Techo Startup Center (TSC), a public administrative institution under the guardianship of the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) of Cambodia, announced today that we are running the Reverse Innovation called “RI”.
Reverse Innovation is a brand-new program in Cambodia where selected institution executive leaders share their companies’ challenges to seek for solutions from university students, innovators, startups, and companies. The companies will open their door on the Reverse Pitch Day that will be on 15th December 2020 via Facebook Live. After that, interested candidates are able to submit their interests through the program website. Then, the shortlisted candidates will go through the mentoring program for 13 weeks. The top 3 winners will be selected on the Forward Pitch Day and offered with following prizes:
- First Place: 40,000,000 KHR
- Second Place: 30,000,000 KHR
- Third Place: 20,000,000 KHR
Besides the winning prizes, the selected teams to the RI phase will receive other essential benefits such as 8,000,000 KHR pre-seed funding, technical-oriented mentoring, the access to payment sandbox, co-working space, and free cloud computing.
H.E. Dr. Marry Kong, Undersecretary of State, Ministry of Economy and Finance and Chairman of the Board of Directors, Techo Startup Center commented “SMEs and startups are adopting innovation and technology as the core engine to develop their products or services that make people’s lives more convenient. The Royal Government of Cambodia significantly recognizes the importance of digitalization in SMEs and Startups to accelerate their growth contributing to the digital economy.”
As the program will be run in a different theme from the previous programs “Innovators, startups, and students will be elevated to explore the use of corporates’ resources and capabilities to address the real key issues in the market. They will be working collaboratively with large corporates to show their potentials in producing a unique minimum viable product to receive more investments to scale up.” said Dr. Nguonly Taing, Executive Director of Techo Startup Center.
“As the consumers are growing vastly, financial institutions are thriving to leverage technology and innovation to improve their product/services to meet the needs of the consumers, “said Dr. Channy In, Chairman of The Association of Banks in Cambodia. He continued “Usually, each cooperate works internally to conduct the research and the development. Through RI, the banks are able to try a new way of seeking solution by working with external stakeholders to solve industry-specific problems. We are looking forward to working with the innovators using their creativity, expertise, entrepreneurial mindset to propose their solutions.”
Dr. Vanmunin Chhieng, CEO of Khmer Enterprise emphasized that the Reverse Innovation (RI) Program is a new approach to solve the existing problems in the industry. This demand-driven model will revolutionize the Cambodia fintech ecosystem by promoting innovative business solutions, creating new startups, and leveraging a stronger cooperation among the stakeholders.
Reverse Innovation is proudly organized by the Ministry of Economy and Finance and Techo Startup Center and co-organized with the Association of Banks in Cambodia (ABC) and Khmer Enterprise (KE). Furthermore, RI is also delighted to announce that Credit Bureau Cambodia (CBC), ACLEDA Bank Plc., Wing (Cambodia) Limited Specialised Bank as our sponsors. Meanwhile, our partners such as Advance Bank of Asia (ABA), IG Tech and Bongloy will provide in-kind supports to the program regarding the mentoring and their resource especially their respective payment sandbox.