SC Ventures Pitch Competition 2026 – Singapore 

Pitch your fintech & AI startup in front of global investors for a chance to win the prize of SGD 10,000 equity-free grant

LIVE in Singapore – come meet investors and operators who back and build category-defining companies

Watch the full recording on YouTube!

5-7 founders will have a chance to pitch in front of a panel of expert judges: partners from SC Ventures, Plug and Play, Peak XV (formerly Sequoia Capital India & SEA), and Elev8te.

Who qualifies?

Must be a registered entity in Singapore
Company must be less than 4 years old and have less than SGD 5M in funding thus far
In fintech and AI, with a preference for enterprise solutions
Have active customers/users
Founder must be at least 18 years of age

What do i get?

Live pitch in front of investors, industry experts, and the startup community
Expert feedback from world’s leading VCs and venture builders
A chance to win SGD 10,000 equity-free grant

Meet the Finalists

Andre Leung

Co-Founder & CEO

Aereve is a globally recognized RegTech100 company delivering multilingual, on-chain and off-chain compliance analytics for banks, insurers, and enterprises. Powered by patented fuzzy logic technology for native languages, Aereve is setting the global ‘East Meets West’ standard for TradFi and Web3 compliance.

Peter Jacobson

Co-Founder & Co-CEO

Greg O'Sullivan

Co-Founder & Co-CEO

COLLYBUS is a live, fully regulated institutional grade trading platform and brokerage (Australian AFSL + Singapore MAS CMS IPA) that unifies fragmented digital asset markets into a single, compliant operating layer. Built by four experienced FX professionals with decades in global trading, execution, and risk management across London, Tokyo, Boston, Singapore, and Sydney, we deliver advanced multi-venue execution, real-time risk visualization, collateral mobility, and compliant orchestration for hedge funds, asset managers, and sophisticated institutions. As the tokenization of capital markets scales, institutions face unsustainable fragmentation across venues, vendors, and workflows. COLLYBUS bridges TradFi-grade compliance and efficiency with DeFi liquidity and innovation, enabling seamless access to spot, perps, options, FX, and RWAs without custody risk or venue dependency. We are scaling to become the go-to, neutral infrastructure for tokenized markets: fewer vendors, deeper counterparty trust, and capital efficiency that embeds us in institutional governance and allocation.

Wildiyanto Yawin

Co-Founder & CEO

Yohanes Rico

Co-Founder & COO

Yuliam Chandra

Co-Founder & CTO

Fineksi is an SaaS company that helps financial institutions streamline their credit process and detect for fraud by ingesting all the borrowers documents and providing AI-based credit analysis. This allows them to process loans faster without sacrificing quality and to reduce non-performing loans.

Michael Davies

CEO

Nextvestment is an AI-native wealth engagement and behavioural intelligence layer that enables wealth institutions to deliver personalised, institution-approved guidance at scale, without re-platforming or increasing headcount. Recognised as one of the 2025 WealthTech100 most innovative companies, Nextvestment participates in the Monetary Authority of Singapore PathFin.AI programme and powers the AI financial guidance capability underpinning Phillip Securities’ POEMSGPT, deployed within its flagship trading platform. By transforming client questions, behavioural signals, and portfolio context into institution-controlled, audit-ready insights, Nextvestment enables banks to move beyond static digital experiences and deliver insight-driven, compliant client engagement within regulated production environments.

Shubhrendu Khoche

CEO

The yufin merchant platform has started with the Philippines, extending the reach of FMCG & financial services to grow their customer base on one hand while monetizing deep local insights of last-mile merchants to acquire & service this growing customer base on the other hand. It is doubling the value flowing through small businesses and their monthly earning with Distribution as a Service (DaaS) for sachet-sized financial services, commerce & content that makes these last-mile merchants more money & makes them financial services distribution hubs. As a B2b commerce platform for ordering weekly supplies, yufin is using its proprietary insights to grow profitability of both suppliers and small merchants, to provide effective embedded financing and is positioned to become the AI infrastructure for small businesses in emerging markets in partnership with retail banks.

Meet the Judges

Harald Eltvedt

Operating Member, Head of Venture Building

SC VENTURES

Harald is an operating member of SC Ventures, Standard Chartered Bank’s venture building arm. He is a serial entrepreneur with more than 15 years of experience building technology startups form inception to exit. He was previously managing director at Havas-Ekino, co-founder of RevSquare (acquired by Pentalog-Globant NYSE: GLOB) and healthme (acquired by WebMD). Harald has an MBA from INSEAD and is passionate about swimming and sustainability.

