With 10 years of working in offshore and marine, oil and gas, as well as running his own businesses, Eric Chean is no stranger to the maritime industry. His interactions from his first two start-ups (a ship-broking business and a digital marketplace for ships) led him to the realisation that he could channel his interest in digitalisation towards optimising the maritime supplies space. This was how Ship Supplies Direct (SSD) was founded. When PIER71 launched Smart Port Challenge in 2018, one of the innovation opportunities matched very closely with the problem that SSD was aiming to solve. As the company did not have a full-fledged solution at that time, Smart Port Challenge offered SSD the ideal platform for getting a deeper understanding of the problem and getting market validation. As one of the selected finalists, SSD also received a S$50,000 grant from the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA). This allowed them to fully develop their application and embark on a pilot project with PIER71’s corporate partners including PSA International, Wilhelmsen and Wärtsilä post Smart Port Challenge. More than a year later, they are continuing to make steady progress by focussing on quality and delivering tangible value to customers. PSA unboXed, the external innovation and corporate venture capital arm of PSA International, has also invested in Shipp as a result.

(updated March 2020)