You may be a mid-career professional who has dreams of making a bigger impact by starting a deep-tech business. Or you could be an entrepreneur who is seeking new horizons.
Good news if you are NUS alumni. The funding and the proven deep tech venture creation framework offered by the NUS Graduate Research Innovation Programme (GRIP) have been extended to alumni.
Under GRIP, participating teams benefit from a series of workshops, mentorships, industry linkages and incubation support over one year to develop commercially viable and investable deep tech start-ups. In March 2024, NUS announced that it will boost funding support from $100,000 to $250,000 for start-ups demonstrating high commercial potential to accelerate their growth.
It is part of a larger $20 million investment from NUS to turn deep-tech research into market solutions, where $10 million will go towards GRIP while another $10 million will be used to create the new Innovation Fellowship and Venture Creation Awards.
EXCEPTIONAL MID-LIFE ENTREPRENEURS
On the move to extend GRIP to NUS alumni, NUS Associate Vice President (Enterprise) Associate Professor Benjamin Tee, who is passionate about nurturing potential entrepreneurs, explained: “Alumni are a critical part of our innovation and enterprise ecosystem. NUS has over 350,000 alumni who are now based all over the world. They are an important extension of our university network, and many of them would have significant resources and their own networks to think about entrepreneurship.”
He added, “We are really looking at mid-career professionals, who are looking beyond a 9-to-5 job and who want the challenge of building something from zero to one.”
In addition to receiving mentorship from GRIP mentors, who offered valuable business and technical guidance, he also attributed his success in establishing a presence in Vietnam to the credibility associated with the NUS brand.
Said Mr Yong, who hails from a family of entrepreneurs, “If I had tried to do it myself, it would have been hard. But the fact that Forte Biotech was a GRIP team enabled doors to open more easily.” On this note, Prof Tee emphasised: “Alumni who join us will be leveraging a foundation we have laid over five years.”
Participating alumni do not necessarily have to form a team on their own. Based on their ideas and skillsets, they could be matched with other participants who may include post-graduate students and professors to “create a diverse team with diverse skill sets”.
He added, “There’s also the idea of engagement. Getting involved in GRIP provides another avenue for alumni to socialise and to become mentors, to contribute back to their alma mater.”
Creating or being part of a deep tech start-up could be a life-changing experience for alumni who are seeking greater meaning.
Prof Tee said, “We talk about deep tech because if successful, it has a very long-lasting impact. We are solving huge challenging problems in areas like climate change and health. Being able to capture more ideas from our alumni really helps to increase the opportunities for social impact.”
