The Singapore government is backing this Indian accelerator that promises to be a gateway for startups in the two countries

• Anthill Ventures, a ‘speed-scaling’ platform, has tied up with Singapore government’s Enterprise Singapore to give market access to startups from both countries.
  
• The program will benefit 18 startups every year.
  
• India has been a rising market for Southeast Asian investors, with many of them setting up shop in the country.

Anthill Ventures, an Indian ‘speed-scaling’ platform that funds startups and then helps them scale just got a big thumbs up from the Singapore government.

It has partnered with Enterprise Singapore, the government agency responsible for developing enterprises and fostering Singapore’s startup ecosystem.

The platform then announced the launch of A-Scale: an Asian market access programme for healthtech, mediatech and urbantech startups based in Singapore. The six-month speed-scaling programme is targeted to benefit 18 startups every year, giving them the required capital as well as access to business scaling use cases.

The Asian startup ecosystem has fast evolved to be on that has attracted funds and consumers both. According to a Deloitte report, the number of Asian startups that have raised funds has tripled and the investment amount has gone up five-fold in the last few years.

Many Indian startups are looking at South East Asia as a prime market and vice versa.

“Being a startup hub, Singapore was an easy choice to be the gateway to Anthill’s ecosystem. I envision A-Scale as the mothership of all our programs - to bring startups from HealthTech, UrbanTech & MediaTech in, and help then Scale with Speed through market access in Asia,” Prasad Vanga, founder and CEO of Anthill Ventures told Business Insider.

But how did a speed scaling platform manage to gain a partnership with the Singaporean government?

“In itself, Singapore may not provide the mass market opportunity that India and other Southeast Asian countries are. Anthill is able to provide these startups with market access connections in their target markets to help them scale,” said Vanga.

Under the partnership, Anthill has received a grant from Enterprise Singapore, which allows them to fund the necessary events & facilitate the right opportunities for the selected startups in the program.

India as a market has also attracted investors from South East Asia. While Softbank, Tencent, Temasek and others are the big ones that have entered the Indian market by investing in big startups, many others like Incubate Fund have also built an India office to take on the opportunity that Indian companies present.

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