SINGAPORE - Tribe Accelerator, a homegrown blockchain accelerator backed by Enterprise Singapore, on Wednesday announced that IBM, Citibank and Ubisoft have come on board as corporate partners for the second edition of its four-month programme.
The accelerator helps growth-stage start-ups bring their blockchain solutions to market and scale internationally, by connecting them with global corporations.
These innovative, market-ready blockchain solutions can either be integrated into existing business units or tailored as end-user products for everyday consumers to tackle real-world problems.
The addition of IBM, Citi and Ubisoft into the corporate partnership-base will give participating start-ups greater access to international markets and resources beyond Singapore, Tribe Accelerator said.
Its second cohort of participating start-ups comes from industries such as media and advertising, cybersecurity, healthcare, fintech and supply-chain management.
They include Binance-backed Torus, a digital identity and password management firm; Bluzelle, which provides a distributed open-source database service; on-demand telehealth start-up WhiteCoat; SGInnovate-backed Irish start-up AID:Tech which delivers international aid using blockchain; and customer loyalty management platform Aqilliz.
For its inaugural cohort completed in July this year, Tribe Accelerator helped the companies raise over S$16.8 million within three months on a global demo-tour across Singapore, Shanghai, Seoul and San Francisco. It also integrated Singapore's GovTech OpenCerts, a national platform for issuing and validating academic certificates that are tamper-resistant, with promising start-ups.
Since the programme's launch last year, it has garnered support from government and corporate partners including AXA, BMW Group Asia, Intel, R3, Singapore's Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), Nielsen, PwC, and Temasek.
Ng Yi Ming, managing partner at Tribe Accelerator, said on Wednesday: "The success of the inaugural batch far surpassed our initial expectations. By ensuring all parties are aligned with a common objective, it has greatly reduced information overlaps and made solution integration prompt."
Carl Wegner, managing director and head of Asia at enterprise blockchain software firm R3, one of the partners with the accelerator, said: "Tribe Accelerator has displayed its ability to solve real business problems in complex and highly regulated markets, and has been able to identify tangible use-cases for blockchain."
The accelerator is one of three initiatives under the rebranded Tribe organisation, alongside OpenNodes, a web-based engagement platform to connect government agencies, corporates and blockchain firms, as well as Tribe Code, a blockchain programming academy.
This three-pronged approach will allow Tribe to better tackle different gaps in Singapore's maturing blockchain ecosystem, it said on Wednesday (Sept 18).
