The 5 most transformational journeys from Tech in Asia School’s Growth Program

Ahead of Tech in Asia School’s upcoming Growth Bootcamp, here’s a look at some truly transformational startup stories that came out of our Growth Program for founders.

The inaugural Tech in Asia School Growth Program is done and dusted, and what an amazing experience!

It’s been quite the journey. We started out by selecting the final 14 startups out of hundreds of applications, spent long hours analyzing results of growth sprints, and witnessed lightbulb moments in mentorship sessions.

The startups in the program come from a diverse range of verticals and countries. We had founders from Singapore, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines all working to improve their product and growth strategies across healthtech, fintech, edtech, and even Gen Z-focused services.

As their capstone project, founders presented on their startup’s growth journey, and our mentors chose five that showed the most significant transformation. While each participating startup demonstrated impressive improvements relative to their own stage, these five startups (in no particular order) stood out for the depth of application of TIA’s core concepts around product, growth, metrics, and traction.

Quest (Singapore)
Co-founders: Evan Chow (CEO), Craig Choy (CTO), and Matthew Wu (Chief Product Officer)

Quest is a platform tailored to connect Gen Z workers with alternative earning opportunities. As a services marketplace, Quest matches anyone who needs non-professional help (like running errands or getting a bike-riding tutorial) with a Gen Z hero to complete that quest.

Growth journey: When the startup joined the program, it already had over 50,000 users and facilitated more than US$500,000 in quests. But the Quest team wanted to increase the number and value of quests it could complete.

With that goal in mind, the co-founders worked with their mentor – Joelle Pang, general manager at FastJobs Malaysia – and the TIA School team, to shift to a more data-driven approach when developing and executing growth sprints. By getting more structured and leveraging data, the Quest team saw a 34% surge in monthly active users (MAU) during the program.

YoRipe (Singapore and Indonesia)
Founder: Xinyan Fang, with Gabrielle Neveu (product lead)

YoRipe is a content creation and distribution platform serving over 150,000 home cooks and 60-plus brands in Singapore and Indonesia. The platform helps creators to work with leading fast-moving consumer goods companies (Indofood, Del Monte, etc.) and appliance brands (Panasonic, etc) while inspiring millennial and Gen Z users to cook and eat better.

Growth journey: During the program’s first bootcamp, the YoRipe team realized that a tighter product-market fit was necessary before investing in growth, especially for the newly launched Indonesia market.

In over six weeks, they carried out almost 100 user interviews and learned the demand for user-generated content (UGC). With the support of their mentor – Rieke Caroline, CEO and founder of Kontrak Hukum – the YoRipe team focused on activation and retention KPIs, ultimately delivering a 22% increase in UGC, 15% jump in new user sign-ups, and a 7% uptick in returning users.

Hey Roomie (Philippines)
Co-founders: Ina Flores (CEO), Jay Fajardo (CTO), IC Mendoza (director of growth)

Hey Roomie is a virtual headquarters for super influencers and their fans. It is an engagement app that allows influencers to bring their followers into one platform, creating a powerful distribution channel for exclusive content and brand partnerships.

Growth journey: When the Hey Roomie team joined the program, they had a beta product and dealt with the challenges of every fledgling marketplace: balancing the number of influencers and fans on the platform.

The team refined their approach at the acquisition and activation levels, figuring out ways to bring in fans from other platforms onto Hey Roomie. They saw a 30% growth in user acquisition during the program after working with their mentor – Thibaut Briere, founder of Growth Marketing Studio.

Flotus (Indonesia)
Founder: Muhammad Daulay

Flotus is an early-stage mental health startup in Indonesia that’s still working on a minimum viable product (MVP). The team is building a platform designed to let sers to write their own journals, connect with others, and book sessions with Flotus’ network of psychologists.

Growth journey: After a few months of unsuccessful product sprints aimed at cracking user stickiness, the Flotus team felt stuck. . They joined the program hoping to nail their MVP and boost their number of active users.

The team rolled out a number of quick experiments on social media platforms with the help of their mentor, investor and entrepreneur Martin Pasquier. Flotus started building momentum when the team produced 26 match intents in five days. They continue to experiment with different formats to build up the Flotus community.

Itooh (Philippines)
Co-founders: Jules Veloso (CEO), Andrew Bercasio (COO), and Enah Baba (head of business development)

Itooh is an ecommerce platform that offers locally made, quality-vetted furniture and home decor. It seeks to transform the way Filipinos furnish their homes while also supporting world-class local furniture makers. Though Itooh is only available in the Philippines for now, the team’s vision is to become Southeast Asia’s go-to online destination through home furnishings.

Growth journey: Though Itooh’s transaction volume has been steadily climbing, the team joined the program hoping to supercharge their growth. They started by identifying its North Star metric: number of purchases per month.

As their mentor Zal Dastur – co-founder of Lucep – said, “To target everyone is to target no one.” So the team refined their target customer persona and developed specific messaging for each group. By the end of the program, inquiries across Itooh’s channels rose by 40%.

We’re so proud of all the startups from the inaugural Growth Program and can’t wait to see what they’ll achieve next. Thank you to our amazing mentors for their guidance and support.

Let’s go for growth

Tech in Asia School provides content, community, and mentorship tailored to the most critical stages of the startup journey in order to help founders succeed.

If you’re keen on learning about great development strategies for your company, join our upcoming Growth Bootcamp! We’ve condensed our six-week Growth Program (yes, the one you just read about) into three intensive sessions, taking you through the nitty-gritty of what it really means to level up.

The bootcamp costs US$399 and will run over three Saturdays from March 4 to March 18, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. SGT. Whether you’re a founder, business leader, product lead, marketing manager, or just someone interested in learning about product-led growth, this is for you.

Sign up for the Growth Bootcamp now! Apply before February 15 to secure your spot.