Joyful Frog Digital Incubator (JFDI) announced today that it is investing SGD350,000 (USD250,000) into seven new startup businesses joining its JFDI Accelerate program this week. Every startup already has products and prototypes ready for customers and all now seek seed funding and a pathway to growth through the accelerator program.
JFDI has invested SGD50,000 into each startup in return for 8.888% equity, with the promise of an additional SGD70,000 follow-on funding at the seed round for the most successful startups. In addition to the cash investment, every team will enjoy a package including intensive one on one mentoring valued at S$150,000, technical and other vendor perks worth more than S$1,000,000 and the opportunity to pitch to over 100 active early-stage investors at a demo day in December.
Huang Chi-Kai, JFDI Accelerate Program Manager said: “We recruit solely on merit and, historically 10-15% of teams have been local. I’m delighted that this time six out of the seven startups have at least one founder hailing from Singapore and two teams are all-Singaporean. That might suggest growing maturity in Singapore’s startup ecosystem but it’s also good to see the diversity with other founders having chosen to come to JFDI from Australia, Thailand, China, Korea, Ireland, the UK, and the US.”
The seven startups were selected from 293 applicant teams. They are:
- Fynd – which provides on demand real time technical support services, such as mobile & computer repair
- CodeCloud.me – developing a website that helps adults learn how to code through social networking and gaming
- Execuvite – an online marketplace for enterprises with cross-functional projects that facilitates the engagement of multidisciplinary freelance teams
- Schelectric – a web application that helps engineering companies to efficiently manage the procurement of numerous electrical components by integrating the electrical design environment with an online marketplace
- Play2Lead – helping companies get the right audience insights by making audience interaction fun, rewarding and social
- RoomFilla – a platform that manages short term rentals for busy property portfolio owners
- Octesys – a web application to help marketing managers of medium to large corporations improve the efficiency and performance of their external partnerships with our quantitative approach to assess and manage partnerships.
The latest teams joining JFDI Accelerate bring the total which have participated in the program in Singapore to 69 since January 2012. The strongest of the early teams are now raising Series A funding in a race led by standout success-story Tradegecko.com, with others set to announce similar fundraising deals shortly. The pipeline for the future is fed by JFDI’s growing presence in Philippines, where an office in Cebu manages the JFDI Discover pre-accelerator program that provides remote mentoring to over 30 startup teams every month.
JFDI.Asia’s co-founder and CEO Hugh Mason said: “Great mentoring is the foundation of our program and when we attract great teams like this, both sides get as much out as they put in. It feels like confidence is growing across APAC that we can build future ‘Unicorn’ businesses to make life better for the next billion people coming online all around us. I’m looking forward to finding out which of these latest teams has what it takes to become a billion dollar business!”