2020 COVID highlighted the fragility & interconnectedness of our global ecosystems, illustrating how actions in one place can have ripple effects all around the world. In the same light, it has also shown how if we work together we can rapidly develop groundbreaking solutions. 2020 gave us a unique opportunity to highlight the importance of keeping this global spirit and developing the tools, technologies and processes to drive true change for the long term. Our belief that business and entrepreneurship is the only thing that can change the world has never been stronger. We’ve also seen first hand just how disparate the world is with the challenges of one city / country or economic group differing rapidly from another — further emphasising the importance of investing in & developing more equitable, sustainable and scalable businesses.

In an unprecedented year we doubled down on our promise to continue to back the very best game changers (founders) from around the world. We had a record breaking year in terms of number of investments, partnerships secured and hours of zoom calls! We made a commitment at the start of the year to ensure no job loss at Brinc and delivered that promise across all offices. Our global accelerator teams worked harder then ever to push our programs online (and host online demo days) and our global management & business development teams learned that business does get done online and that less travel permits a different type of stability and balance. It was a year for the history books and one that we will never forget.

Here’s a recap of the year gone by:

Please note this is a pretty long overview of all our invested teams this year — if you are already caught up on the portfolio and want Brinc news, scroll down otherwise we encourage you to spend some time and learn about the game changing founders we got a chance to back and work with this year…

Investment Round Up

In 2020 we had 26 teams raise follow on rounds with the average follow on growing to 1.1M USD (up from 800k in previous years). The portfolio also got a lot more global, as we were able to source & work with teams from all around the world with our programs going online this year, now with founders from over 35 countries.

Australia Program, run on a rolling basis:

• Space Industries(Australia) — Space Industries is developing mining technologies to produce Helium 3 for use on Earth along with other elements to sustain life on other planets including the Moon.

• Wildfire Energy (Australia) — Wildfire Energy’s solution is called MIHG, a simple process which converts waste into electricity and hydrogen, with negative carbon emissions. Wildfire Energy has developed modular plants which can be rapidly deployed and used to convert waste into renewable energy products at very low cost. This makes Wildfire Energy’s solutions ideally suited for improving waste management in outer urban, regional and remote communities, where landfill is currently the only option.

Hong Kong Programs:

• Laava Tech (USA) — Laava Tech develops and manufactures smart LED lighting solutions for a variety of industries including vertical and hydroponics farms and insect protein operations. Their proprietary combination of hardware and software optimises the light output of LED grow lights to give each plant optimal growing conditions. Their technology helps indoor farmers decrease lighting energy consumption by up to 90% compared to existing systems as well as increase yield by up to 20%.

• Z Imaging (USA) — Z Imaging develops surgical navigation and robotic tools for emergency neurosurgery. Their platform Zeta provides surgeons with an unparalleled ability to easily operate on patients with complex pathologies such as stroke and hydrocephalus. The company was born at and is partnered with Harvard University/Brigham and Women’s Hospital and has been backed by investors such as Y Combinator and Plug and Play.

• MyrLabs (Singapore) — MyrLabs is an A*STAR spinoff whose mission is to create cutting edge capabilities to enable next-generation robotics. Their main product is an indoor positioning system for fast-moving robots, drones, and indoor applications. The technology uses wireless signals and is designed to be an add-on for robots to overcome the limitations of LIDAR-based navigation. This enables robots to operate in areas with glass, in crowds, and in large robot swarms effectively. With their positioning system, robots are freed from their fixed paths and can autonomously roam in air or on the ground at high speeds.

• TROES (Canada) — TROES is developing advanced power energy storage technology and products to help middle market power distributors and power consumers solve their pain points from conventional energy grid such as high utility bills, unreliable power or capacity shortage. The company owns proprietary design and IP, has technology commercialised, sold and deployed in three countries and makes positive EBITA.

• iMAGsystems(Australia) — iMAG systems is a PRO AV manufacturer. They facilitate communication using audio visual materials in spaces like corporate meetings, education institutions, entertainment venues, medical facilities and retail spaces. Their AV over IP technology delivers audio and video signals using networking technology to allow organisations to use their existing cabling infrastructure. Their software, Director facilitates quicker deployment, watch dog like monitoring, analytics, automation and a suite of tools to provide a level of insight that keeps the AV working all the time. Additionally they license their software technology to brand manufacturers to accelerate entry to market.

