On 27 Oct 2023, Marketing Director Xavier Wong and five CM material-based portfolio startups visited the BASF Creation Center in Shanghai, to meet up with Danny Du, Leader of BASF Creation Center APAC for a discovery session. Danny was joined by team members Jian, BASF Creator Lab Manager and Joanne, BASF Creation Center China Manager, as well as other BASF colleagues joined online.
The half-day exchange session allowed BASF and CM portfolio startups focused on material technology – Beaver Bio, Nanotop, Prismlab, Sengong & ZenithNano – understand each other’s strengths in developing breakthroughs for the materials market, and opened up fresh opportunities in co-creation and product development.
On CM’s side, portfolio startups attending included: Sengong (PVA material) CEO Jason Wang, NanoTop (conductive polymers & adhesives), CEO Yin Wengang, Beaver Bio (magnetic nano-beads), CEO Arthur Ren, ZenithNano (conductive nanofilm technology) R&D team, and PrismLab (high-speed/resolution 3D SLA printing), Media/Mktg Director Yu Xintong.
BASF Creation Center shared its principles of innovation through a universal 3-step process – Discover, Understand, Create – and the belief in co-creating to achieve breakthroughs. They also shared a 5-step process – Objective, Idea, Prototype, Evaluate, Production – on how co-creation is generated. CM Venture briefly introduced its expertise in the hard tech focus – advanced materials, smart manufacturing, new energy & sustainability. This was followed by a short lunch and an afternoon session with the five portfolio material companies sharing their latest breakthroughs and tech insights.
As BASF APAC Creation Center Leader Danny Du says: “Thanks to Xavier and CM Venture for co-ordinating a very informative discussion from a diverse group of industry sectors and leaders. I look forward to exploring the opportunities to collaborate with the innovative technologies and materials in the near future.””
The discovery session was an eye-opener for both CM Venture material portfolio startups and BASF, with both parties planning to continue further conversations on possible co-development and/or collaboration on future projects. We’d like to thank BASF for making time and taking the effort to host our startups and our team, and look forward to more discovery sessions in future!
