The Block Challenge by Block On and Venture Capital Network

About the event

The Block Challenge Event was a full-day event that took place on the 1st of March 2019, Friday at Marina One Auditorium. Organised by Block On Capital and co-organised by Venture Capital Network, Camelot and AlphaXlab. The purpose of the event was to help SMEs to adopt blockchain technology in their business. The mission was to bring Technology Experts, C-level Executives, Investors/VCs and Government officials together by bridging the gaps to expedite blockchain adoption in Singapore. This event created the opportunity for networking and communication between investors and projects.

About the speakers

There was a total of six blockchain-powered real business projects that were given the opportunity to showcase their riveting projects to the audience. Along with the projects, there was also other speakers. This included speakers from Block On, Venture Capital Network, Camelot and other invited guest speakers. At the third and final segment of the event, there were two panels. The two panel discussions focused on Fundraising Tips by VC and the other on Government perspective.

Keynote by Block On Capital — Jagdish Pandya

Jagdish Pandya, Chairman of Block On group took the stage. Block On Capital is Singapore-based Investment firm that focus on early stage investment in deep technology, blockchain & fintech. Block On Portfolio includes both traditional tech & blockchain tech companies. FTAG, one of the Block On Portfolio Companies, partnered with Founders Space (Silicon Valley-based Incubator & Accelerator) is heading Singapore Start-up Scene by mentoring & incubating Start-ups in the region. The speaker focused on things to watch out for in 2019 and trends for the next decade revolving around blockchain.

Keynote Venture Capital Network (VCN) — Janet Lee

VCN was represented by Janet Lee, CEO of VCN. Venture Capital Network is a Singapore based investment and capital management firm. They are into listings advisory & fundraising for both equity and token space. Janet mentioned that VCN is selective in their partnership. This is especially so when it comes to collaboration as the company stands true to their corporate core values — integrity and honesty. The company also does deal structuring for businesses and investors depending on their respective requirements from time to time to help in fundraising. VCN is currently looking at like-minded people to join them in building their VC Investment Fund. In a bear market like today, surprisingly she noticed some of the algo trading can still outperform market which is why some of the fund is channelled into crypto quantum trading. Additionally, if anyone has excess BTC, they can also lend out to earn some interest fee via their OTC lending channel instead of force sell to cash out at a loss. For more information, feel free to contact VCN directly.

Keynote by Camelot — Yew Seng LIM

The speaker, Yew Seng LIM, Chairman of Camelot introduced BlockBASIC Asia Forum which is established to connect people interested in Blockchain and advance digital technologies to share and discuss current challenges, and through entrepreneurial ventures, explore the potential advantages of their combined use and development for the good of mankind. They expect to create synergistic advanced digital technology companies in sectors such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Security, Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud Computing & Data Analytics to create huge value for enterprises by solving critical pain points.

Irene Boey — SME Centre @ ASME

Irene Boey, VP (Strategies and Development) and Chairman, SME Centre@ASME, presented this talk. She focused on challenges for SMEs in Singapore, technologies and some government programs to help SMEs. She highlighted that SME Centre @ ASME is within a network of Centres that assist SMEs on business upgrading.

Alex Siow — NUS Professor

Professor Alex Siow (NUS, School of Computing) presented a talk on ‘How to adopt blockchain technology for your business’. He gave an overview of the fundamentals, the technology, cryptocurrency and trading hands-on and blockchain for business.

Vishal Batra — CTO, FreightChain

The speaker presented on Blockchain Technologies & Beyond (IBM Hyperledger). He provided insightful information on Blockchain, including public and permissioned blockchain networks, enterprise blockchain technologies, other emerging technologies on blockchain and a use case evaluation.

Gan Fong Jek — Jubilee Capital Management (JCM)

The speaker focused on JCM’s perspective of blockchain trend 2019. He provided an introduction about JCM and portfolio, after which he highlighted their VC perspective of blockchain trend and market outlook. He wrapped his talk by mentioning their investment criteria the 7 “S” into Solution, Scalability, Security, Superior Team, Sustainability, Structure and Successful Exit. His interest areas also include STO being the next trend in investment.

Nisha Ramisetty — Director of FBS, Dubai World Trade Centre

The speaker presented on Blockchain Initiative by the Dubai Government. She highlighted on how Dubai will be the first city fully powered by blockchain by 2020. She shared detailed information on the future blockchain summit event that was scheduled to be on the 02–03 April 2019.

WhatsHalal

This project focuses on each stage in the life cycle of a food item or product, ensuring that the conditions that the item was produced is established with certainty. Blockchain technology greatly improved integrating halal traceability. This ensures that the movements of an ingredient or product can be tracked even as it changes hands. This creative and practical system intrigued many in the audience.

Rapidz

This project focuses on making payment easy and secure for anybody, anywhere. It brings global payments to its users with ease and efficiency through web application, mobile application and POS.