• STYCKR (France/USA) — STYCKR is an end-to-end risk management solution offering a highly versatile and totally autonomous system that ensures information continuity by collecting and treating big data (geo-positioning, temperature, humidity, shocks, pressure, etc.). The company’s strong algorithm supervises fleets, predicts endogene & exogene risks, and detects malicious and fraudulent networks.

• UpperMed (Singapore) — UpperMed is dedicated to improving the quality of life for peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients, bringing modern technology and service to all PD patients to automate the setup of the heavy dialysate, data logging, and infection control in one package. Patients can choose to conduct dialysis at any space outside the home without external help.

• Fybraworks (USA) — Fybraworks Foods is developing game changing technologies to produce recombinant animal-free muscle proteins and next-gen protein ingredients that mimic the taste and structure of meat through fermentation.

• Orbillion Bio (USA) — Orbillion Bio finds the best cell lines and increases the yield of cultivated meat. Their proprietary methods allow them to grow cells 2x faster, with 30% longer proliferation. They have the capacity to screen (high throughput screening) 1000s of cell lines per day. They focus on cell isolation, cell expansion, cryopreservation, longevity, optimisation, and cell banking. Their objective is to gain price parity with animal meat by accessing the right cell lines.

• Shandi Global (Singapore) — Shandi Global is a plant-based functional ingredients innovation and manufacturing company. By naturally modifying plants at a molecular level, they create plant-based meat analogues with similar amino acid and protein profiles as real meat.

• Aurora Food (Singapore) — With their glycemic lowering technology, Aurora Food enables the production of baked goods with slow sugar release. They make sweet indulgences healthier and more diabetic-friendly without using any sugar alternatives.

• Buytasker(UK)— Buytasker makes it possible to manage customers, communications, apps, shipments, and customs filing using one interoperable UI platform and developer API. It’s designed so all the world’s supply chain systems can work together on a single network platform. The UK’s first cloud-based Freight Management SaaS product offering interoperable system connectivity and extensibility at a low cost, whilst empowering development teams with a modern scalable integration toolkit.

• LiberaTrade(HK) — LiberaTrade is revolutionising emerging market consumer goods supply chains, by predicting demand and driving continuous optimisation of upstream logistics to grow sales while reducing operating expenses more than 10%. The Liberatrade platform makes Supply Chain AI accessible for all retail enterprises in Asia by combining data-driven products for revenue growth, inventory optimisation, and access to supplier financing through SaaS.

• Nonnatech(US) — Nonnatech’s patented IoT-based platform is composed of specialised monitoring capabilities connected to a proprietary data and analytics platform designed to detect early changes in a health status or a chronic health condition, where early intervention will prevent more expensive upstream care such as an avoidable hospitalisation or ED visit. Their solution allows professionals a more efficient way to care for their patients and allows for a higher caseload per clinician, reducing overall costs.

• Rebolet(Switzerland) — Rebolet provides an all-in-one reselling service for e-commerce returns and overstock. They are helping e-commerce to be more profitable and sustainable by processing, analysing, and reselling returns and overstock through their SaaS Platform.

• Sensegrass(US) — Sensegrass is a Soil Intelligence Platform that helps companies and farmers reduce excessive resource use (water, fertilizer) through real time soil health analysis (NPK) using a patented NPK sensor and Artificial Intelligence Agronomist. This helps companies grow higher, healthier and faster, with better resource utilisation, achieving a 38% fertiliser and water improvement, with an average of a 22% yield improvement.

• Harmony (US) — Harmony is a MIT-based FoodTech company providing the next generation of baby formulas, which contains human breast milk proteins as the base instead of cow’s milk. Their formulas are dairy-free, allergy-free, environmental friendly and impact the whole baby food industry by changing the main structure of current baby products.

• KYF(US) — KYF produces plant-based, frozen healthier fast-food alternatives for kids aged 9–17. Their business model puts marketing and a strong brand first, and they are the first in the market to create plant-based products speaking directly to a tech native generation.

• More Foods(Israel) — More Foods is dedicated to eliminating the use of animals in our food system by creating novel food products, the first being a plant-based beef strips. Rather than using traditional plant-based ingredients such as pea and soy, their products are yeast-based and highly texturized.

• Raging Pig (Sweden) — Raging Pig are producers of healthy and sustainable plant-based meat for generation WHY, driving the change our world needed yesterday. Merging FoodTech, activism and lifestyle to become an obvious part of pop culture, they have rolled out their first product — a vegan bacon seasoning to the market.

