Our first class of startups are making their way to Singapore next week to participate in the JFDI–Innov8 2012 Bootcamp.
Starting on 26 January, the startups will race for 100 days to build not just product, but an investment-ready business. In May, investors will write cheques!
Our startups were chosen from over 300 applicants and 1,000 participants at 6 Startup Weekends in Singapore, the Philippines, Australia, India, Indonesia and Thailand.
The founders come from countries including: Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, India, New Zealand, Canada, France and the Netherlands.
In our inaugural batch of startups:
Fetch Plus provides a tool for businesses to build and manage branded Facebook and Twitter pages with no technical knowledge.
Fill8 from Thailand is a social commerce application for mobile. We met this team at AIS Startup Weekend Bangkok. They have tremendous design skills and we can’t wait to see how they address the female markets of Southeast Asia.
Flocations is a travel discovery service that has been featured on the BBC. Based in Singapore, its founders come from France, Canada, India and Singapore. They love to travel and are scratching their own itch. We think they’re geniuses because every weekend they disappear off to some resort town in Southeast Asia, and it’s a business expense.
Gradeful is a Singaporean startup creating a mobile app to help parents, students, and teachers work better together. At first we thought they were going to build an app that would tell parents when to cane their children, and we were very excited about that because the revenue opportunities were obvious, but we realized that Singapore was too small a market and maybe parents elsewhere don’t beat their kids enough. So we pivoted.
Hobby Mash was the top team at Startup Weekend Manila. They are building a web app to connect communities of shared interest, with monetization models that Meetup can only dream about.
Jobs Bolega was chosen from Airtel Startup Weekend Gurgaon. This team is building a voice based social network aimed at blue-collar workers throughout Southeast Asia.
Kark Mobile Education won 1st place at Telkomsel Startup Bootcamp in Jakarta. They are an established mobile gaming company and will be exploring new directions in educational games.
Ontheroad make a mobile app for traveling sales professionals. The founding duo hail from New Zealand. Look out ladies, they’re pretty beefy.
Rocket Science Concepts are traveling the farthest to join us at JFDI. The Dutch trio are building a collaborative travel application to help friends decide where to go together. In fact, they used the app to decide to come to Singapore.
Qryo are a team of chain-smoking übergeeks from the Philippines. This will be their first time outside the country, but they will see nothing of Singapore because they will spend all their time in the JFDI bunker building apps based on QR codes that threaten to revolutionize the future of print.
TribeHired is a referral recruiting application, founded by an extremely deliberate Malaysian who personifies the word “grit”. In a good way.
Wildby puts toys on the cloud. No one is more passionate about toys than these Singapore-based founders; they have deep experience in robotics and design. They built the resident robots that live in Hackerspace.SG.
Other Startups are still in stealth so don’t be surprised if this list gets longer.