EY start-up incubator program on offer to Sri Lanka start-ups

EY has announced the expansion of the EY Foundry start-up incubator program to cover Australia, New Zealand and the ASEAN markets of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Sri Lanka. 

EY Foundry focuses on helping early stage tech start-ups in the tax, accounting, fintech, legal tech, regulatory tech, compliance tech and HR tech space, to accelerate business growth through piloting and scaling activities with the EY organisation. Founders of start-ups in the countries announced today are invited to apply to the program from 28 September till 6 November 2020 at www.ey.com/eyfoundry.

Due to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, EY Foundry has evolved into a virtually run program which will leverage the EY global connectivity to bring greater collaboration opportunities to life – between start-ups, EY professionals and the supporting corporate community. Successful applicants to the program will be announced at a virtual launch event to be held in November 2020, in which up to 14 start-ups may each be offered six months of participation in high-growth EY activities. These activities include tailored learnings by EY subject matter professionals, as well as EY piloting sessions to better prepare start-up products to access the corporate community. 

EY Foundry takes no equity in the start-ups and to further support the program’s participants in building their technology, they will be given $ 120,000 worth of Microsoft Azure credits. 

Ben Stein, Co-Founder and CEO of Staple, and EY Foundry Singapore alumni, says: “I highly encourage any start-up that fits the criteria to apply for EY Foundry. The program has helped us accelerate our company’s growth, increase our enterprise network and establish greater trust with our investors and corporates. Piloting our technology with EY Foundry was a milestone that not only helped get our product corporate-ready, but also provided us with traction in the market to achieve our funding objectives.”

Following successful program launches in Sydney and Singapore, Patricia Xia, EY Asia-Pacific Tax Innovation Leader, believes the program’s expansion will bring greater diversification of applicants, start-up businesses and emerging technologies, and more opportunities to connect these solutions to EY services for clients. 

To qualify for the EY Foundry program, applicants must fulfil a set of criteria, including:

An early stage (pre-series A funding) start-up that is technology or product-related 

Potential applications to the tax, accounting, fintech, legal tech, regulatory tech, compliance tech or HR tech industries

Having a working prototype or working toward having a prototype that is scalable 

Having a leadership team with demonstrated experience in the relevant industry

Being able to provide business pitch materials or video in the application

Ernst & Young, Sri Lanka Partner Tax Services Roshini Fernando commenting on the launch stated, “EY Foundry is about helping our young entrepreneurs by way of activities that can help test and validate technology ideas and assist start-ups refine the implementation strategy for cross-border growth. Through EY Foundry virtual program, Sri Lanka, as one of the progressively evolving markets in the space of tax, accounting, fintech, legal tech, regulatory tech, compliance tech or HR tech industries, would indeed be unveiled to an unrivalled opportunity to escalate start-up businesses both locally and internationally. Thus, we urge our Sri Lankan start-ups of the said focus industries to send in their applications to the EY Foundry program.”