• Rainfed Foods (Canada) — Rainfed Foods is an alternative dairy startup created to address climate change and animal welfare issues in the traditional dairy industry. Starting with millet-based milk, they are creating products that are indistinguishable from dairy in taste, quality and nutrition. Their mission is to redefine the future of dairy by using the most sustainable future food crops, such as millets.

• Sova Health(Singapore) — Sova Health is a precision nutrition platform that personalizes individual needs nutrition-based on AI driven blood analysis. They simplify healthy eating through a combination of cutting-edge biomarker diagnostics and evidence-based recommendations leading to safe and measurable results.

• Upfood(Denmark) — Upfood’s mission is to upcycle surplus food at primary production and side streams from industrial food production. By using its proprietary drying technologies, Upfood can preserve surplus produce right at the source and repurpose it into nutritious, shelf stable dried food ingredients sustainably and at competitive costs.

India Program:

• Arcapsis (India) — Arcapsis is an IoT and Cloud-based Health Care System Designing Company with the capability of combining the electronics, mechanical and software aspects of health care products. Arcapsis aspires to create technologies which can be used to ease living for millions of people. It enhances on Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, along with Advanced Sensor Technologies and Seamless Connectivity.

• Bagmo(India) — Bagmo Pvt Ltd is a Kochi-based startup solving healthcare needs using engineering innovations and operation management techniques. They have an innovative patent pending technology for the blood supply chain to eradicate the non availability of blood in rural parts of India. Bagmo Pvt Ltd is a spun out company of BIRAC’s (Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India) Innovation Immersion program on maternal and child health.

• Muse Diagnostics (India) — Muse Diagnostics is a Medical Device and Health Data Analytics company. Their product Taal Digital Stethoscope with Surr App and Platform helps health professionals screen their patients more effectively. It enables this through capturing a patient’s body sounds in high definition and then filtering, storing, sharing and analysing it at a comparable price to traditional non-digital devices. Taal and Surr, are particularly effective tools for healthcare students and professionals to learn and upskill their diagnostic capabilities, which positions it as a revolutionary tool in healthcare.

MENA Program:

• Xeleqt (The Philippines) — Xeleqt is the first IoT-powered platform that helps and allows business owners to dynamically manage, mobilize, and match their assets and resources with every customer-demand through safety protocols and embedded interaction-policies.

• Iris(Tunisia) — IRIS is building the future of precision beekeeping. The smartbee device is hardware fully equipped with sensing capabilities, specially designed to meet beekeepers needs: efficiency, security and better profitability that comes through sustainability.

• Symphony (Hong Kong) — Symphony provides clients a user-oriented vibration-analysis-based IoT predictive maintenance solution with machine learning and helps clients to eliminate unnecessary downtime of equipment, whilst simultaneously having the capability of avoiding catastrophic events caused by equipment failure.

• Frij (Bahrain) — Frij is a smart refrigerator designed to be compact and placed conveniently at every workplace providing healthy fresh food daily at a reasonable price Frij ensures easy and convenient accessibility to affordable improved lifestyles. Frij provides a seamless user interface, payment gateway and a mechanism for customers to track nutritional information.

• 7amdaan.io (Bahrain) — 7amdaan.io is building an interactive robotics solution company with the ultimate blend of Robotics & Advertisement, an initiative by the founder that will help shape the direction of the advertising and marketing industry through using a blend of AdTech Robots and Marketing Automation to drive interactive content development and introduce flexibility into physical advertising spaces.

• Radical Growth Solutions(Pakistan) — Radical Growth Solutions is solving resource waste challenges in AgriTech globally. They aim to enable digital transformation in agriculture through a state of the art plug and play automation and monitoring system. Their solution aims to optimize farming; by enhancing crop quality & quantity, improving the use of farm resources & equipment, real-time monitoring & irrigation management, converting farms into smart spaces.

• A1Smart Cam (Egypt) — A1Smart Cam offers remapping retailtech & analysis by offering their video analytic solution. A1Smart Cam software connects to any type of camera and does a full analysis of customer, employee, safety and shelving behaviors and trends to support businesses in improving productivity, creating targeted marketing campaigns with higher conversion rates, creating new revenue streams and cost savings.

