Pepshield crowned as Grand Winner of TECH PLANTER in Singapore 2025!
On 24th May 2025, Leave a Nest Singapore conducted TECH PLANTER in SINGAPORE 2025 at MPH, SUTD. This is our 12th consecutive year of TECH PLANTER since 2014.
This year, 9 finalists were chosen from 41 applications to pitch their core technology, business model and issues that they want to solve in front of a panel of judges from Leave a Nest Singapore, Elev8, National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Cluster (NAMIC), NUS Enterprise, SLINGSHOT by Enterprise Singapore, ST Engineering Ventures, Ezaki Glico, Glocalink, JR East Business Development SEA, and UntroD Capital Asia. The finalists were from three categories: Energy & Industrial Innovators, Biosphere Vanguard, Living with Automation.
Before pitch presentations began, Sivakumar, project lead, welcomed the audience and invited a family spirit – although Tech Planter Demo Day has prizes, Leave a Nest’s goal is to build an ecosystem where all technology providers can receive the support necessary for their stage. This can vary from early stage building up of R&D through to market expansion, the necessary support to translate technology into impact to the world.
The award recipients, selected for outstanding contributions and impact, are detailed below.
TECH PLAN Demo Day in Singapore 2025 Awardees
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| Grand Winner: Pepshield
Technology Theme: Peptide-nanonet based coating for medical devices and surfaces that addresses the issue of bacterial colonization and biofilm formation by physically trapping and killing bacteria upon contact. Award Inclusions: SGD 3,000 Cash Prize and an Invitation to present at the TECH PLANTER Asia Final 2025 Reason: Pepshield peptide immobilisation is an innovative way to tackle this problem. The research has use cases starting from medical and food safety industries. Their presentation was heartfelt and passionate, causing the judges to believe deeply in the founders. Leave a Nest believes in and acts to support passionate researchers making a difference with their technology. |
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| Leave a Nest Award: Forte Biotech
Technology Theme: Affordable, portable, and highly sensitive DNA-based pathogen detection for real-time disease management in aquaculture. Award Inclusions: Invitation to present at the TECH PLANTER Asia Final 2025 Reason: Forte Biotech without investment has become a revenue generating company, and with further push, has the potential to make the difference in the Southeast Asian shrimp farm scene, and other agriculture as well. Additionally, they are working to educate farmers on PCR testing, and this has potential synergy with Leave a Nest’s Education Development Division. |
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| SLINGSHOT 2025 Award and Glocalink Award: Measure AI
Technology Theme: Real-time, ultra-sensitive, and intelligent multi-gas sensing for advanced quality control and process optimization. Award Inclusions: Reason: Amongst the finalists, Measure AI holds the strongest combination of technology, impact and current company roadmap to benefit from the SLINGSHOT platform. Simultaneously, there are synergies between Measure AI and Glocalink’s venture portfolio. |
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| JR-East Award: Smart RX
Technology Theme: A modular solution for automatic prescription dispensing and telemedicine, integrating real-time vital signs monitoring to deliver accessible, evidence-based healthcare in clinics, pharmacies, or remote environments. Award Inclusions: SGD 2,000 Cash Prize Reason: Smart RX directly tackles issues that are apparent in Japan and Singapore. JR-East is keen to see its implementation within train stations in Japan. |
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| UntroD Capital Asia Award: HYDGEN
Technology Theme: Advanced Anion Exchange Membrane Electrolyzers for Low-cost Green Hydrogen Production Award Inclusions: SGD 2,000 Cash Prize Reason: The hydrogen demand is clear, and HYDGEN has encouraging traction with plenty of use cases. More investigation into HYDGEN’s technology uniqueness is necessary as they reach more end users. |
For more details related to all the Finalist and Lightning Talk teams who pitched during the event and all the Judges who participated in the program, you may check out this related news article: https://global.lne.st/news/sg/2025/05/07/tp25-fl-lt/
FINALLY, CONGRATULATIONS AGAIN TO ALL THE WINNERS, PARTICIPANTS, AND APPLICANTS OF TECH PLANTER IN SINGAPORE 2025!
The TECH PLANTER Asia 2025 season continues! The Philippines and Singapore legs are complete, and we have Malaysia this week, with Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand Demo Days in July 2025. Stay tuned to our website and social media channels for more details!
As a result of TECH PLANTER in Singapore, Forte Biotech and Pepshield will be at TECH PLANTER Asia Final held in MALAYSIA on AUGUST 23, 2025. And for all the teams, we are deeply committed to advance these changemakers' deep tech innovations! Next year’s TECH PLANTER in Singapore 2026 program is in the works, please reach out regarding partnerships and applications here. For any inquiries or questions, feel free to contact us at info-asia “@” lne.st (attention Michael)
