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NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) was launched by then NUS President Professor Shih Choon Fong. The NOC programme aims to nurture entrepreneurial talents and give students the opportunity to live, work and learn at leading entrepreneurial hubs around the globe.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed between NUS and Stanford University on 3 July 2001 for NUS students to intern at Stanford affiliated technological start-ups, establishing the first college in Silicon Valley, USA. Fun fact: Silicon Valley, a hub for technology companies, has attracted a great deal of venture capital. It is the epitome of extraordinary innovation and entrepreneurship and big-name companies like Apple, eBay, Yahoo, PayPal, Google were founded in the area.

The first batch of 14 NOC students embarked on the NOC programme at Silicon Valley, USA

An MOU was signed on 25 Sep 2002 between NUS and the University of Pennsylvania, hence establishing two NOC locations in the USA. The University of Pennsylvania is a highly entrepreneurial university and its alumni have founded a variety of companies, such as Fortune 500 companies CVS, Comcast, Sysco, Cisco Systems, Inc., and Morgan Stanley.

The pioneer batch of 14 NOC students arrived at Philadelphia (NOC Bio Valley*), Pennsylvania, USA. The University of Pennsylvania is a highly entrepreneurial university and its alumni have founded a variety of companies, such as Fortune 500 companies CVS, Comcast, Sysco, Cisco Systems, Inc., and Morgan Stanley. *NOC Philadelphia (Bio Valley) has ceased operations

The NUS Enterprise Centre in Silicon Valley was launched, the first overseas business support centre established by a Singaporean university.

An NOC team won the 1st prize.

An MOU was signed on 29 Aug 2003 between NUS and Fudan University, establishing the link with Shanghai, China. Since the 2000s, entrepreneurship in China has grown at an exponential rate. The success of internet entrepreneurs, such as Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu, later led to entrepreneurs growing exponentially in various other industries. The next generation of young people were exposed to entrepreneurial aspirations and no matter the outcome, it adds to their experience and opens up even more opportunities in the future.

The pioneer batch of 8 NOC students arrived in Shanghai, China.

NOC teams clinched 1st and 2nd prize at the 2nd Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition and 1st prize at the 5th Start-Up@Singapore business plan competition.

An MOU was signed on 17 May 2005 between NUS and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, establishing the link with Stockholm, Sweden, and the pioneer batch of 4 NOC students commenced the programme in the same year. Sweden’s home computer drive and concurrent early investment in internet connectivity are some of the reasons why its capital Stockholm has become a rich soil for start-ups, leading to the birth of unicorns like Spotify, Skype and Klarna. Spotify was also an NOC intern company before they attained unicorn status.

An MOU was signed between NUS and the Indian Institute of Science, establishing the link with Bangalore, India. With new computer and software policies in the 1980s, large IT organisations set-up camp in Bangalore (now known as Bengalaru) and hired Indian programmers. Indian software companies benefited from American companies offering advanced systems, while American companies capitalised on the large talent pool and low operational costs, further contributing to the making of an IT hub and innovation centre. In the early 2000s, Bangalore (Bengalaru) was then known as the “Start-Up Capital” of India.

NOC teams won 1st prize at the Santa Clara Engineering Business Alliance Business Plan Competition, 1st and 2nd prize at the 7th Start-Up@Singapore business plan competition and 1st prize at the 3rd Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition.

NOC teams won 1st and 2nd prize at the 8th Start-Up@Singapore business plan competition.

With the rise of entrepreneurship in Singapore, the innovative Local Enterprise Achiever Development (iLEAD) programme was launched by NUS Entrepreneurship Centre (NEC) to offer NUS students the opportunity to intern at local start-up companies and be exposed to the entrepreneurial challenges in Singapore and beyond. The pioneer batch of 15 students also went for their first Overseas Study Mission (OSM) trip to Silicon Valley.

The pioneer batch of 2 NOC students arrived in India.* *NOC India has ceased operations.

NOC teams won 1st prize at the 4th Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition and 1st prize at the Intel-Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge

Then NUS President, Professor Shih Choon Fong, gifted the NOC programme with seed funding of S$200,000 to set up the NOC Odyssey Fund.

A total of 139 donors joined Professor Shih Choon Fong to make gifts and pledges worth S$65,350 to the NOC Odyssey Fund. 127 of them are NOC alumni.

An MOU was signed on 4 August 2009 between NUS and Tsinghua University, establishing two NOC locations in China. The pioneer batch of 10 NOC students arrived in Beijing, China.

The first NOC Alumni D&D was held at The Legends, Fort Canning Park.

The iLEAD OSM trip was expanded to China (Beijing and Shanghai).

The iLEAD programme was subsumed under the NOC office in 2010.

An exponential growth of NOC India programme saw its increase from 18 to 45 participants. NOC India* was also expanded to the Himalayas. *NOC India has ceased operations.

McAfee, then the world’s largest dedicated security technology company, announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire tenCube, founded by two NOC alumni and their two NUS peers.

The iLEAD programme expanded the OSM trip to Germany (Munich and Stuttgart) and Israel.