• AREYLight (Turkey) — AREYlight redefines Energytech and conserves electricity usage by ensuring that lighting units can be controlled remotely and efficiently through the use of artificial intelligence. Their solution aims to make our cities autonomous by consolidating smart lighting technologies with other smart city applications to reduce expenses and maximize return on investment. Smart Units created by AreyLight turn into Autonomous Lighting groups with neural network communication which assists in gaining efficiency values that surpass any available in the market.

China Programs:

• Hao Food — Haofood is developing plant-based chicken to help foodies in reducing meat consumption without losing pleasure from comfort food. Through their proprietary technology and formulation, Hao Food is the pioneer in using peanut protein as key ingredients for a great product texture and laser focus of designing products as popular fried chicken.

• CellX— CellX is a biotechnology company specialising in cell culture meat. CellX hopes to use tissue engineering and 3D bioprinting technology to skip animals as carriers, and to sustainably produce cell culture meat in vitro, thereby promoting food health, protecting the ecological environment, and improving animal welfare.

• New Singularity — New Singularity Limited is a company focused on collecting the best plant-based products for the healthy, happy and active lifestyles of young diners around the world. We believe in a refreshing eating experience, hoping to make every product element appear where it should be. We are eager to share the stories around you and me, to witness a wonderful change in lifestyle

Managed Programs:

• Weknow Technology — Weknow Technology is a company that focuses on the field of brain-computer interfaces and uses EEG perception control technology as its core technology. Based on this technology, we have implemented some smart hardware and wearable hardware. Through a large number of promotions of smart hardware, we continue to collect user’s data, the back office continuously operates the personal living space. Create an open EEG application platform, and use this EEG platform to supplement other industries.

• Freehub — Freehub is an e-commerce trading platform for flexible employment skills services. The platform provides standardised skills services such as agency operations, KOC/KOL, customer service translation, copywriting design, financial law, etc. for enterprises in the consumer, e-commerce, and live broadcast industries.

• Orange Technology — Orange Technology has created the Orange series toothbrush is the world’s first oral hands-free electric toothbrush. It is also a toothbrush with any combination of soft and hard bristles that can freely match the color of the bristles. Orange Technology has more than ten invention patents, appearance patents, and utility model patents. In terms of manufacturing, the copper-free hot-melt tufting line equipment is also the world’s first, with innovative technology leading the domestic and foreign industries for at least 12 months.

• 001ai— 001ai is a high-tech company engaged in artificial intelligence and machine translation related software development, Internet AI platform construction, intelligent hardware research and development, design, production, and related Internet services.

• Doycan — Doycan Remote Rehabilitation SaaS Cloud Platform is the first “Home Rehabilitation Remote Management Service SaaS Cloud Platform” system in China, which enables rehabilitation doctors, rehabilitation therapists, and nurses to provide home patients with remote videos, rehabilitation training guidance, and nursing guidance online Rehabilitation services can fill the gap in the out-of-hospital rehabilitation services market, allowing patients to receive professional online rehabilitation guidance services without leaving their homes, especially to solve the home rehabilitation and nursing problems of many stroke patients and patients with limited mobility.

• Jitou — Jitou is committed to solving the problem of domestic waste classification and recycling. Jitou optimizes the recycling industry chain, increase user’s willingness to deliver, and establish large-scale and standardised garbage collection and sorting, garbage collection and transportation, Garbage recycling processing center.

• Taizhike— Outbound Overseas City Safety Data Platform is an accurate and comprehensive global life safety data platform. It uses a national professional analysis database and converts it into life safety score data in multiple dimensions. Through mobile applications, it provides users overseas timely and reliable life-oriented safety information eliminates the safety anxiety of Chinese people overseas due to language, system, information and other reasons.

• ERINNO — ERINNO uses blockchain technology and property development experience, and reduces transaction time and costs by building a safe, transparent and efficient smart contract signing system for house leasing and buying and selling. In the future, it plans to provide a smart community management service platform including smart property management, O2O community, and digital voting for large communities and commercial systems.

• Sunway Network— Sunway Network is a provider of software and hardware solutions focusing on VR/AR/MR. Its latest product protective helmet integrates AR, AI and 5G. It has been applied to many scenarios including cargo/catering distribution (Dongguan), mechanical maintenance (Hong Kong), interior architectural design (Japan and Poland) and warehousing and manufacturing (USA).

In addition, 36 startups were accelerated through our non equity programs.

