Initiative gives Singapore's small businesses a growth blueprint

Initiative Singapore is launching a two-year corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme aimed at helping local entrepreneurs, founders and small businesses tap cultural insights and brand marketing expertise to grow their businesses.

Dubbed "The growth initiative", the programme launches on 21 August in conjunction with World Entrepreneurs' Day and will see the Omnicom Media agency provide founders with tools and coaching to better understand their brands' place in culture and identify opportunities for growth.

The programme comes as Singapore's startup ecosystem continues to expand, with the city-state home to an estimated 3,900 to 4,000 tech startups. According to Initiative, however, only around 30% of homegrown ventures succeed, with many founders lacking access to the brand marketing and advertising expertise needed to translate strong products and operations into consumer visibility.

Don't miss: Enterprise Singapore urges businesses to rethink standards

"The growth initiative" will roll out across two phases. In its first year, Initiative will introduce "The growth initiative blueprint", a self-serve, AI-powered tool designed to help founders assess where their brands sit within culture, the audiences they resonate with, areas where they have momentum and potential white spaces for growth.

In its second year, the agency will build on insights gathered during the first phase by working directly with participating entrepreneurs, founders and small businesses as growth coaches. Participants will receive two sessions a year focused on translating cultural insights from the Blueprint into practical business and marketing actions.

The programme also builds on Initiative's positioning around identifying opportunities amid disruption, applying the agency's culture-led approach to smaller businesses that may otherwise have limited access to strategic marketing resources.

Through the programme, Initiative said it hopes to give founders a clearer understanding of their position within culture while equipping them with strategies that can translate those insights into longer-term business growth.

According to Zachary Lim, managing director at Initiative Singapore, the tool is intended to make strategic cultural assessment more accessible to founders who may not have the budget to engage agencies or consultants.

"A strategic culture assessment that would normally run thousands of dollars becomes an afternoon's work for a founder with zero budget," said Lim. "Understanding their position in culture isn't an exercise; it's the foundation for real business growth."

In tandem, Chloe Neo, CEO, Omnicom Media Singapore said, "Singapore's SMEs make up 99% of all enterprises and employ around 70% of the workforce. Today's founder is tomorrow's employer, and tomorrow's contributor to shared prosperity."

She added that supporting the startup base could strengthen Singapore's wider economic ecosystem, describing the programme as an example of the "systemic impact CSR should create".

The programme comes as AI increasingly lowers the barrier for smaller businesses to access marketing capabilities that have traditionally required greater budgets, resources or specialist expertise. Meta, for example, recently expanded Meta AI with new advertising and analytics capabilities aimed at helping small businesses understand campaign performance, identify what is working and make decisions on where their ad budgets could work harder.

The features allow businesses to connect Meta AI directly with their Meta ad campaigns, giving the assistant access to performance data that can be analysed within a conversation.

Related articles: 
Omnicom Media merge Mediahub and Hearts & Science into new global agency  
Omnicom Media China names new chief growth officer
Omnicom PR builds out APAC leadership team following regional overhaul