BeingIconic launches in Asia backed by Avyan Holdings Singapore; Jack Lim named principal

Growth consultancy, BeingIconic, which transitions businesses through their scale-up journey, is opening in Asia with backing from Singapore-based Avyan Holdings.

BeingIconic supports companies to scale outside of existing internal capabilities through flexible delivery of strategic marketing, network expansion, commercial and operational expertise.

It has closed a A$1 million pre-seed round with investment from Avyan Holdings, part of Avyan Global, a creative human experience design-led collective.

Experienced senior executive Jack Lim (pictured middle), partner and chief growth officer at Avyan Global and former chief commercial and partnerships officer at ONE Championship and chief commercial officer at Mediacorp, will be principal of BeingIconic’s Asia operations based in Singapore in addition to continuing in his current role.

BeingIconic has also appointed Mike Wilson (pictured right), who launched and was chairman and CEO of Havas Media Australia and co-founder of Naked Communications, as non-executive director and strategic advisor. Wilson is also an investor.

Following successful collaborations with over 50 scale-ups in Australia, BeingIconic has closed a pre-seed friends and family capital raise to expand operations in Asia and the UK, build out strategy and client services teams as well as investing in marketing and business development.

The first round of shareholders include leading investors and executives from Australia and Asia’s marketing, media and creative sectors.

Investors include:
• Singapore-based Avyan Holdings, part of Avyan Global, a creative human experience design-led collective.
• BeingIconic non-executive director and strategic advisor, Mike Wilson, who launched and was chairman and CEO of Havas Media Australia and co-founder of Naked Communications.
• James Neale, Clemenger Group board director and former national managing director of Traffik Marketing.
• Jack Byrne, founder and managing director of award-winning Australian independent media agency Hatched and Simon Porter, head of retail at Hatched
• Jason P Ross, investor and former creative at agencies including JWT, Saatchi & Saatchi, TBWA. Ross’s investment portfolio includes creative innovation platform, Exceptional Alien.

Peter Brocklebank (pictured left), partner and managing director, BeingIconic, said: “Since launching two years ago, we have taken a deliberate and staged approach to validate the proposition to ensure it delivers for companies ready for their scale-up journey. Scale-ups typically don’t fail because they don’t have a good product, they fail because they only have a great product. BeingIconic brings deep insights, expertise and networks to fuel the next phase of growth by becoming an integral part of their teams through expert guidance across marketing, operations and finance functions.

“Our new investors not only enable us to expand the BeingIconic offer to Asia, UK and beyond, they are a collective of partners who intrinsically understand the ecosystem and can support us with their own insights, experience and connections.”

Industry and category agnostic, BeingIconic works with scale-ups including espresso Displays, award-winning creators of the world’s thinnest portable monitor; UK-based CrowdProperty, on the Australian launch of the UK-based fintech business; natural wellness company BWX and technology innovation company Olinqua.

Will Scuderi, CEO and founder of espresso Displays, said: “In the first ten months working with the BeingIconic team we have seen sales increase by 2,400 percent. Plugging their core team into ours, with a wider partner network, has given us all the expertise we need. From refining our brand; getting our new website built; setting up global Amazon sales to organising our paid media strategy, BeingIconic has enabled us to scale at a rate we couldn’t have hoped for.”

In addition to collaborating with scale-ups directly, BeingIconic works with established capital raising partners and their clients, including OnMarket, Australia’s largest equity raising platform and Microsoft For Startups, the corporate venture capital subsidiary of Microsoft, amongst others.

Ian Bell, partner and chief innovation officer, BeingIconic, said: “There are significant opportunities to take the product and service innovations of Asian businesses and expand them out to new markets. BeingIconic’s mission is to grow these entrepreneurial scale-ups beyond their internal potential, be a trusted partner and help them realise their ambitions. The founders together with our new shareholders are experienced in doing just that and now we are bringing this combined experience, and that of our wider team to scale-ups in Asia.”