“NOC is a flagship program which NUS has every reason to be proud of….The quality and caliber of NOC graduates makes them excellent ambassadors of NUS, both abroad and domestically.” - International Advisory Panel (IAP)

NOC alumni start-ups, 2359 Media and Stream Media, received significant investments from SingTel Innov8 and NUS.

The iLEAD-KTH internship programme in Singapore was officially launched.

APAC leading media intelligence firm, Media Monitors Group, acquired a majority stake in NOC alumni start-up, Brandtology.

NOC India* was re-branded to NOC Entrepreneurial India*, and expanded to Haryana, Jaipur, Udaipur and Sadri in Rajasthan. *NOC India has ceased operations.

The pioneer batch of 5 students arrived in Israel. Israel is named as the Start-up Nation as it has one of the highest density of start-ups in the world. Despite being a small nation, it does not hinder new companies, but leads them to be international and think global since day one. The business-friendly country has highly-developed government programs for funding technological advancements, and has strong support from the private and public sectors for innovation.

The pioneer batch of students shifted into NOC themed residence, N-House at Blk 15 Prince George’s Park Residences, a place where entrepreneurial minds meet and live next to one another.

Blk71, an old industrial building, was repurposed by NUS Enterprise, SingTel Innov8 and the Media Development Authority of Singapore and transformed into an entrepreneurial enclave for start-ups, incubators and venture capitalists. Plug-In@Blk71 (now known as BLOCK71 Singapore) was established at the heart of this community to nurture start-ups in Singapore, and NOC students had the opportunity to intern at incubatee companies.

The three parties (NUS Enterprise, SingTel Innov8 and the then Media Development Authority of Singapore) work together to bring in the first tenants to the building, including start-ups from their respective portfolios, investors such as QuestVC and TNF Ventures, as well as JFDI, Singapore’s fi rst accelerator. JFDI initially runs its programme from Plug-In@Blk71 before moving into its own unit. Through Plug-In@Blk71, NUS Enterprise incubates a variety of start-ups, and aggregates a diversity of entrepreneurship events to bring vibrancy to the building. These include Barcamp, Start-up Weekend, 100-Days Bootcamp, Seeds Forum, Demo Asia, and the Innotribe Challenge.

The New York Times notes that Blk71’s inhabitants are “...building a world where tech travels everywhere, demolishing existing systems and changing societies.”

Travelmob is acquired by HomeAway, making it one of Blk71’s first success stories.

To continue to work together to maintain and enhance activities for NUS students in NOC Israel, an MOU was formalised between NUS and Tel Aviv University (TAU) on 24 Feb 2013, and between NUS and IDC Herzliya (now known as Reichman University) on 31 Aug 2013.

Following the success of Blk71, NUS establishes an overseas incubator, NUSRI Enterprise Space, in Suzhou, China, as part of the National University of Singapore (Suzhou) Research Institute (NUSRI).

Zopim was acquired by US-based Zendesk. Four of the five co-founders attended the NOC programme.

The Economist labels Blk71 “the world’s most tightly packed entrepreneurial ecosystem.” Given the success of Blk71, government agency Jurong Town Council (JTC) launches JTC LaunchPad@one-north, expanding the start-up cluster surrounding Blk71 with the intention to double the number of start-ups and entrepreneurs in the vicinity. The expansion includes two new buildings - Blk73 & Blk79- as well as the upgrading of the area and development of sports facilities, shared meeting rooms, and a food hall.

An MOU was signed on 20 May 2014 between NUS and New York University (NYU), establishing three NOC locations in the US. The pioneer batch of 7 NOC students arrived in New York, USA. As Silicon Valley boomed, New York followed suit in second place and was often dubbed as “Silicon Alley”. As Google and Facebook boomed in the second half of the 2000s, media and advertising began to move online, destroying old business models and birthing new ones. New Yorkers took notice and from it rose a variety of online start-ups such as Shutterstock, Etsy, BuzzFeed, Outbrain, Tumblr, and FourSquare. Silicon Valley giants also took notice, setting up their offices outside of Silicon Valley - in New York.

The final batch of NOC students arrived in Philadelphia (Bio Valley*) and India*. *NOC Bio Valley and India has ceased operations.

NUS Enterprise takes BLOCK71 abroad with the opening of BLOCK71 San Francisco, a collaboration between NUS Enterprise, Singtel Innov8 and Infocomm Investments Pte ltd (IIPL) (nka SGInnovate). Playing the role of a tech ecosystem developer and global connector, BLOCK71 seeks to provide a twoway flow of talents, technologies, and start-ups between Singapore and other ecosystems. NOC students also had the opportunity to visit and develop new experiences there.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong attends the official opening of JTC LaunchPad@one-north in January 2015 and gives Blk71 a pat on the back. “I’m very happy that Block71 has been successful. There are now 1,200 people working in 260 start-ups and 25 incubators.”

The iLEAD programme was renamed to NOC Singapore

Timbre+ opens at JTC Launchpad@ one-north, providing live music, food, as well as a central gathering place to the area’s start-ups.

