Jack Yap struggled for years to attract meat lovers to his chain of vegetarian restaurants in his native Malaysia. He offered discounts, spent more on marketing and worked closely with in-house chefs to introduce creative dishes to the menu, like a vegetarian Philly cheesesteak. After four years of toiling away “without making a penny,” Yap

SINGAPORE (THE BUSINESS TIMES) – Enterprise Singapore (ESG) has added 14 new Accredited Mentor Partners (AMPs) to its Startup SG Founder scheme to groom local start-ups, with the appointments taking effect on May 1. The newly-appointed AMPs include start-up investors and accelerators such as Accelerating Asia, AgFunder Rocket Seeder, Big Idea Ventures Asia, Cocoon Capital, Decacorn Partners,

New York-based Pleese Foods, supported by Harlem incubator Hot Bread Kitchen and backed by Big Idea Ventures’s New Protein Accelerator, debuts a game-changing pizza cheese developed with the help of pizzerias across New York and with a big difference. Co-founder Kobi Regev tells us the secret behind what makes this one unique. Pleese Foods’ vegan cheese is produced

Big Idea Ventures (BIV), the hybrid VC firm-slash-accelerator, first caught my attention last year when it launched the New Protein Fund, a $50 million fund targeting seed-stage companies in the alternative protein space, and made its first investment in cell-based seafood company Shiok Meats. At the same time, BIV announced a twice-yearly accelerator program for budding alt-protein startups with