Singapore, 11 November 2014—Joyful Frog Digital Incubator (JFDI.Asia Pte Ltd) today revealed details of the 12 Singapore-based startup businesses joining its fifth 100-day accelerator program. Compared with previous programs, the latest cohort includes companies on average at a significantly later stage of maturity. The move marks a shift for JFDI downstream towards later stage startup support.
The new teams come from countries as diverse as Poland and India. Each will receive a SGD 25,000 (USD 19,650) cash investment, workspace and the option to choose from a package of free technical and services valued at SGD 1.8million (USD 1.4 million). However, past participants report that the most valuable benefit is a package of intense mentoring preparing them for a demo day with active early-stage investors in January 2015. Historically, this event has seen over 60% of JFDI startups raise seed funding averaging SGD 700,000 (USD 545,000).
Hugh Mason, co-founder and CEO at JFDI.Asia, said “When Meng Wong and I set up business together in 2009, phases like ‘lean startup’ and ‘startup accelerator’ were unknown in Asia. There were no hackerspaces or coworking facilities, Singapore’s Block 71 was an empty factory shell and only a handful of early-stage investment deals got done by people who happened to know each other already. There was a lot of community building and basic education to be done. Today, that valuable work continues, but it’s now being done by many other dedicated individuals and organizations across the region. So JFDI is free to move on and that’s why we are shifting now to help more established businesses.”
Silent Eight is one such example. The team has developed a Software as a service (SaaS) solution for ‘Enterprise Search’ that allows enterprise users to securely search for valuable content inside their systems and applications.
Silent Eight has been closing projects with large enterprises and government customers worth hundreds of thousands. The ambition now is to accelerate that to $70 million annual revenues in 3 years, which is why the team behind the service moved from Poland to Singapore.
Martin Markiewicz, CEO of Silent Eight, said: “We are drawn to JFDI’s community of mentors, investors and its pool of successful SaaS alumni in Asia. We want to take strategic angel investment from ex-entrepreneurs who have strong enterprise sales connections and we believe JFDI will be able to help us with that.”
The Silent Eight team are all serial entrepreneurs: Martin Markiewicz and Michael Wilkowski started their first big venture after working together at Wola Info, one of the biggest system integrators in Poland. In 3 years, they built the biggest hydropower project portfolio owned by a non-governmental company. Julia Markiewicz left her corporate job to start one of the biggest IT recruitment companies in Warsaw and was CEO for 5 years.
Selection Process
Compared with the previous application process to JFDI, the selection process for the program announced today offered more entry points to accommodate a wider range of startups. From 250 teams that applied online for the Accelerate program, 50 teams were chosen to go through 21 days of rigorous online mentoring and ‘customer discovery’ in JFDI’s Discover program. The final 12 startups were then selected based on business maturity, their commitment to applyling a disciplined, evidence-based approach to entrepreneurship and the depth of their customer interactions.
Wong Meng Weng, Chairman of JFDI.Asia, said: “This cohort came into the Accelerate program very well prepared: we helped speed their learning through our Discover program then supported them remotely to validate their businesses before they came to Singapore. That’s important because, while there is plenty of early-stage capital available in Singapore, investors at every stage are getting more demanding about the maturity they want to see before they write a cheque. Our job is to prepare startups to be ready.”
That preparation work is helped by the fact that two of Singapore’s most active business angels, Michael Blakey and William Klippgen, and two Series A funds, Monks Hill Ventures and Northstar Silicon Island, are all resident at JFDI. Together they have more than SGD165 million (USD 128 million) under management. JFDI startups literally work alongside these investors, making the feedback loop very direct.
Dr Alex Lin heads Infocomm Investments Pte Ltd, JFDI’s anchor investor. Dr Lin said: “We observe a significant rise in the quality of tech startups with viable business models and stronger ability to attract VC funding. There is also growing energy and interest in the ecosystem to help promising tech startups at the seed and early stages grow through acceleration. Singapore is building itself into the world’s first Smart Nation, and this environment will provide lots of exciting innovation opportunities for local tech startups anchored here to build ideas that are able to solve real worldwide challenges.”
Batch 2015A
The new startups joining JFDI Accelerate are all incorporated in Singapore. Their working titles and current focus are as follows:
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Silent Eight – Next-Generation Enterprise Search
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Oroscas – Enabling the Underbanked in the Philippines to Save, Send, and Spend Money
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Pricify – Fashion Ecommerce Product Discovery for India
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Rush Bike – A motorcycle delivery logistics marketplace in Bangkok
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Shareboard – smart mobile file sharing for emerging economies
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RyMM Education – Developing productive partnership between parents and teachers in a private campus social network
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Digify – SnapChat for Serious Content
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Gecko Life – the social network that puts families first
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QLC – Career and lifestyle portal for the restless millennial
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Telefun – Massively multiplayer television
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DatastreamX – A marketplace for real-time data from M2M, IoT and Big Data applications
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CastingDB – A talent casting platform that reinvents the audition
Applications are now open for the next JFDI Accelerate program which will start in February 2015.
About Joyful Frog Digital Incubator
JFDI was the first startup business accelerator program in SE Asia and first in the region to be selected to join the elite Global Accelerator Network set up by US accelerator pioneer Techstars.
JFDI operates a variety of programs of startup business support, the most prominent of which is JFDI Accelerate, taking teams of entrepreneurs from validated ideas to investment readiness in 100 days. Since 2012, JFDI Accelerate has supported 50 teams. Of the 26 teams participating during 2012 and 2013, 21 are still operating and 60% raised seed funding averaging SGD 700,000 (USD 545,000). This portfolio is now valued at SGD 36 million (USD 29 million).
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Details about JFDI Accelerate and the terms under which JFDI.Asia invests in startup businesses are set out at http://jfdi.asia/accelerate. Applications are open now for the next program.
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Creative Commons licensed images relating to JFDI.Asia are available for download at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/
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