✦ At its third annual OktoberTech Asia Pacific 2021 event, the company signed separate collaborations with CapitaLand Investment and Hyundai Motor Group to give a boost to startups with innovations that can make life easier, safer, and greener.
German semiconductor giant, Infineon Technologies, announced on 27 October, 2021 separate collaborations with Asian industry giants, CapitaLand Investment of Singapore and South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group, to empower startups in Asia to develop innovations in sustainability, future mobility, smart cities, and smart factory.
Speaking to reporters at a hybrid media briefing, President and Managing Director of Infineon Technologies Asia Pacific Mr. C.S. Chua, said that this marked the first time Infineon is collaborating with these titans of the industry to help startups deliver innovations that can make life easier, safer, and greener.
Celebrating the signing of the Infineon-Hyundai Motor Group MOU: (from left): Mr Chua Chee Seong, President and Managing Director, Infineon Technologies Asia Pacific; Mr. Lee Seung Soo, Vice President and Managing Director, Infineon Korea; Mr. Gan Kim Yong, Minister for Trade and Industry, Government of Singapore; Dr. Hwang Yun Seong, Vice President, Head of Open Innovation Investment Group, Hyundai Motor Group; and Dr. Helmut Gassel, Chief Marketing Officer and Member of the management board, Infineon Technologies AG.
Here is the complete breakdown of why Infineon’s collaborations with CapitaLand Investment and Hyundai Motor Group are stirring up excitement within the startup community:
1. Possible real-world applications by CapitaLand Investment and Hyundai Motor Group
In order to appreciate the significance of these collaborations, let us first try to understand what these companies actually do.
Listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FSE), Infineon makes products that include sensors, microcontrollers, memories, power semiconductors, and connectivity for use in Wifi, bluetooth, and USB.
CapitaLand Investment, listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX) securities trading, is one of Asia’s leading listed real estate investment managers (REIM) and one of the largest REIM in the world. Its markets include Europe, Asia such as Singapore, China and India, and the United States.
Hyundai Motor Group is a global company with business in automobiles, steel, and construction, and is present in nearly 48 countries around the world.
With the help of the collaborations, Infineon can help startups develop technologically possible products into marketable products – yes, that’s a way of saying technological products that are reliable and are of good quality, performance and value – while CapitaLand Investment and Hyundai Motor Group can guide the startups on the real-world application of their innovations in various areas of smart cities.
Guest-of-Honor Mr. Gan Kim Yong, Minister for Trade and Industry (third from right) and Dr. Helmut Gassel, Chief Marketing Office at Infineon Technologies AG (fourth from right) listening to a demonstration of the autonomous mobile robot and how it can help to streamline work processes and increase process equipment utilization in a smart factory. This solution is among nine innovations showcased onsite while another 22 innovations are presented virtually at the OktoberTech Asia Pacific 2021 hybrid event.
2. Startups won’t lose their intellectual property but what will they get?
The kind of support that startups will receive include guidance and support that is entirely non-monetary. Infineon’s Mr. Chua had made it clear in the media briefing that the company will not be pursuing a stake in the startups.
While explaining what Infineon and Hyundai plan to do, he said: “As a start, Infineon will work with Hyundai to nurture selected startups from Singapore and Korea in order to discover innovative technologies for Southeast Asian markets. We will be looking at startups with innovations that can incorporate Infineon’s microelectronics. Our experts will provide technological support and mentoring to the startups before they go work on proof-of-concept projects with Hyundai.”
“From Infineon’s and Hyundai’s communities of startups, we will offer the opportunity to a select group to be part of Infineon’s Co-Innovation Space in Singapore. This Co-Innovation Space is a 12-month commitment during which Infineon’s experts will provide startups with insights into how they can improve and ready their innovations for the global market. For these startups, this experience will be highly valuable as they want to deliver solutions with high quality, reliability, performance, and value for the global market.”
He added: “Our experts are highly experienced in our own internal R&D projects and manufacturing such as the smart factory here in Singapore. We are even willing to share our customer or partner connections with these startups whenever necessary. This is an important point as one of the biggest challenges that startups face is producing a product in very small quantities, as no one wants to make it.”
In short, startups who are eventually selected by Hyundai, CapitaLand and Infineon can turn their prototypes into products for commercial use in specific real-world environments.
3. The real-world environments: Sustainability, future mobility, smart cities, and smart factories.
Essentially, Infineon’s strategy has been guided by global megatrends shaping the world today and tomorrow. These megatrends include demographic and social change, climate change and scarce resources, urbanization, and digital transformation. Based on these megatrends, the company is placing its bets on growth areas such as energy efficiency, mobility, security, Internet of Things (IoT), and big data.
While all that sounds fanciful, what it means is startups who have innovations that can enable a specific user, let’s say, an urban farmer, to make better use of energy and water for their crops, can also aim to be part of CapitaLand Investment and Infineon’s innovation ecosystem.
Mr, Chua said: “From Infineon’s perspective, we will evaluate if these innovations can incorporate Infineon’s microelectronics such as sensors, microcontrollers, memories, power semiconductors, and connectivity into their solutions.”
The collaborator, CapitaLand Investment, on the other hand, will evaluate if these solutions by startups could be applied for industry deployment in any of their urban environments.
Giving a thumbs-up to the Infineon-CapitaLand Investment MOU: (from left) Mr. Chua Chee Seong, President and Managing Director, Infineon Technologies Asia Pacific; Mr. Rohit Girdhar, Vice President, Strategy and M&A, Infineon Technologies Asia Pacific; Mr. Gan Kim Yong, Minister for Trade and Industry, Government of Singapore; Mr. Alwyn Tan, Chief customer solutions, CapitaLand Investment; and Dr. Helmut Gassel, Chief Marketing Officer and Member of the management board, Infineon Technologies AG
Wait, it gets better - the startups selected by CapitaLand Investment and Infineon could potentially use CapitaLand Investment’s Smart Urban Co-Innovation Lab as a living lab for their solutions! For those who do not know, this Lab created by CapitaLand Investment in Singapore Science Park and has other global names such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Johnson Controls, Schneider Electric, TPG Telecom and Vizzio.AI as its partners.
So, if you’re a startup with successful prototypes geared towards sustainability, future mobility, smart cities, or smart factory, you might want to be part of Infineon’s community.
All the best!
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Infineon Technologies Asia Pacific
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