Poland Program:

• Dynamic Air Cooling (DAC) — Dynamic Air Cooling’s (DAC) technology is a new ecological way to generate cold for industrial or residential air cooling and refrigeration. Technology created by DAC allows to decrease the temperature by 60°C but at the same time has no impact on the environment — it uses no synthetic coolants and has neither thermal nor CO2 emissions. DAC’s technology is an effective and economical solution — it’s up to 50% cheaper compared to traditional A/C or refrigeration technology.

• CityCharger— CityCharger’s vision is to help accelerate the transition and adoption of electric vehicles by providing components for accessible, reliable, scalable and affordable EV charging infrastructure elements along with open and flexible e-commerce (B2B, B2C, C2C) software platform called CityCharger.

• SOLO Workout— SOLO Workout is a cloud-based data collection system consisting of sensors paired with gym equipment and an app. Thanks to SOLO Workout’s solution, it is possible to track workouts in real-time, monitor progress, create personal training plans and record training performance. SOLO Workout goes right to the source of this over $11b active market with unmet needs, delivering accurate, real-time data tracking to gym owners, fitness clubs, members and their trainers.

• SENSE Smart Roofs— SENSE Smart Roof’s platform helps to efficiently manage risks related to flat roofs: preventing structure overloading, increasing safety and savings. It continuously verifies whether the outlets are working properly and at the same time detects excess water levels on flat roofs using a Rainwater Build-Up Detection (RBD) system, built by the Startup. Thanks to RBD, you can check if the drains are unobstructed, detect excessive water accumulating on the roof, and monitor how long still water pools remain around roof drains.

• SEZO — SEZO offers a compact air quality monitoring module — SEZO A1M — based on LTE-M transmission connectivity. The device has several sensors incorporated, and is AC powered and water resistant so it can be used indoors and outdoors. It has an option of enabling a GNSS geolocation and it’s also able to inform users about abnormal levels of measured parameters.

• MediBOX — MediBOX is a diagnostics device, which in its basic version includes: digital ECG, blood pressure monitor, pulse oximeter, scales and body composition analyzer. MediBOX IT solution consists of a proprietary diagnostic device (telemedicine kiosk), its own mobile application for users and a complete central system based on Mediguard solution that binds everything together — resulting in a comprehensive IT solution that enables remote transmission, analysis and collection of test results performed within a kiosk or any other integrated measuring devices.

• Wares— Wares has created a device which is a universal smart reader for water meters allowing real-time readings, enabling users to fully and remotely control their current water consumption, without the necessity of checking the water meters. Wares provides a system for complete analysis of water consumption in an urban agglomeration. Water consumption data is interpreted using AI solutions, therefore allowing predictions for future usage.

• Micromobility Solutions— Micromobility Solutions plans to build a micromobility sharing platform for low-voltage electric vehicles (e-scooters, e-bikes, e-mopeds) operating in a docked model. This universal docking and charging station for all three types of aforementioned vehicles will be available through a dedicated software and a mobile app. Stations will be installed next to hotels and office buildings and will offer mobility solutions to hotel guests / corporate employees.

• Movitrade Energy — Movitrade is developing a tool for measurement and complex analysis of thermal energy consumption from district heating for both industrial and domestic use cases. Project outcome is to predict the needs for district heating and usage rationalisation of available heat sources while maximising use of waste heat.

• Prosoma— Prosoma is creating a platform for pharmacy chains. The mission is to educate society, help fight fake medical information and propagate medical knowledge in an easy way using video animation and simple messages. The content will be aimed at children and senior citizens and will also be describing issues related to drug and substance abuse.

We’re running out of space so only ten deals are listed. The remaining 20+ can be can be viewed by clicking here for the Spring cohort and here for the Fall cohort. This is also the mid point where we check if you’re still paying attention 🙂

We also had 13 teams pivot or step up to develop solutions for a changed world during COVID:

• Poladrone built custom UAV solutions and remote sensing technologies through machine learning algorithms to gather a massive amount of data which can be used to provide aerial insights. Poladrone began working with the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation who are directly responsible for enforcing drone technology nationwide in the effort of reducing the infection. Drones can help in monitoring crowd and movement, information and announcement broadcasting, experimental body temperature using thermal cameras, and disinfection of public areas.

• Labfly developed an automated drone solution that provided a fast, reliable and traffic-independent delivery system for life-saving goods in the most densely populated areas of the world.

