Get to know William Taing – Co-founder and Director at Beanstalk

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Tell us about your business

Beanstalk’s purpose is to ‘Unleash the potential for agriculture to be the leading force for good’. We exist to support industry leader agribusinesses, start-up innovators, investors, and government bodies across the Indo-Pacific to advance sustainable, ethical and responsible food systems.

We support them on their journey to become resilient businesses of the future. Businesses of the future typically share three key attributes:

  1. Impactful: They are clear about the impact they have and want to have. They work toward building the world’s resource base.
  2. Innovative: They are open innovators and are nimble in the face of change. They increasingly use their data to make better decisions.
  3. Profitable: They understand and prioritise their challenges and balance short and long term goals to create a solid foundation for growth. Profitability enables them to achieve their purpose and impact.

We are a specialised team of global leading strategy, agriculture and innovation experts dedicated to uplifting agriculture through innovation. Our core streams of work and leadership are in: 

  1. Corporate innovation: We design and deliver bespoke open innovation programs that help corporations solve challenges and capture opportunities fast by leveraging a tailored global innovation network
  2. Growth services: We help leading startups & scaleups with strategy, go-to-market, operations and investment services for market entry across Indo-Pacific and scaling up
  3. Ecosystem development: We design and deliver industry-led AgTech market entry, accelerator and incubator programs involving private sector, NGOs and public sectors to foster agritech ecosystem growth and tech adoption
  4. Venture advisory: We provide tailored venture advisory services to help corporations, investors, HNW family offices & industry groups make strategic investments in AgTech and build scalable ventures

 

What’s your role all about?

I am a Cofounder and Director at Beanstalk and our focuses are on bridging the gap between medium to large scale agribusinesses and startups across the Indo-Pacific region. My role here in Singapore is to help grow our footprint across the key markets of Singapore, Indonesia, India, Malaysia and India.

What’s the hot topic in your sector right now?

A few topics that are a passion area of Beanstalk and are critical challenges being faced today and into the future are:

  1. Sustainable agriculture and aquaculture systems
  2. Digitisation in agriculture
  3. Carbon farming and its role in greenhouse gas mitigation
  4. Regenerative agriculture practises
  5. Soil health
  6. Crop and food waste
  7. Ethical supply chain management
  8. Open innovation for agriculture
  9. Traceability and transparent supply chain management
  10. Resilience farming systems

Why are you a member of AustCham in Singapore?

I am keen to be actively connected and contributing to the Australia-Singapore bilateral relationship and feel that Singapore will be a hub and catalyst for agrifood innovation in the decades to come demonstrating the possibilities of technology and new business models. There is a fast emerging ecosystem here and I believe that Australian businesses are very open to collaboration and partnerships across the Southeast Asia region more broadly.

Australia is also well recognised as a productive agriculture region, bringing these experiences and knowledge into the region will be highly valuable and help to catalyse exciting possibilities for innovation in technology and practice change.

Where are your favourite places to go to relax in Singapore?

I have been here for only 3 weeks now but so far it has been walking around Southern Ridges and hanging by some of the small cafes in Tiong Bahru. Nevertheless, the pool we have in our complex will have to be a frequent go to!

What are your predictions for the next 12 months?

A return to some level of normality with heightened awareness and consciousness around sustainability in our region. There appears to genuine engagement and interest from many corners of Southeast Asia for agricultural innovation and the private sector are dipping their toes in the water. Things will start to happen quick from now as it seems there is no shortage of capital, but just lack of high quality opportunities in AgTech and that will also catch up.

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