CIIP was pleased to participate in a conversation hosted by Bank of Singapore at Spotlight Singapore, alongside ecosystem partners and founders building from Singapore into Asia.

On a panel focused on ecosystem builders and accelerators, CIIP's Akhil Khurana shared perspectives on Singapore’s impact startup ecosystem and how CIIP, alongside Philanthropy Asia Alliance and Temasek Trust, supports impact ventures through the Amplifier programme. The Amplifier focuses on helping founders navigate early-stage trade-offs between scale, capital, and real-world impact.

Key insights from the discussion include:

💡 Asia is not a single market. While each geography resets assumptions around distribution, regulation, and trust, strong founders build on learnings from earlier markets rather than starting from scratch.
💡 We are seeing two parallel innovation tracks in Asia: deep, long-horizon technologies (e.g. energy and materials) and pragmatic applications of existing tech that improve how systems already operate.
💡 In practice, mentorship programmes like the Amplifier connect founders with seasoned business and investment leaders to pressure-test decisions around partners, prioritisation, and timing, before those choices become hard to unwind.
💡 Capital providers and funders play a key role in helping to empower startups and providing pathways toward significant growth and scale, helping momentum to build.

We are grateful to Bank of Singapore, Asia’s Global Private Bank, for this invitation and look forward to helping vital ideas deliver greater social and environmental impact.