• Hayatech is a Software as a Service (SAAS) and connected hardware platform that incentivises active lifestyles, transforms companies into healthy communities, & empowers wellness brands to build true loyalty. The company witnessed a rise in interest about wellness technologies during the global pandemic. Users on the cloud-based app have shared health tips and exercise ideas compatible with the current social distancing guidelines. Their platform continues to serve as a great escape from the cheerless conversations associated with the current state of the world.

• Drone Delivery Systems introduced AirBox Home, the first real IoT smart mailbox system. AirBox Home can be used by businesses to continue to serve the community in spite of social distancing with contactless deliveries. Businesses will place AirBox Homes outside their buildings. Customers place and pay for orders through their app then can collect their order through an assigned AirBox Home.

• Evelabs offeres wireless solutions to improve clinical efficiency, safety and patient experience in IV therapy for urban mid & top-tier hospitals.

• Flextrapower developed a graphene mask to fight Covid-19.

• Strados Labs developed the Remote E-Stethoscope Platform (RESP), the world’s first clinical-grade wearable e-stethoscope. RESP™ technology can record patient lung sounds that can then be made available for playback, or transmitted to telehealth workers, to be monitored for changes in status. This remote, wearable stethoscope can be used for spot-checking and patient wear, reducing the burden on clinicians and bedside nurses. Strados is working with telehealth companies to deploy devices for use in remote care and triage settings, as well as clinical research organisations currently working on novel respiratory vaccines for COVID-19.

• YUPS Tech developed 4 new products forming a new vertical of UV Disinfectors. They are also working on modifying their people tracking solution for social distancing for companies.

• Vacus Tech has used their same patented technology to create a social distancing and contract tracing solution within factories and buildings using monitors and sensors.

• Linkers IoT is working with the Saudi National Health Information Center on an initiative to encourage grocery stores to subscribe to its platform. The Linkers platform enables businesses to access a store’s foot traffic to determine peak hours and busy locations. The initiative comes as the government is supporting businesses to run while maintaining smaller foot traffic to avoid crowded stores.

• Kfx Circuits & Systems has developed a smartphone enabled pass and ticketing system for public transport systems to eliminate physical transfer of passes & cash for contactless transactions.

• GeoMeo Informatics developed a Work From Home Wifi router with all the inbuilt security features targeting corporate employees and were shortlisted in the final round of Indian government COVID-19 innovation support program. Their innovative solution provided smart connectivity within government control rooms and their application Qcare helped the government monitor home quarantines remotely.

• iSpagro explored developing a swab collecting robot for contactless swab collection.

Notable mentions:

Fundraising:

• Avant Meats has closed a US$3.1 million seed funding round which will help scale-up plans towards the commercialization of its cultivated fish in 2021.

• Silentmode announced the successful close of their $1 million Pre-Series A funding round, and launched Breathonics: a new “ workout” and biofeedback iOS app that combines breathwork with curated music to help users optimize their mental fitness, mood and productivity; reduce stress and heart rate.

Acquisitions:

• Jetbrain Robotics was acquired by Solaris. Jetbrain is the first Brinc team to be acquired. Read more through their Press Release, Ajay’s blog post, and Manav’s blog post.

Products recently launched in market:

• Grounded closed their seed round and officially launching their plant-based protein m*lkshakes. They became the #1 selling plant-milk product in a major organic supermarket chain in their first 3 months of launching and have outsold Oatly & 5 major dairy-alt brands in a key retailer in the same period.

• Phuture Foods developed a new range of products, one of which is its vegan pork, Phuture Mince, which has been launched in restaurants in Singapore. They have been named as one of the Top 100 Alternative Protein Companies by the Good Food Institute and chosen to be part of the FoodTech 500 list by Forward Fooding.

Awards:

• Galy won €300,000 from the H&M Foundation Global Change Awards.

• Kozhya received ~3 million euros from the Polish Center of R&D (Narodowe Centrum Badań i Rozwoju)

• Congratulations to our portfolio teams: Avant Meats, CellX, Cerealthy, Fybraworks foods, Inc., Journey Foods, Orbillion Bio, & Sensegrass Inc. for being named on the FoodTech 500 list by Forward Fooding! This list represents this year’s 500 most inspirational AgriFoodTech innovators and disruptors.

