{
  "id": 17018456,
  "title": "LKYGBPC returns with a pitch to fix deeptech’s real bottleneck: customers",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/29/lkygbpc-returns-with-a-pitch-to-fix-deeptechs-real-bottleneck",
  "topic": "business",
  "section": "Business",
  "published": "2026-10-29T06:00:33.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "e27",
    "slug": "e27",
    "url": "https://e27.co/lkygbpc-returns-with-a-pitch-to-fix-deeptechs-real-bottleneck-customers-20261028/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Deep-tech founders in Southeast Asia face a common obstacle: securing customers for their unproven technologies. The Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition (LKYGBPC) at Singapore Management University (SMU) aims to address this gap. The 13th edition of the competition, which opened applications on Wednesday, offers university founders and recent graduates working on urban and sustainability problems the chance to compete for over SGD2.5 million (US$2 million) in prizes. Selected finalists can then join SMU's Urban SustaInnovator (USI) accelerator, which provides market access, pilot projects, and introductions across Asia. The competition covers 12 focus areas, including climate-tech, energy, urban mobility, and sustainable materials. The US$10 million USI Fund SMU IIE, launched in May, will back ventures as they pilot and scale. SMU's evidence comes from three 12th-edition finalists, including Malaysian agritech Qarbotech, which turns agricultural waste into productivity-boosting compounds. Qarbotech is currently piloting its technology with a large sugar cane plantation in the Philippines and plans to launch in another Southeast Asian market. Another finalist, Singapore-based Standard Physics, combines real-time IoT sensor data with computational fluid dynamics to help buildings and data centres cut energy use. The company has secured a pilot with The GEAR, a Singapore innovation hub of Japanese construction giant Kajima, and is discussing three more. The third finalist, Cambridge-based Mimicrete, is developing self-healing concrete that extends infrastructure lifespan and cuts maintenance and carbon. These pilot stories are encouraging, but they represent only a hypothesis and not recurring revenue. A 12-month trial is not enough to achieve scale, especially in Southeast Asia, where corporates are better at starting trials than signing purchase orders. SMU's pitch to founders is that it can carry them beyond Singapore, leveraging its overseas centres and International Advisory Councils to forge connections that enable startups to cross borders.",
  "summary": "Ask a deeptech founder in Southeast Asia what keeps them up at night and few will blame the science. The harder problem is finding someone willing to let an unproven technology loose on a real building, a real plantation or a real data centre and then pay for it. That is the gap Singapore Management […] The post LKYGBPC returns with a pitch to fix deeptech’s real bottleneck: customers appeared…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}