InnovateUK Global Incubator Programme Cleantech 2025
- Team Better Earth Ventures
- Feb 7
- 2 min read
Cleantech rarely fails because the technology isn’t good enough.It fails because markets are messy, incentives are misaligned, and reality does not care how elegant your pitch deck looks.
That tension sits at the heart of the Innovate UK Global Incubator Programme Cleantech Singapore 2025, delivered in partnership with Better Earth Ventures.
This week marked the graduation of the cohort, and as is tradition, we closed the programme not with a celebration of outputs, but with reflection. What founders learned. How they changed. What comes next. What stood out immediately was a shift in how many of them now think.
Immersion in a new market has a way of forcing perspective. Removed from familiar customers, regulations, and reference points, founders were pushed to lift their gaze from day-to-day product and operations, and engage more deeply with strategy, leadership, and long-term scale. Conversations that once centred on opportunity and potential evolved into far more concrete territory: pilots, deployment pathways, partnerships, and timelines.
This programme was not designed to be comfortable, but rather clarifying. Over the past few months, founders stepped into Singapore and the wider Asia-Pacific ecosystem and tested their assumptions in real time. They sat across the table from investors, corporates, government agencies, and ecosystem builders who deal daily with the region’s energy, infrastructure, and climate realities.
Very quickly, discussions moved from “what does your solution do?” to “who will pay for this, why now, and how does it scale here?”
Across the cohort, some ideas sharpened. Others broke. In many cases, the technology held up, but the go-to-market strategy did not. That distinction matters more in cleantech than most like to admit.
What emerged was not a single narrative of success, but something far more valuable: range. Hardware companies rethought partnership models. Software platforms narrowed focus. Infrastructure plays recognised that pilots, not pilots-as-marketing, are the real currency of trust in this region.
This was a deeply committed group of founders. They leaned fully into the work of scaling across borders, showing real openness to challenge, feedback, and recalibration. We believe personal growth is just as important as business growth metrics, and this cohort embodied that belief in practice.
The outcomes speak for themselves. Founders walked away with confirmed revenue, pilot contracts, and conversations that will continue well beyond the programme. Many also gained meaningful exposure through Singapore’s ecosystem and global platforms such as SWITCH, anchoring their next phase of growth in real relationships rather than abstract intent.
We want to recognise the graduating cohort for how thoughtfully they showed up throughout the journey:
RE24 – Dan Tennakoon
Hydrologiq – See Wah Cheng
METzero Technologies – Pavlina Theodosiou
measurable.energy – Dan Williams
Plastic-i – James Doherty, Sharon Rachel Manu
iBoxit – John Farley
Treeva – Anjali Devadasan
Bladon Micro Turbine – Paul Hancock
Thank you to Innovate UK and ATUM Ventures for the partnership and shared commitment to building strong international pathways for cleantech founders.
We’re proud to share our highlights in a video that captures the founders, the friction, and the moments of clarity that defined this programme.
Because in cleantech, the future is not built by the loudest ideas.It is built by the ones willing to adapt fast enough to stay standing.
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