Evercomm co-founder Ted Chen is in the prestigious Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2016 list.
Chen Chiu Hao, or Ted as his friends call him, was an undergraduate at the Nanyang Technological University when the startup bug bit him and his co-founder, Phyo Ko Ko.
Spoiler alert: They launched the energy startup Evercomm, which is now based at NTU’s Innovation Centre. Evercomm provides enterprise end-to-end energy management solutions, including energy data collection, data analysis and insights reporting. The company also joined the Accreditation@IDA programme.
Ted recently made it to the ranks of the Manufacturing and Energy category of the prestigious Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia awards.
IDA Tech News caught up with Ted for a quick chat after the Forbes list was announced.
Q: How did it feel when you first heard that you were up for the Forbes 30-under-30 Award?
It was humbling and exciting, because the work we strongly believe in has been recognized by a prestigious organization.
Q: And when you received the official notice?
It felt surreal! I am extremely honoured to be part of the Forbes Asia 30 under 30, and I am thankful to IDA for the nomination.
Q: As the co-founder and product architect of Evercomm, what are your thoughts about winning the award?
It has been a fulfilling and meaningful journey towards sustainability. Although it has only been 3 years, everything was made possible because of an idea I conceived together with my cofounder, Phyo Ko Ko, during our university days.
The journey we took to build Evercomm, a company alongside a validated product, has been a long but extremely rewarding one.
I definitely have to thank the various mentors who have provided us with help and guidance along this journey.
Q: How would you describe your startup journey so far?
We were very lucky to be in the right place at the right time. We started under the guidance of NTUitive's mentors.
Ted in action, presenting at the World Entreprenuership Forum.
We then won the first CodeXtreme App hackathon, which gave us an opportunity to meet IDA’s Executive Deputy Chairman, Steve Leonard.
We met Steve as just two fresh grads, but after we pitched our ideas to him, he kindly linked us to Infocomm Investments (IIPL) and the Enhanced iSPRINT team, where we learnt about SPRING TECS (Technology Enterprise Commercialisation Scheme) and the industrial sector.
During our SPRING TECS process, on top of just product development, we were fortunate enough to be pushed by IIPL head, Alex Lin, during every milestone review on the commercialization progress.
Most recently, we have gone through a complete company optimization with Edwin Low, Director of Accreditation@IDA and his team to ensure Evercomm is ready to scale up.
Q: In Oscars style, who would you like to thank and credit for this Award?
NTU, NTUitive, IDA, IIPL, SPRING and our client-turned-energy partner, the GLOBALFOUNDRIES management team, who proactively took on sustainable challenges through pioneering dynamic Energy KPI with us.
We wouldn’t be here without them!
(Editor: Orchestral music starts playing.)
Q: Now that you have this award under your belt, what’s next for you, personally?
Learning how to manage and grow a team across the region.
Q: And what’s next for Evercomm?
On top of continuous R&D through various collaborations, this year we will be focusing more on regional expansion. Last year, we successfully expanded into Taiwan. This year, we are planning to expand into Malaysia and China simultaneously.
Q: One bonus question. How has Evercomm benefitted from the Accreditation@IDA programme?
The programme helped clean up our company’s financials, which enabled us to close our seed round very quickly. It also helped us established processes so we can scale more effectively. Most importantly, we went through stringent vulnerability and reliability testing, which is critical for any enterprise software.
Without Accreditation@IDA, it would be very costly for us to conduct these procedures.
(Editor: And before we forget, CONGRATULATIONS, TED!)
.webp)