Meetup: Reverse Innovation Cohort 2: Info Session

25^th August 2022

Ouch Sovannarith

Mr. Vantharith Oum is a Senior Startup Development Specialist of Techo Startup Center. He graduated from Royal University of Phnom Penh with a Bachelor of Art in Media Management in 2006 and completed his Master coursework in Development Policy at KDI School of Public Policy in 2013. He has more than 10 years of working experience in various organizations across different sectors including advertising and brand communications, technology & civil society, and most recently in social business and entrepreneurship. He has also managed a social enterprise to promote and market WASH products to rural consumers in Cambodia.

Incubation and acceleration programs are meant to incubate and accelerate startups exponentially. These programs help expose startups to the public as well as important stakeholders such as investors and mentors. In addition, if the startups’ business models are selected by the judges, those startups will be rewarded with huge sum of fund to help boost their businesses. In fact, Reverse Innovation Cohort 2 is also an acceleration program organized by Ministry of Economy and Finance and Techo Startup Center and co-organized by The Association of Banks in Cambodia and Khmer Enterprise to help startups within Fintech sector.

During the event, Mr. Vantharith explained the flow of the Reverse Innovation Cohort 2 program as well as how to register in the program. This program was officially launched on 31^st August 2022 under the name “Reverse Pitch Day”. He continued that startups who join this program will receive the following provisions including connection to investors, mentoring and trainings from specialists, networking with important stakeholders, access to co-working space, receiving financial support and so on. Lastly, he concluded that any startup can join this program by solving challenges of corporations or related issues within the field of Fintech namely banking, nonbanking, and decentralized finance.

In the meetup, Mr. Vantharith also talked about:

· Background of Reverse Innovation

· Objectives of the program

· Key dates and timeline of the program

You may find the slide deck to this meetup in here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0yIk6wzq7w