They chose to Start Here, at Techventure, in Singapore

Techventure attracted over 1,000 local and international participants, comprising more than 160 startups and 50 investors, 19 organisations and 13 countries this year.

While the conference featured some stellar speakers and panellists yesterday, the exhibition hall remained a hub of action and interaction for the conference delegates.

Startups, research institutions, and venture capital firms from Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, the UK, India, Thailand, the Philippines, and Taiwan, among others, had set up booths in the exhibition hall in Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre. Together, they represented initiatives in infocomm and digital media, biotech and medtech, engineering and manufacturing, environmental sustainability and others.

“Techventure 2015 is a great success and we found a large variety of Asian startups here,” said Chris Keen, Senior Associate, Taylor Vinters, a law firm in London, Cambridge and Singapore specialising in technology, investment and private client.

Professor Yoshika Sekine of Tokai University, Japan, was extremely happy with the kind of response he got at the conference. He was here to look for seed funding for his wellness monitoring device through human skin gases. “We have received enquiries from five to six venture capital firms,” he said. “We are very pleased with the response.”

Daniel Li, founder of an app Surpriseme, said he was overwhelmed with the response at the conference. “I had a fat stack of name cards and more than half of it is gone,” he said jubilantly. His app is still in the beta stage, supported by the Nanyang Technological University (NTU)’s NTUitive incubator. He was at the conference to look for partners and investors.

Most participants in the exhibition hall had similar positive reactions to share. A large number of visitors had kept them busy and they were looking forward to follow through the proposals that they had received.

The experiences of the investors, exhibitors and delegates alike underscored the event’s theme this year: to Start Here. That is, to bring your fledging business, an idea, or to test a concept at Techventure 2015. See you again in Singapore for Techventure 2016.