Prime Minister Lee, in his annual National Day Rally address, endorses the success of Blk71. “The start-ups are growing, and investors are paying attention... maybe the next Google, Facebook or Alibaba may come from Singapore.” In a speech on US-Singapore relations, US President Barack Obama states, “We see our friendship in the collaborations between our innovators and entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley to Singapore’s Block 71.”

NOC was set-up in Munich and Lausanne* cities with strong deep-tech culture – targeted for post-graduate students with deeper technical knowledge to provide them opportunities to intern at deep-tech start-ups (based on true technological innovation or scientific discovery). An MOU was signed on 25 Feb 2016 between NUS and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland. *NOC Lausanne has ceased operations. An MOU was signed on 22 June 2016 between NUS and Technical University of Munich (TUM), Munich, Germany. Munich has a strong start-up ecosystem – one that educates students in entrepreneurship each year, provides start-up consultation, incubation and business centres, all of which is supported by the Technical University of Munich (TUM), similar to how NUS supports entrepreneurs through NUS Enterprise. Through NUS’ and TUM’s collaboration, students from both universities benefit from entrepreneurial exchange programmes – travelling to the respective country to take internships at a start-up company and courses at the university, experiencing the dynamic entrepreneurial environments in Singapore or Munich, Germany.

JTC Launchpad@one-north further expands through the addition of Blocks 75, 77 and 81.

BLOCK71 Jakarta opens as a collaboration between NUS Enterprise and Salim Group.

NUSRI Enterprise Space is renamed BLOCK71 Suzhou.

The pioneer batch of 2 and 6 NOC students arrived in Munich and Lausanne* respectively. *NOC Lausanne has ceased operations.

An MOU was signed on 22 Nov 2017 between NUS and University of Toronto, Canada.

NUS Enterprise extends its partnership with Salim Group through the openings of BLOCK71 Yogyakarta and BLOCK71 Bandung.

The pioneer batch of 15 NOC students arrived in Southeast Asia (SE Asia). The three-month internship sought to expose students to the dynamic economies of SE Asia and start-ups in areas such as agricultural technology, social enterprise, e-commerce and more. The pioneer batch of 9 NOC students arrived in Toronto, Canada. Toronto earns its place as a phenomenal start-up city for entrepreneurs of all kinds, ranked one of the best cities in the world to launch a tech start-up, and for woman entrepreneurs.

The Innovation Cybersecurity Ecosystem@BLOCK71 (ICE71) is jointly launched by NUS Enterprise and Singtel Innov8 as the region’s fi rst cybersecurity start-up hub.

Port Innovation Ecosystem Reimagined@BLOCK71 (PIER71) is launched by NUS Enterprise and the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore.

Launch of NUS Graduate Research Innovation Programme (GRIP) - Additional opportunities for NUS students work in teams to transform their knowledge and ideas into investible, scalable deep-tech start-ups.

BLOCK71 Suzhou and the NUS (Suzhou) Research Institute run the inaugural China Immersion Programme, designed to help Singapore start-ups venture into the China market.

The pioneer batch of 6 NOC students arrived in Shenzhen, China. Shenzhen is known as the start-up city of China. It was once dubbed as the manufacturing hub of the world.

An MOU was signed on 10 Sep 2019 between NUS and Nagoya University, Japan. NOC Nagoya, a 6-month programme tailored to NUS PhD students, was established and aimed to introduce students to Japanese corporate innovation and expose them to the deep-tech start-up ecosystem in the region. Nagoya is a manufacturing powerhouse and is home to many of the world’s largest Japanese companies in the fields of automotive, aviation and robotics. Nagoya’s world renowned brands include Toyota, Denso, Mitsubishi, Subaru and Brother Industries.

BLOCK71 Saigon opens as a partnership between NUS Enterprise and Becamex.

242 NOC students were recalled in batches between January to March 2020 amid the Covid-19 pandemic. NOC staff delivered care packages to students doing SHN at College Green.

Former incubatees PatSnap, Carro, Nium, Carousell and Ajaib achieve unicorn status.

Overseas student programmes resumed in October 2021 for students fully vaccinated against Covid-19. NUS' budding entrepreneurs were among first students to head overseas for internships.

Pilot of GRIP NOC launched to enable current NOC students to work in teams and pursue deep-tech entrepreneurship during their internship period. Teams have the opportunity to receive NUS’ Venture Initiation Programme (VIP) grants to advance their business ideas, or even progress to join the full GRIP programme.

BLOCK71 launches the SE Asia Booster Programme.

BLOCK parties used to be a regular affair until they were put on hold due to COVID-19. The exclusive closed-door event on 2 December 2021 was especially significant, as the event doubled up to kick off BLOCK71’s 10th and NOC’s 20th anniversaries.

NUS Overseas College expands into France, and the undergraduates will be attached for six months to start-ups in the French capital that are in the digital, food and retail technology sectors, said NUS president Tan Eng Chye.

Expect further expansion of NOC to the PhD level, in China due to NUSRI presence, expansion of the NOC Southeast Asia programme to Bangkok, and in Europe and North America.