Sunway Innovation Labs (Sunway iLabs), the innovation arm of Sunway Group and Sunway University has concluded the fourth batch of its’ flagship Super Accelerator with a Demo Day where the top five startups pitched to a room of over 100 Angel investors,venture capitalists, and industry leaders.
The five startups, Swipey, YesHello, Beebag, Smart Clean and Lumirous were selected from a pool of over 120 startups that applied for the programme.
“Over the past few years, many pilot projects have been initiated to connect startups to the Sunway ecosystem, and with further funding opportunities given through our corporate venture capital arm, SunSEA Capital, and VCs that we actively partner with, like Kejora Capital, Gobi Partners, MAVCAP, Hive South East Asia, and Penjana Kapital. Sunway has invested over RM 200 million in startups and venture building over the last few years and we remain committed to equipping and enabling businesses in developing greater local innovations as part of our commitment to nation-building and advancing the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.” said Sunway Group CEO, Digital & Strategic Investments, Evan Cheah.
Over a period of four months, the startups benefited from over 50 hours of mentorships, sharing sessions conducted by founders and investors across the region, and introductions to Sunway’s business divisions. The selected top five startups received an investment of RM 250,000 (USD56,000) at the start of the accelerator with follow on funding of RM 180,000 (USD 40,000) after the Demo Day.
“Starting a company as a fresh graduate was challenging… there were so many things that you don’t know, and you’ll often find yourself overwhelmed. We’re super glad to have joined Sunway iLabs Super Accelerator. The programme was filled with practical workshops that equipped us with knowledge to better operate the company and maneuver around the startup ecosystem.” said co-founder of Beebag, Joel Lim.
As of the Demo Day, this batch of accelerator startups have run seven projects with the different Sunway business units and another five are in the planning stage.
“We look forward to work closely with the top 5 startups, as well as the ones that were in our pre-accelerator programme, on a number of well scoped out pilot projects in the Sunway ecosystem. This is exactly what makes our accelerator unique, as participating entrepreneurs can validate their business models in focused test beds and scale up their innovative solutions using Sunway’s extensive networks in the region.” said Sunway Group, chief innovation officer and Sunway iLabs, director Matt van Leeuwen.
This programme is supported by Sunway Group, Gobi Partners, Sunway University, Sun SEA Capital, MAVCAP, AWS, AdEasy, Bawatana, MDEC, Aliance Bank Biz Smart Solution, Stripe, Alevate, Xero, Rtist, BEAMSTART, Vase.ai, HubSpot and Law Partnership.
For more information on the startups and their progress, please visit https://innovationlabs.sunway.edu.my/accelerator/ or follow Sunway iLabs on Facebook and LinkedIn.