It was January 2025, and Tommy Phun, the founder of Pyxis, a maritime electrification start-up, was reflecting on the past year. Pyxis, a Singapore-based company, had received investments of S$4.5 million in a seed funding round in 2024, raising its total funding to S$6 million.
With the fresh injection of funding, Pyxis is now in a strong position to accelerate its mission: helping maritime companies make the shift to electric and low-emission fleets. This comes at a crucial time, as Singapore’s Maritime and Port Authority (MPA) has set a clear target — all new harbour craft must be fully electric or run on net-zero fuels by 2030.
Phun grew up in his family’s shipping company, Eng Hup Shipping (Eng Hup), one of the largest harbour craft owner-operators in Singapore. Attuned to the challenges faced by the maritime sector, he founded Pyxis in 2022 to offer sustainable solutions aligned with MPA’s mandate. Pyxis’ main offerings comprise three Es: Electric vessels, Energy through charging infrastructure, and Electra, a digitalised shipboard management system.
Phun’s vision is for Pyxis to become the market leader in maritime coastal electrification in Asia Pacific by 2030. And the momentum is building – the company’s recent win at the 2024 Emerging Enterprise Sustainability Award, organised by The Business Times and OCBC Bank, signals Pyxis’ growing prominence in an emerging industry.
Building from Legacy
Eng Hup had modest beginnings in 1986 with a single tugboat and a small team, mainly transporting goods from large ships that could not dock at the port. As the business expanded, Eng Hup diversified into container handling services. Over time, its fleet grew to over 70 vessels including ferries, tugboats, pilot boats, survey vessels, and training ships.
Phun got his start in the family business in his late teens while serving his National Service. His first major project was leading the acquisition of a shipyard to give Eng Hup’s fleet a permanent ‘home’. He recalled being ‘thrown into the deep end’ but was glad for the rich experience.
Years later, with a decade of experience behind him, Phun began to feel mounting pressure from customers to provide ‘green’ solutions, such as electric, hybrid fuel and low-energy vessels, or risked exclusion from tenders. Government project tenders, in particular, were increasingly demanding green solutions. Phun knew that that the business his family had built could become irrelevant if it didn’t adapt or evolve fast enough.
At the same time, the looming deadline of MPA’s directive – for all new harbour craft operating in Sing apore to be fully electric by 2030 – added urgency to the transition toward green solutions. The founding of Pyxis (Latin for ‘mariner’s compass’) was intended to help the industry adopt and deploy electric vessels quickly and at scale. Its vision was to create a greener, cleaner maritime future for generations.
The Triple E’s of Pyxis
At the heart of Pyxis’ business are three core pillars - and the first is Electric Vessels. Pyxis assembled a team of second- and third-generation maritime professionals – individuals from maritime family firms that had built and operated vessels for decades. Together they focused on designing lightweight, agile harbour craft optimised for shorter and more frequent trips between Singapore and its surrounding islands. In March 2024, Phun launched Pyxis’ first electric harbour craft, X Tron, at Clifford Pier, where his grandfather had worked as a boatman ferrying passengers.
The second pillar of Pyxis’ business focuses on charging infrastructure. In collaboration with SP Mobility, a subsidiary of Singapore’s national power grid operator SP Group, Pyxis launched a charging point at Marina South Pier where its fleet is based and would be the primary users of this solution. Data collected from the charging point would help inform infrastructure planning and contribute to the development of national standards for electric vessel charging.
The third pillar is Electra, Pyxis’ proprietary digital ship management system designed to support smart, efficient vessel operations. Powered by Internet-of-Things (IoT) technology, Electra provides real-time updates that are seamlessly synchronised across the vessel dashboard and mobile app. Vessel operators can track carbon savings, vessel location, and onboard weather information to make faster, smarter decisions on routing, maintenance, and energy use.
Mobilising the Industry to Build an Ecosystem
Pyxis knew that meaningful change in the maritime industry would take collaboration, which is why they pursued public-private partnerships in maritime transformation. One such alliance was formed with Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, one of the world’s largest marine transportation companies, to promote electric vessels in Singapore and Japan. It also signed an agreement with SP Mobility for vessel operators to make payments by scanning a QR code – a method familiar to most drivers of electric vehicles.
To develop a strong talent pipeline for the green maritime industry, Pyxis partnered with the Institute of Technical Education (a vocational training institution in Singapore) and industry stakeholders to co-develop an electrification technology course aimed at equipping operators with the know-how needed to manage electric vessels.
With more than a third of Eng Hup’s 300 employees aged 50 and above, Phun also reassures his staff that the transformation would not lead to job losses but rather a redesign of job roles. “As we electrify our fleet, their reskilling is very important because we want them to continue with us on this journey towards a greener future,” he said.
Scaling up in the Region
Phun aims to position Pyxis as the Asia-Pacific market leader in maritime coastal electrification by 2030 and has set his sights on several markets including Japan, Indonesia, Australia and Korea.
In the next five years, he plans to deploy more than 100 electric vessels across the Asia-Pacific region and expand into major ports in Japan (Port of Tokyo), South Korea (Port of Busan), and Taiwan (Port of Kaohsiung).
Another key target market is Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelagic nation, as well as other ASEAN countries like Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines, where ferrying passengers and transporting goods along extensive waterways is crucial to economic activity.
As a young entrepreneur championing sustainability through innovation, Phun has identified the key challenges of transforming a traditional industry like maritime and analysed how strategic partnerships can empower a start-up to drive industry-wide transformation.
“Our vision is to lead the maritime industry to a new era of efficiency, innovation, and environmental stewardship – that’s the three key tenets of how we will bring everyone on board the electrification journey so that we can move forward as an industry,” said Phun.
The case study ‘Pyxis: Powering a Sustainable Maritime Future with Electric Vessels’ was written by Emeritus Professor Annie Koh, Dr. Cheah Sin Mei and Teo Siok Kuan at the Singapore Management University, and Dr. Khoo Guan Seng at the SWF Academy. To read it in full, please visit the CCX website by clicking here.
