<article>The <a style="color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.ida.gov.sg/" target="_blank">Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA)</a> is offering $200 million in funding to startups in the US as it attempts to bring more American startups to the city-state. The IDA made this announcement as it kicked off San Francisco office.</article>

The <a style="color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.ida.gov.sg/" target="_blank">Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA)</a> is offering $200 million in funding to startups in the US as it attempts to bring more American startups to the city-state. The IDA made this announcement as it kicked off San Francisco office.
DEALSTREETASIA had recently reported that <a href="http://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/jtcs-block-71-takes-root-san-francisco/" target="_blank">Singapore’s Block 71</a>, the factory buildings that symbolises the city state’s efforts to build its own version of Silicon Valley, and described by the <a href="http://www.economist.com/" target="_blank">Economist </a>magazine as the ‘world’s most tightly packed entrepreneurial ecosystem’, was being transplanted to San Francisco.
While Block 71’s US base is aimed at helping Singaporean startups expand to that continent, IDA’s $200 million fund targets the reverse – getting American startups to shift base here and also help the city-state endeavour towards becoming a smart nation.
The funding is therefore targeted at startups who can use and analyse the 8,000 open government data sets adding value to Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative in areas like healthcare, city planning, mobility, security, urban living and citizen-centric services.
The fund was announced at the new office of <a style="color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.infocomminvestments.com/" target="_blank">Infocomm Investments Pte Ltd (IIPL)</a>, (the VC arm of IDA), San Francisco office by Steve Leonard, the executive deputy chairman of IDA.
Curated ideas appropriate to the Singapore context, as well as global scaling potential may then be selected for testing in Singapore. Successful solutions can then be applied to urban problems in cities elsewhere.
Data sets available includes public transportation commuter patterns, air quality, household electricity consumption and other attributes regarding Singapore demographic, socioeconomic and cultural trends.
The Smart Nation strategy seeks to leverage on ICT infrastructure to improve the operations of both government agencies and Singaporean businesses, from SMEs to MNCs. This involves collecting data, analysing it and translating that into actionable information.
IDA is also in a  collaboration with General Assembly, a global educational institution fostering a new tech community consisting of professionals seeking new careers. General Assembly is possibly establishing a Singapore presence in Q2 2015, making it their first office in Southeast Asia.
IIPL’s new office, which was based in Silicon Valley since 2009, is now located in the South of Market (SoMa) neighbourhood, part of <a href="http://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/jtcs-block-71-takes-root-san-francisco/" target="_blank">Block 71 San Francisco</a>. The latter is a collaborative initiative between NUS Enterprise and SingTel Innov8, aiming to generate trans-Pacific partnership opportunities between the two startup ecosystems.

IDA's $200m fund to attract US startups to SG

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IDA's $200m fund to attract US startups to SG

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