Startup Failures in Singapore

Grab's digital bank dream burned SGD 300M chasing customers it already had in its app.

Southeast Asian corporate card that spent $1,800 acquiring customers worth only $900 annually.

Predicting arrivals when the carriers gave the data away for free.

400 million users watched — almost none of them bought anything.

The NFT marketplace that launched with $1B in week-one volume — 95% of which was wash trading by its own users

The Singapore embedded finance unicorn reached $1B then filed for judicial management after missing payroll

Blockchain climate certificates—innovative, unrecognized, and ultimately worthless.

The $40B Southeast Asia super-app SPAC that fell 75% before its first profitable quarter

The Southeast Asian crypto exchange that froze withdrawals and then its CEO disappeared

Southeast Asia's quantum software pioneer dissolved when no bank could find a quantum problem worth solving.

Decentralized indexing for 20 chains, sustained by a token price that fell 97%.

APAC people analytics needed 15 legal frameworks solved simultaneously — an impossible task for a 14-person startup.

A pet-sitting marketplace that survived the pandemic but couldn't survive the aftermath.

Palantir's Asia expansion crushed this supply chain geopolitical risk startup overnight.

The Southeast Asian BNPL startup raised $40M then shut down as rising rates made the model unworkable

Mintable raised $13M backed by Mark Cuban but couldn't survive a 97% NFT market volume collapse.

Asia's co-living pioneer discovered that Singapore's government is the ultimate property manager.

The Singapore crypto lender that hid its Anchor Protocol losses until it was too late

Blockchain couldn't float a ship that nobody wanted to board.

The most influential crypto hedge fund in the world — wiped out in weeks by a levered bet on Terra/LUNA and stETH.

The $60B algorithmic stablecoin that proved math can't substitute collateral.

The $18 billion crypto hedge fund that borrowed $3.5 billion to bet on LUNA — then disappeared when it hit zero

The crypto lender that offered 12.68% APY until the market proved that impossible

Even $690M couldn't buy consumer wallet share from Grab and Shopee in Southeast Asia.

CEO falsified ARR, got ousted, and the engineers all left within 90 days.

Southeast Asia fashion unicorn collapsed when its CEO's numbers didn't add up

The $200B pandemic darling that lost 89% of its value in seven months

Singapore food wholesale marketplace that survived COVID subsidies but not the recovery.

Blockchain cobalt tracking collapsed when DRC miners said no to GPS surveillance.

Algorithmic stablecoin wiped $40B in 72 hours in a death spiral

Bangladesh's ride-hailing hero dissolved in Singapore before completing a single ride.

Singapore grocery and food delivery raised $200M and expanded to 8 Asian markets. Then ran out of cash, stopped paying employees, and quietly collapsed.

Blue-collar job platform connecting hourly workers in Southeast Asia

Singapore's venue booking marketplace was destroyed by COVID with no recovery path

Southeast Asia cross-border parcel platform abruptly shut leaving merchants stranded

Banking AI conversational platform made redundant by GPT-4 entering financial services

Singaporean payments infrastructure startup rebranded as Fazz before MAS tightened crypto licensing

Singapore's neobank that MAS gave the digital bank license to Grab instead

Zipmex operated a regulated crypto exchange across Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and Australia — then the Celsius and Three Arrows Capital collapses froze 53 million dollars of customer funds, triggering judicial management and leaving 200,000 users unable to withdraw their money.

Luxury goods resale marketplace for Southeast Asia

Singapore's 3D printer startup that proved consumers don't need $347 3D printers

SME lending platform for Southeast Asia — a promising model undone by credit losses

STEPN built a move-to-earn app that paid users in crypto tokens for running — reaching 700,000 daily users and 122 million dollars in monthly revenue before the Ponzi dynamics collapsed and the token lost 98 percent of its value in three months.

Philippines live-streaming social app raised $10M then lost the race to TikTok Live

Singapore used car marketplace unicorn raised $360M but could not escape used car economics

Cell-based shrimp and crab too expensive to survive without a market.

Singapore online grocery pioneer raised $26M, was acquired by Lazada, then Lazada shut it down when Alibaba restructured Southeast Asian operations.

Malaysian B2B food supply platform folded after COVID-era tailwinds reversed

Singapore SME P2P lender — defaults climbed as the loan book aged

Super-app credit arm found lending harder than rides

Singapore robo-advisor raised $90M then watched AUM growth stall as banks launched free equivalents

Singapore grocery delivery darling burned through $200M expanding to 8 countries before collapsing

Southeast Asia restaurant off-peak discounting app raised $13M and failed to survive COVID

Asia-focused employer of record startup stalled as Deel and Remote dominated global market