Short answer: yes — branding and marketing work can genuinely be co-funded under the MRA grant, up to 70%. The longer, more useful answer is which branding and marketing work, because this is exactly where applications get approved or quietly rejected. We’ve written a full guide to how the MRA grant works generally; this one answers a sharper, more practical question, using Indonesia as the worked example — because it’s one of the most common, and most genuinely different, markets Singapore SMEs expand into.
Why Indonesia is the perfect test case
Indonesia sits geographically close to Singapore, but digitally and culturally it’s a different market entirely: different language, different visual and messaging conventions, different dominant platforms (WhatsApp Business is enormous for direct customer engagement there; TikTok and Instagram carry real commercial weight; local e-wallets and QRIS matter for trust and payment). A Singapore brand that simply runs its English-language site through a translation tool isn’t really entering the Indonesian market — it’s just visible in it. That gap between “visible” and “genuinely adapted” is precisely where MRA’s funding, and its strictest rule, both live.
The rule that decides everything
From our deeper guide: the work has to be genuinely created for that specific market, not a general brand refresh that happens to also reach Indonesia. Assessors specifically look for new content and assets adapted to local market preferences — not your existing materials run through Google Translate. Keep that rule in mind through everything below, because it’s the line between a claimable project and a rejected one.
What branding and marketing work genuinely qualifies
Visual identity adaptation for the market. Colour associations, imagery conventions, and what reads as trustworthy or premium shift across cultures. Adapting your visual identity — not necessarily replacing it wholesale — specifically for how it lands with Indonesian audiences is market-entry work, and it’s claimable.
Messaging and positioning built for Indonesian consumers. What resonates in Jakarta isn’t always what resonates in Singapore — community and family-oriented framing, different price-sensitivity cues, and trust signals like local payment options or local testimonials often carry more weight. Developing positioning specifically for this market, rather than translating your Singapore pitch, is exactly the kind of work the grant is built for.
Genuine Bahasa Indonesia copywriting — not translation. This is where a brand voice actually gets tested. If you’ve thought about what makes your brand sound like you (we’ve written about finding that voice), the real work here is re-establishing that same voice naturally in Bahasa Indonesia — not a literal word-for-word rendering of your English copy, which reads stiff and foreign to a local reader and is precisely the kind of “translation, not localisation” that gets flagged.
Platform-specific content for Indonesia’s actual digital landscape. Content built for WhatsApp Business engagement, TikTok and Instagram specifically for the Indonesian audience, and Indonesia-relevant marketplaces — built for how Indonesian consumers actually shop and discover brands, not a copy-paste of your Singapore social strategy.
Localised landing pages and campaigns. Indonesia-specific landing pages in Bahasa Indonesia, with locally relevant trust signals (local payment methods, local contact presence), driven by Indonesia-targeted search and social campaigns — the bundle that actually gets a new market customer from discovery to conversion.
What probably doesn’t qualify
A general company rebrand, even if Indonesia happens to see the new look too. If the project isn’t scoped specifically as Indonesian market entry, it reads as general brand development — which sits outside what the promotion pillar funds.
Straight translation of existing materials. This is the single most common rejection reason, and it’s worth repeating plainly: running your Singapore website or ad copy through a translation tool, with no real adaptation to local language, tone, or preferences, does not meet the bar.
Core brand strategy work with no specific market tied to it. Refreshing your overall positioning or strategy as a general business exercise is legitimate work — it’s just not this grant’s scope.
What a realistic Indonesia package looks like
Scoped as one project — “Indonesia market-entry branding and digital marketing” — you could bundle visual identity adaptation, genuine Bahasa Indonesia brand voice and copywriting, localised landing pages, and an Indonesia-targeted social and search campaign. Kept within the roughly S$20,000 promotion-pillar sub-cap at up to 70% support, that’s in the region of S$14,000 reimbursed on a S$20,000 project — a real, properly localised market entry for a net cost of around S$6,000, rather than a diluted translation of your Singapore brand with no actual claim to being local.
The one process reminder worth repeating
Apply before you commit to anything — sign a contract or pay a vendor first, and the application becomes retrospective and gets rejected regardless of how well the work itself would have qualified. Scope the project as Indonesia-specific from the proposal stage onward, and keep every deliverable traceable back to that market.
(General information, not grant advice — confirm your specific scope with Enterprise Singapore before committing.)
Where Oasis Web Asia comes in
This is exactly the kind of project we scope and build — genuine market-specific branding and marketing, not a translated version of what you already have, documented and structured from the proposal stage to hold up as an MRA claim. For Indonesia specifically, that means real Bahasa Indonesia brand voice work, platform-appropriate content, and localised campaigns built for how that market actually shops — the kind of web development Singapore SMEs lean on to enter a new market without carrying the full cost alone.
If Indonesia (or any new market) is on your roadmap and you want the branding done properly, claimably, that’s exactly the conversation we like to have.
Start a conversation → — get a free consultation with our Singapore-based team.