Partnerships:

• Skyebrowse announced their partnership with Metro Fire to serve first responders and fire departments.

• Valkyrie Industriesannounced their fellowship with StoryFutures to use their proprietary haptic gloves to develop a sculpting haptic VR tool to facilitate the entry for non-experts into 3D modelling and 3D animation.

Overall, in 2020, we accelerated and provided support to 84 startups through our programs, invested in 40 startups, and secured management of a new portfolio of over 50 AI companies (more on that soon). This pushed our total investment portfolio to 149, from 109 at the end of 2019.

Do you know any high-growth startups that are mixing profit and purpose and currently are at POC stage and have short-term commercialisation needs that fit our investment thesis? If so, please direct them to our website so they can learn more and apply.

Brinc Highlights & Announcements

In 2020 we launched 8 new programs globally:

• The BOOST Program for Insurance, Health and MedTech Startups has launched in the Fall in partnership with Manulife Asia.

• The Logistics & Supply Chain Accelerator was launched in partnership with Mount Parker Ventures — an early investor in Hong Kong’s first unicorn GoGoVan. We look forward to supporting companies in this space in 2021.

• The Alternative Proteins Accelerator Program & Investment Fund for Plant Based Meat Startups in China launched in the Spring in partnership with Lever VC.

• The CleanTech Accelerator Programin Australia launched in the Spring in partnership with Artesian.

• The R&D Program for IoT, AI & Robotics, Sensor Design startups launched in Guangzhou in the Summer in partnership with Tsinghua Pearl River Delta Research Institute. The program is accepting startups who are interested in working on their product development or mass production in GBA.

• The PowerUp Program is a vertical agnostic program that was launched in Guangzhou in the Fall in partnership with Zhi Hui Park.

• The Ignition Accelerator Program for Smart Manufacturing, Robotics and MedTech startups launched in Dongguan over the Winter in partnership with Lin Run Group. It is also our first MedTech program in China.

• The EdTech Engine Program is a POC Program for Education Technologies startups. It was launched in China over winter in partnership with CIEO.

We also secured key partnerships with a number of world leading organisations:

• ABInBev, a multinational drink and brewing company based in Leuven, Belgium.

• ARUP, a multinational professional services firm which provides engineering, architecture, design, planning, project management and consulting services for all aspects of the built environment.

• Bio4Dreams, an incubator for innovative startups dedicated to Life Sciences.

• Huawei, a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices.

• Manulife, a multinational insurance company and financial services provider.

• MountParker, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage startups, mainly focusing on companies operating in Southeast Asia.

• PCCW Global, a Hong Kong-based information and communications technology company, known for being the majority owner of telecommunications company HKT Limited.

• SecondMuse, an impact and innovation company that builds resilient economies.

• Wismettac, for over 40 years, is one of the oldest and most experienced importer, wholesaler and distributor of Asian food products in North America.

• Lever VC, a venture capital fund that makes early stage investments in alternative protein companies.

• Brinc and Batelco sponsorship continued accelerating innovation and entrepreneurship in Bahrain.

If you are a corporate: Reach out here to learn more about our engagement models. We work closely with organisations to drive POCs & distributed innovation through startup engagement.

If you run a fund or are keen to invest into high growth companies: Reach out here to learn more about how we can help develop custom sourcing funnels (following your thesis) & develop programs that help you de-risk your investments.

We were also very active in the community — hosting, speaking & attending a variety of events and competitions:

The Origin Innovation Awards by Technode recognized us with the People’s Choice VC award. We are honoured to receive this award alongside our peers.

We introduced our latest Fall 2020 FoodTech cohort at the Asia Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Summit. Natalie Lung and Mattan Lurie also led some insightful discussions during our ‘Battle Royale: Plant-Based vs Cell Ag vs Fermentation. Who Will Own the Future?’ roundtable at the virtual Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Summit.

Manav spoke at the GFI’s flagship Asia Summit on Alternate Protein (ASAP).

Manav spoke at the ‘Start-up & Civil Society: Disrupting Climate Change Now.‘ panel at the TEDxCivicExchange Cyberport Venture Capital Forum.

During the Cyberport Venture Capital Forum, Estefania Almeida spoke on a panel discussing funding opportunities post-COVID with Karena Belin, Tony Verb, Ivan Wong, and Tina Choi.

Natalie Lung spoke on the FoodTech Ventures panel at Startup Impact Summit 2020.

