Overview
Esco Aster utilizes our relationship capital as a scientific bridge, with Singapore serving as a nexus between the Far East (China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan) and the USA, Canada, UK, and Europe.
Esco Aster, from Singapore, also serves as a launchpad for South Asia, ASEAN, and Oceania (Australia/New Zealand) — a region valued at ~USD 10.5 trillion GDP with ~2.6 billion people.
Esco Aster enables business relationships with multinational corporations across various sectors, including biopharma, pharma, food, nutrition, dermatology, dermocosmetics, and consumer goods.
We are also strongly linked to the Middle East / North Africa via our regional hub at Esco Lifesciences Group in the United Arab Emirates.
Esco Aster has leveraged on the Tide Motion bioreactors to establish a robust and scalable platform using macrocarriers to meet the demands for future clinical therapies.
We present our services and process optimization with quality controls and release riteria of functional and phenotypic characteristics for the translation of academic/industrial R&D into bench scale for future clinical trials and commercialization process.
Our business development services range from interim leadership positions / fractional talent to working alongside our consulting services and strategic capital as a service. We provide key insights to ensure startup companies are built for success with the right “exit” strategy from day zero. We work with our collaborators to map out investment and business milestones.
We ensure that the startup can connect science to commercial markets by identifying the right opportunities with the right exit target, based on current market trends. This enables us to rapidly secure the right agreements and ensure every step of the company’s cadence moves toward regulatory, clinical, and commercial success.
We offer the following services as part of our comprehensive “idea to exit” and “concept to cure” framework — from seed stage to scale-up — connecting market intelligence with long-term strategy.
Our Business Development Tech-Biz bridges contracted services from Esco Aster (from research & development) with the end goal of clinical trials and eventual commercialization.
We provide sponsors with exit-focused consultancy services, identifying, evaluating, and securing deals to drive growth and manage IP. We sit at the intersection of “winning science” and business across R&D, clinical strategy, corporate strategy, and commercialization.
We help our sponsors with market expansion by identifying new markets and applications, expanding customer bases, and conducting competitor analysis to drive revenue. We act as the “North Star,” beginning with the end in mind — enabling the startup to commercialize and/or exit successfully.
We support our startups/sponsors’ commercial strategy, ensuring they have the right business model, are focused on the right targets and markets, and work alongside our clinical development team. This guarantees the product addresses an unmet medical need. We speak both science and business fluently. We also provide market intelligence on potential peer regulatory milestones based on public information, competitor readouts, reimbursement or policy updates in health technology assessments, and — most importantly — investor sentiment.
This helps our sponsors move beyond just sales to build the financial and operational capacity to launch products, while keeping costs in mind in the case of generics and biosimilars. We provide comprehensive technical and economic analysis, including COGS and plant profit & loss cost modeling.
Our services range from pre-term sheet to term sheet and post-term sheet, representing our sponsors’ interests in deal negotiations based on our unique insights into what partners are looking for.
Venture Creation and Growth
We enable academic labs to spin off their assets into companies with the right business model from day one. We also help startups and sponsors find alternative financing, funding, and partnerships, as well as navigate exits.
We do this by helping sponsors find collaborators, partnerships, and strategic alliances through targeted introductions and well-crafted pitches in the following areas:
- Research Collaborations / Joint Grants: We connect the ecosystem with academic institutions — often involving scientific co-founders who remain principal investigators / tenured professors — to participate in and receive grant funding.
- Open Innovation / Venture Partners: We work with our network in Singapore, including Open Innovation partners, government incubators, funds, fund-of-funds, accelerators, and venture studios to secure both funding and open innovation-funded partnerships.
- Off-take Arrangements / Brand Owners: We work with our network of brand owners, in addition to our CRDMO services, to jointly find off-takers for startups focused on B2B.
- Co-Development Partners: We help startups — especially those with platform technologies such as cell lines or encapsulation technologies (from nanoparticles to lipid nanoparticles, viral vectors, and drug delivery platforms) — find co-development partners via grant calls or joint funding. We often serve as the exclusive APAC regional distributor of the platform and CRDMO partner (e.g., Lipid Nanoparticle Development and Formulation Services | Esco Aster).
- Licensing Out: We help startups with platform technologies acquire partners keen to in-license these technologies for their specific indications.
- Spinning Out / Joint Ventures: We help startups spin out their assets and find funding partnerships leading to joint ventures.
- Pharma Corporate Venture Capital: Strategic capital with potential acquisition, typically involving non-dilutive BD deals with option-to-license or sponsored research collaboration agreements. For platform technologies, pharma companies may fund specific programs without diluting equity.
- Government-backed Innovation Funds: Enterprise Singapore (POC / POV grants), EIC Accelerator (EU), Innovate UK.
- Patient Advocacy Foundations / Non-Profits: For rare diseases, neuroscience, pediatric oncology, oncology, spinal cord injury, CNS diseases (e.g., Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s). Examples in Singapore include Viva Foundation. We help map science to foundation priorities, some of which fund translational science.
- Mergers & Acquisitions: We help match startups to buyers interested in acquiring the biotech company or its assets by identifying the pre-requisites required before acquisition.
Business Development Roadmap / Pitch Deck
Our services also include developing clear, concise, and precise business development plans and commercialization strategies — often as part of the data room and pitch decks — aligned with the startup’s targets across the following stages:
- Early-Stage Research Phase: This phase focuses on developing the minimum viable product. We are often contracted even at the early academic stage to guide projects and ensure grant money clearly demonstrates, using in vitro models (especially New Approach Methodologies), that the lead candidate works in a microphysiological microtissue model. This validates the value proposition before spinning out and securing angel or seed funding.
- Preclinical Phase: This phase involves leveraging Esco Aster’s corporate R&D partnerships to fund proof-of-concept and proof-of-validity non-clinical studies for lead candidates while advancing additional pipeline and platform assets. Our business development team focuses startups on a “Built-to-buy” strategy to generate high-fidelity non-clinical data that impresses grant bodies (based on technological readiness level) as well as potential licensors and early-access partners, while GLP data is being generated or the platform is first commercialized in Animal Health.
- Growth Clinical Phase: Mid-stage clinical data, especially through our contracted clinical development teams for investigator-initiated trials, allows our business development teams to develop more partnering options, such as regional licensing deals. Finding co-development partners for jointly developed, jointly owned intellectual property can supplement in-house capabilities as programs progress to late-stage trials. Most biotechs are acquired once they reach clinical stage. In oncology or dermatology, acquisitions often occur after efficacy endpoints in Phase I or Pivotal Phase II trials (Phase III often skipped). Hence, our business development teams focus on high-value strategic deals such as Joint Ventures, spinning out assets, M&As, or helping startups prepare to exit on SGX at this stage.
- Approval Phase: Priority shifts to commercial-focused partnering to support regional regulatory submissions, build manufacturing capacity via dedicated sites, and expand reach. Full out-licensing is an option (often geography- or indication-specific for platform technologies), or co-promotion to retain some control. Business developers initiate commercial and product strategies.
- Mature Commercial Phase: With commercial operations underway, business development teams aim for rapid growth as patent shelf life dwindles. We focus on extending market access for our sponsors through lifecycle management, line extensions, label expansions, and indication expansions. Acquiring complementary commercial-stage platforms can diversify revenue as a private equity play while preparing the company for trade sale and/or IPO.
If you are a government agency or venture ecosystem partner interested in our fractional business development or Business Development as a Service, contact us at [email protected].