EWATech

EWATech is a Greentech company that is building self-sustaining communities across Asia and beyond. Their unique business model is the Oasis+ ecosystem. This ecosystem is an integrated healthy lifestyle concept that empowers sustainable smart home with the OASIS+ core technologies in water, air and energy in a home. They incorporate blockchain technology and tokenomics into their ecosystem. The vision is to create a sustainable business using green technologies that enhance health of communities in Asia. Additionally, the company mission is to connect People & Empowering Lives with OASIS+ Technologies by building sustainable solutions such as filtered drinking water, clean air & renewable energy. Through EWATech platform, people in ASIA can get affordable healthy basic needs in water and energy. They aim to be a dominant supplier of green technologies that enhance human sustainability.

Jeremy Khoo — Managing Partner, CRC Capital

The speaker presented on investing into blockchain innovation. He introduced the investment teams and highlighted the general trend of investment into tokens. He shared a few news articles to encourage blockchain start-ups. He wrapped up his presentation by mentioning that blockchain start-ups can be more attractive investments than the rest.

Octera Technologies

This project strongly believes in a future where innovation is accessible and affordable to every individual and organisation. OCTERA CIBBS© is the first accounting platform to integrate distributed ledger technology in order to solve three main issues facing the existing accounting framework: trust between parties, revenue collection issues, and complex and expensive audit processes. Octera Technologies is entering the accounting software market with the objective of listening to what are the current needs across the business sectors and with a set of ambitions aiming to emancipate the current accounting system. The vision of Octera Technologies is to revolutionize the ways of doing business today through modern technology of Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence and become a world leader in business solutions by 2025. Their mission is to enable easy trustworthy transactions between B2B and B2G and help organizations boost productivity by de-cluttering multi-tiered structures and tearing down on bureaucracy.

Longxing Mining (Minerals)

The platform is to apply blockchain technology to mining assets trading, upgrade the traditional local and offline trading mode to global and online trading. In the future, with the help of Longxing resource trading platform, online iron ore, coal mine, non-ferrous metals, rare technology and other resources mineral chain and trading can be completed only with digital money.

Asia Token Fund (AFT)

AFT is a one stop solution platform for fundraising with media ecosystem. It provides tokenization solution to SMEs, Crypto wallet, Token issuance, Market Analysis, Rating and Polls. It also offers security tokens and STO comprising of world’s first combination platform ecosystem of media, digital asset wallet and token issuance platform. Its mission is to enable real companies to tokenize their business and the biggest user platform for cryptocurrency usage ecosystem.

Wendy Bee Hoay Yew — CEO Of Walletton & Hon. President of BETAS

BETAS is the Blockchain and Emerging Tech Association of Singapore. It is adoption focused, partnership driven and provides real content by simplification. First of its kind, BETAS is focused on learning and the creation of new business models based on new and emerging tech to achieve greater yields. It creates unique partnerships and simplifies real content to make it easier and quicker for clients.

Panel Discussions

The event included two panel discussions towards the end of the event. The first panel discussion focused on fundraising tips by Investors, VCs and successfully funded founders. The moderator was Andee Chua (Members Success & Partnerships, Found8). The panellists were Aaron Tay (General Partner, Circuit Capital), Peter Yeo (Co-founder, XinFin Protocol), Anthony Lai (CEO of W.B Fleming) and Hong Qi Yu (CEO of Tokenize Exchange). The panelists mentioned that the ICO space is good for start-ups as it is an alternative way to raise funds and it serves as a mechanism for fund-raising. They also discussed the difference between fundraising with blockchain technology and traditional fundraising. The panel brought up that POW stage is a better time to raise fund for projects. Lastly, the panellist discussed how to increase the chances of getting funded by VCs and investors for blockchain projects.

The second panel discussion focused on Government perspective of Blockchain — SG, Dubai, China, Malaysia and Thailand. The moderator was Jagdish Pandya (Chairman of Block On Group). The panellists were Rose Sim (Tax Partner, PWC), Yew Seng LIM (Chairman of Camelot) and Hayk Hakobyan (Partner at Vision Capital and Expert-in-residence at SOSV). The panelists agreed that Singapore is one of the hotspots for Blockchain Technology and implementation. Additionally, countries such as France, British Virgin Island and Hong Kong were mentioned for having more politically friendly regulations on blockchain implementation. The panellists were also asked to express their opinion on whether they think all government services will be replaced by blockchain for better transparency and security and if there are enough government initiatives for SMEs to transform their business with blockchain.

Awards

Investor’s Choice Award was presented to Octera Technologies while Community’s Choice Award was presented to EWATech. EWATech was the overall recipient of the Block Challenge Award and had the honor of winning a Dubai Future Blockchain Submit Ticket Worth US$2600 sponsored by Camelot company.

All in the audience were also given the chance to participate in a lucky draw. Justin Ong was the winner of the lucky draw, winning a free app design sponsored by Block On & AlphaXLab.

Concluding comments

Overall, the entire event was successful. Prior to the commencement of the event and after the event ended, many investors and project speakers continued to mingle and associate forming strong networks. This insightful event allowed for enjoyable and engaging conversations between investors, project speakers and others who were present. We look forward to such remarkable events in the future that provide the necessary platform to connect investors and projects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMvzXR7qFmA&feature=youtu.be

Please feel free to contact us for the projects’ detailed information or browse our website for the more information. (www.vc-network.org)