Singapore focuses on refining data, the new 'oil'

Guest of honour Kiren Kumar, Director of Infocomm and Media, Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), outlines Singapore's opportunity in providing applied analytics talent and expertise to the world, during his welcome address at the Rakuten-Viki Global TV Recommender Challenge.

Kiren Kumar, Director of Infocomm and Media, Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), noted that the new accessibility to large amounts of data is a global opportunity.

Speaking at the finals of the Rakuten-Viki Global TV Recommender Challenge as the guest of honour, Kumar said that analytics could lead to a better understanding of the customer, and in turn new business models and revenue streams. in Singapore

"It is Singapore’s vision to be the Digital Capital of Asia. This explosion of data represents a world-wide opportunity as businesses look at applying analytics beyond historical uses in performance management to explore real-time intelligence and innovative applications to drive efficiencies and grow profits and new businesses.

"As a country with no natural resources, Singapore recognises that data is fast becoming a new 'resource' that can be refined and modelled into a form that can be used to drive economic growth. Beyond establishing ourselves as a regional data management hub, Singapore seeks to help companies unlock the value of their repository of data through analytics.

"The organisation of this data challenge is aligned with our vision as it encourages participants to drive innovation using analytics to solve real world business challenges. I believe that what you have experienced as participants reflects only a small sliver of what is possible with data.

"It is my hope that Singapore can continue to be that location for companies to crowdsource new analytics applications and create new business models and revenue streams with a better data-driven understanding of the consumer," he said in his welcome address.

He also noted that at least 30 large MNCs have set up analytics teams in Singapore over the last two years, highlighting the new importance that analytics holds for business success.

Singapore is also working on offering training for applied analytics, Kumar said, with the Rakuten Institute of Technology already nurturing analytical talent especially in big data, natural language processing, and computer vision, and IBM teaming up with NUS to offer a Masters of Science in Business Analytics. "EDB is keen to partner with partner companies for overseas training programmes," he said.

Interested?

Read the TechTrade Asia blog post on the finals for the Challenge