On a balmy Saturday afternoon at a senior care centre in Singapore, five seniors were gathered in the activity room, each with a pair of virtual reality (VR) goggles perched on their nose.

Through the device, they saw chef Chan Hon Meng, owner of Michelin-starred hawker stall Liao Fan Hawker Chan, painstakingly preparing his signature chicken rice. “My Chinatown outlet is popular with aunties and uncles who love the chicken and char siew (barbecued meat) rice,” he proudly proclaimed.

“The chef was cutting up the chicken and there were so many plates of chicken rice lined up in front of me!”

one of the seniors exclaimed excitedly upon removing her goggles.

The company behind the VR programme, Mind Palace, uses VR technology to help seniors with dementia maintain an active mind and stave off the effects of the condition. It is one of 10 startups that formed the first cohort of The Start, a local pre-accelerator programme StartupX launched early this year that aims to help grow disruptive startups, in partnership with Temasek.

Sang Shin, Director of Digital Technology at Temasek, who was also one of 20 business mentors involved in The Start, believes Mind Palace has the potential to positively impact how we live out our silver years.

“As people live longer, the chances of having issues as we grow older increase. It is so important to have tools and capabilities to help the elderly better manage their lives at that stage,”

he shared.

With the average life expectancy in Singapore set to rise to 85.4 years in 20 years’ time compared to 83.1 years in 2017, the question of “how to live longer” has evolved into the more complex one of how to live longer, well.

While medical advancements allow us to live much longer than past generations, doing so comes with its own problems. High on the list: the need to be financially secure for a longer period of time, in addition to a myriad of age-related issues.

Another startup from The Start that is addressing the issue of longer lifespans is Bridge — but they are doing so by targeting people on the opposite end: youths.

“We see Bridge as a tool that will allow parents to understand their children’s spending habits better and also help raise financial literacy among students,” explained Bridge’s founder, Rafael Soh. The 15-year-old student is the leader of the team of teenage developers who developed the Bridge app.

Sang said Bridge’s mission to instil a financially prudent mindset early in life is critical for today’s youngsters.

“We know as we grow older that if you don’t have enough assets stashed away properly, early enough, it gets more difficult.”

Sang Shin

Paying it Forward

After a long day at work, most people tend to return home to savour dinner and unwind from the day. But Sang and his colleague Evelyn Lau, an Associate Director of Digital Technology at Temasek, chose to spend their off-duty hours slightly differently.

For three months, both volunteered at least one evening per week to work with teams in The Start, providing advice and feedback to help improve their products.

An experienced entrepreneur herself, Evelyn knows the importance of mentors well.

When she launched her first startup nearly 20 years ago providing creative interior consulting and project management services, she did not have a mentor and today recalls that the experience was very difficult.

That business took a much longer time to establish than her second startup, a creative media and tech agency that provides content and mobile learning solutions to institutions and international corporations, which she founded seven years ago. Evelyn attributes the difference to the help of her mentor: an experienced fund manager who gave her advice and guidance.

She applied the same principles to her mentee teams in The Start.

“I very much wanted these startups to benefit from the experience which I’ve learnt over the course of these 20 years,”

said Evelyn.

With Bridge, Evelyn raised the need to validate the team’s business idea and ensure that parents were open to the idea of using the Bridge app to co-manage their children’s expenses.

Thus advised, the team surveyed 300 parents regarding the app. “We received positive feedback from them which really motivated us,” said Rafael.

A Crucial Helping Hand

Like Evelyn, Sang is well seasoned when it comes to entrepreneurship, having spent several years with startups in Silicon Valley. Their combined experience helped them dispense critical advice that steered each startup towards becoming a viable enterprise.

With Mind Palace, Sang highlighted to its founder Eugene Soh the need to think about a new business model that would engage with nursing homes — rather than individuals as Eugene initially intended — to allow the business to turn a profit.

Evelyn assigned Eugene a deadline to submit a revised business plan, which she then went through with him in detail.

“That really forced me to sit down and think about how I could balance the social impact of Mind Palace, while still making sure that it was a sustainable business that could turn in profits rather than rely on financial grants and my own money,”

reflected Eugene.

Ultimately, what drove both Evelyn and Sang to help these teams succeed was their belief in the social impact that startups like Mind Palace and Bridge can bring about.

“I feel these startups will multiply positive impact when they show results,”

said Evelyn.

Sang added, “It’s part of Temasek’s DNA to make good investments, but also to do good for society. For the startups, we see them coming out with the newest ideas, the newest innovation and creativity in that capacity that can move the needle in the world’s most serious challenges today. It’s a big part why Temasek is involved with them.”

The Start is a pre-accelerator programme StartupX launched to help early-stage founders develop their prototypes into full-fledged startups, in partnership with Temasek.