July, the Showcase Day of the 4-week long THE HANGAR Booster Programme June run.
On this day, this cohort of start-ups pitched live to our specially curated panel of 4 experienced venture capitalists and angel investors — Chris Sirisereepaph from Saison Capital, Dr Ivan Choong from NUS Enterprise, Frank Lee from TechJDI and Huang Shao-Ning from Angel Central.
To make this finale a meaningful one, our Booster Programme Team experimented with the idea of a pitch simulation for the cohort. Our 4 pitch judges were each given an imaginary $1 million fund to “invest” in start-ups that were innovative, scalable and delivered convincing pitches. This gamified the pitch simulation, allowing the start-ups to absorb feedback and better understand their progress through experiential learning, making things much more exciting!
Presenting to you the start-ups in our June run:
Eduweave is a personalised platform that enables offline educators in Asia to digitalise lessons into an immersive live experience.
Focus Planet is an all-in-one productivity mobile application that helps college students and workers stay focused and disciplined for an extended period.
Husks Green is the first in the world to turn rice husks and natural binders into safe everyday wares that are free from harmful substances for everyone’s use while conserving Mother Earth.
Learnen is a comprehensive, engaging and effective edu-tech platform that enables primary school students to learn academic content at their own pace while elevating their learning outside of school.
LearnPal is a provider of personalised soft skills for primary school kids to train communication, negotiation and leadership.
Outwiths is a revolutionary digital portfolio platform that helps job seekers from all professions showcase their skill sets and helps employers remove time and technology barriers during the hiring process.
Probiotics Coffee Tea provides consumers with familiar beverages like coffee and tea, which are enhanced with healthy probiotics, making improvement of gut health convenient.
Shopform is a user-led social commerce platform that encourages people to share authentic reviews of direct-to-consumer (D2C) digital native fashion brands in order to help people make more informed decisions and create discoverability for brands.
TaCo, Taster Course SG curates immersive university mock lessons for students who lack exposure to the university options available and also aims to be the ultimate guide for students to understand various paths in university to prevent wastage of money, time and resources.
Taloobot offers a frictionless and intelligent Human Resource Management System (HRMS) platform to empower start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with lean and efficient Human Resource (HR) teams by equipping them with necessary tools and services at a low cost.
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Kudos to our mentors, advisors, and the Booster Programme Team for making THE HANGAR Booster Programme June run a success as it would not have been possible without their hard work the past few weeks (and even months) in curating this comprehensive programme aimed at boosting start-ups to greater heights.
Although the programme has ended, we continue to support these start-ups in the next stage of their entrepreneurial journey.
Want to have a fulfilling start-up learning experience, be part of a supportive community and boost your start-ups to greater heights? Stay tuned for the application for the next round of THE HANGAR Booster Programme in October 2021! Also, our next run of the NUS Enterprise Virtual Office Hours is open for application till 25 August 2021. If you are keen, register here now!