On November 29th, we hosted the THero Global Startup Competition 2020. The Top 10 finalists pitched online while the judges and Greater Bay Area startup community gathered in Guangzhou for a live event. Check out the photos from the event here.

At the Startup & Angels event in Sydney, Manav Gupta provided a Brinc introduction & Tuan Lam moderated the panel on Startup Funding: 2020 retro and 2021 forecast.

Renee Pan & the China team recently hosted a 5G Summit at the 2020 China Innovation & Entrepreneurship Fair.

Renee Pan & our China team recently hosted a Greater Bay Area Investor Forum during the Canton Tower Science & Technology Conference in Guangzhou.

We collaborated with MEW for the 3rd year. Yasin kickstarted the MEW event with a fireside chat “Telecoms Reimagined” with Omantel that was streamed on BHTV, YouTube and IGTV. Marwa then bolstered the collaboration with the “Entrepreneur’s guide to successfully pivot in difficult times” panel joined by one of our most recognized startups in the region, Linkers.

We hosted GEW Batelco Hackathon in support of GEW led by Zainab to empower youth entrepreneurs in partnership with Batelco and Andra. To wrap up GEW, Yasin moderated the “Successful Corporate Startup Collaborations” panel discussion joined by one of our most iconic startups Hayatech in collaboration with Tamkeen and Batelco.

We kicked off our new monthly Webinar Series focused on providing guidance to founders/startups. The first webinar was focused on PR & Brand Story with our close friend Uptin Saiidi who shared powerful tools to amplify your brand and why PR is important.

We also moved all of our programs 100% online this year as COVID came into our life.

We hosted our first fully online Demo Day via Hopin Our first Virtual Demo Day was a success. 1200+ unique emails registered. You can check out our new Demo Day platform that highlights our latest cohort.

We also launched our new brand & new website: www.brinc.io

We finally ended the year formally announcing our new commitment for sustainability at the online WebSummit event hosted in Lisbon in December to wrap up the year and set our intentions clear for the year & decade ahead.

What’s coming up in 2021?

As we look forward to 2021 there is an exciting lineup of new programs & partnerships we are working on that will be announced soon.

Here’s a sneak peak:

1. All our current partners extended commitments into 2021 — Tamkeen, Artesian, LeverVC, PFR and many more.

2. New programs have been secured, some are in the works and will also be announced soon:

• AgriFoodTech programs to be announced soon in Singapore, Middle East & India.
• Brinc’s MedTech Program, our first program in Singapore in partnership with Future Health Asia, a HealthTech Angel Investment Group will kick off in Q1 2021.
• New programs will be coming in Europe. Stay tuned.
• New programs will be coming in the Middle East. Stay tuned.
• New programs will be coming in India. Stay tuned.
• New programs in MedTech, AI and Mobility will be announced in China. Stay tuned.

3. Our Climate Change Commitment will weave into all our programs globally:

• We will charge forward on our commitment to back 1,000 climate-conscious startups in the next 5 years
• CleanTech focus across all programs
• ESG Focus mandate across all programs

4. We will also be announcing new funds with Artesian that will go live this year to back our Emerging Market commitments & FoodTech focus verticals. Stay tuned.

As we look forward to 2021 we are excited to continue to invest in game changing founders that are building businesses that mitigate climate change by developing more sustainable agriculture, manufacturing, supply chains, etc. In a nutshell we want to back more businesses that are more efficient at creating high outputs (at the same quality and price) with less inputs (water, land usage, energy, etc.). We are also excited to continue to work with some world leading partners to set up syndicates across all industries where we run programs, utilising the networks and experience of leading players in each vertical, to drive investments and activate POCs & scalable commercialisation opportunities. More from us soon.

Do you know any high-growth startups that are mixing profit and purpose and currently are at POC stage and have short-term commercialisation needs that fit our investment thesis? If so, please direct them to our website so they can learn more and apply.

About Brinc

Brinc is a different breed of venture capital and accelerator firm. Core to our business is our belief that some of the world’s biggest challenges can be solved by entrepreneurs, who we like to call GAME CHANGERS. More game changers will make a positive impact on the world if they are given the right backing. And that’s what we’re here for. To support and mentor founders and their teams from across the world and provide investment to help them grow. Today, we believe that technology focused startups, with the right backing and support can fundamentally change how we move, what we eat, how we feel and where we live for the better.

www.brinc.io