Manav Narang

Head of Financial Services, APAC | Head of India

Plug and Play

Plug and Play connects startups with more than 550+ corporate and government partners as well as investors and universities across more than 60 locations and 25 industries worldwide. As Head of Financial Services at Plug and Play APAC, Manav leads corporation innovation and startup investment in fintech, Insurtech, and healthtech verticals leveraging his deep experience from consulting, venture capital, and corporate business development.

Aakash Kapoor

Principal

Peak XV Partners

Principal at Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India & SEA), where he works with early-stage startups across fintech, consumer tech, and commerce. Peak XV has invested over USD 9B across 400+ companies in India and Southeast Asia. Aakash is a founding member of Surge, the firm’s rapid scale-up program, and serves as an advisor and board member to several high-growth companies including Aspire, Tazapay, Kast, and more.

Sharmin Reehman

CEO

Elev8te

CEO & Founder of Elev8te, where she designs programs and advisory initiatives that connect founders, operators, investors, and ecosystem partners. Deeply committed to founder development, she has helped build, launch, and scale hundreds of early-stage startups across APAC and the US. Sharmin is the City Leader for Founders Live Singapore  and a mentor with German Accelerator and Accelerating Asia, supporting founders on go-to-market strategy, leadership development, and regional expansion across Southeast Asia.

HOW DO I APPLY?

Apply here on our FinTech Bridge Community platform.
1. Click on the “Apply now” button on the challenge page.
2. You will be prompted to sign in/set up an account. Create your account by clicking “Join Fintech Bridge”.
3. After setting up your account, verify your profile by clicking on the link sent to your email, and click on “Back to login”.
4. Sign in and complete your profile by responding to a few questions.
5. You will then be prompted to apply to open challenges. > Click on the “SC Ventures Pitch Competition 2026” module to start your application.
Submit your pitch deck and a 2-3 minute video by Wednesday, 25 February. Notes:
1. Keep your pitch deck under 15 slides max.
2. The video should be informal – just a walkthrough of your startup and the founding team.
5-7 finalists will be notified by Thursday, 26 February via email. You must confirm your participation within 24 hours in order to secure your spot.
Each founder gets to pitch on stage on Thursday, 5 March – 5-minute pitch and 3 minute Q&A from judges.
The judges will announce the winner at the end of the event.
The judges will also share their feedback with the other finalists.

Terms and Conditions

Please read the Pitch Competition Terms & Conditions before submitting. By submitting your application, you agree to be bound by these Terms & Conditions.

Terms & Conditions

How will applications be evaluated?

We will evaluate each application to select the finalists based on:

Founding Team – Experience & Track Record
Problem Definition & Customer Pain
Market Size (TAM/SAM/SOM)
Go-To-Market Strategy
Competitive Analysis: Solution & Differentiation
Traction & Proof Points
Financials
Business Model & Monetisation
Pitch Quality & Clarity

Key dates

Wednesday, 25 February: Applications Close
Thursday, 26 February: All applicants will be notified of the outcome of their application
Friday, 27 February: Finalists to confirm participation at Pitch Finale
Thursday, 5 March: Fintech & AI Pitch Finale

Come watch Singapore’s most promising fintech and AI startups pitch live.

Join us on 5 March 8:30am SGT at The Nanson.

Sign up for FinTech Bridge to get free access to all of our content.

You will be able to submit your application on FinTech bridge as well.

Sign up for FinTech Bridge to get free access to all of our content. You will be able to submit your application on FinTech bridge as well.

Exclusive Pitch Simulation Access for Applicants

Sharpen your pitch before judging begins! We’re offering free access to AI-powered pitch roleplays on Lexarius, our experiential learning platform built with INSEAD, grounded in years of academic rigour. Designed to simulate real investor conditions, the module lets you stress-test your pitch through realistic scenarios and real-time, personalised feedback – including:

Live competition simulation: 5-minute pitch + 3-minute Q&A
Investor-grade questioning: Rigorous Q&A by dynamic personas, calibrated to the competition’s evaluation criteria
Pressure testing: Practice responding to unscripted questions in real time

After each simulation, you receive a structured assessment covering communication effectiveness, critical thinking and business judgment, commercial and financial acumen, influence and executive presence, and resilience under pressure.

Start sharpening your pitch

Email hello@lexarius.com from your corporate account with “SC Ventures Pitch Competition” in the subject line to unlock access!

For support, reach out to support@lexarius.com

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

By Alex Manson, CEO, SC Ventures

Buy the book to learn about SC Ventures’ unique approach to venture building and how many of the startups were created. 

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Terms and Conditions

Please read the Pitch Competition Terms & Conditions before submitting. By submitting your application, you agree to be bound by these Terms & Conditions.

Terms & Conditions