Our first cohort & 2020 recruitment
The year is almost over and it’s being a big one for Accelerating Asia. We’re excited about announcing our next cohort in January 2020 but in the meantime, here are some of our and our portfolio company highlights.
We invested S$1m collectively in our first cohort of 10 pre-Series A startups which included 40 percent female-led ventures. During the 4 months in the Accelerating Asia program, the 10 startups:
- Raised a combined amount of over S$3m
- Grew average MRR by 2.5X
- Created 40+ new jobs
To wrap the year, we finished off recruitment for our January 2020 cohort. We’re not giving away too much about them just yet - you’ll have to wait until the new year! But we can say it was a hard choice narrowing it down to just 10 from 200+ applications.
It’s not all about us, here are some of the highlights from our portfolio companies:
Zantrik: The team at Zantrik achieved 10X growth in 2019, raised S$300,000 and grew the team from 15 people to 40.
Deaftawk: In 2019, Deaftawk increased users from 1200 to over 11,000 and interpreters from 31 to 450, launched a mobile app and signed an MoU with Google to develop sign language through AI.
Loop: The logistics startup finished 2019 strong, with freight booking requests in November increasing 68 percent from October. Loop also just closed a deal worth S$1.6m (per annum) freight services contract with a customs and forwarding company out of the Port of Chittagong.
Datanest: The Datanest team expanded across Southeast Asia - setting up HQ in Singapore and opening a KL office. In September they launched the DemandAI product.
BeamAndGo: This month, the team welcomed a new Head of Engineering - Justin Kee who has 14+ years’ experience. And to start off 2020, they’ll be offering new products for migrant workers, stay tuned on that one.
See you in 2020!
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