This startup won judges’ hearts at the Tech in Asia Tour pitch battle in Singapore

After traveling to six cities around Asia to search for the best startups to showcase at Tech in Asia Jakarta on November 11 and 12, the Tech in Asia Tour yesterday rolled into Asia’s tech hub, Singapore.

The pitch battle took place at co-working space The Working Capitol. Four handpicked startups presented their ideas in front of an excited audience and a panel of judges consisting of Leung Pui Yan (associate director, SingTel Innov8 Ventures), Jessica Duns (manager, PwC Accelerator), Kuan Hsu (principal, GREE Ventures), and Gina Heng (CEO, Marvelstone).

Here are the four startups who took the stage.

Foodie Myanmar

Searching for suggestions on where to have your next meal has never been easier with the help of food discovery apps. But not in Myanmar, where most restaurants and food outlets do not have official websites. And even when food discovery websites are available, the information provided tends to be limited.

That’s where Foodie Myanmar hopes to make a difference. It aims to be the one-stop site for users to find the best restaurants and dining experiences, which they can then share with friends and other food lovers in the country using custom stickers. This social feature is what distinguishes Foodie Myanmar from its competitors.

More than just a food discovery app, it’s also accessible by restaurant owners who can easily update their business information and respond to customer reviews.

The startup is looking for an injection of up to US$200,000 of fresh funds to expand and evolve.

A Better Florist

There’s always this thing about flowers: they’re nice to receive but expensive to buy – and hard to keep it fresh. Sometimes, the purchase experience can also be less than ideal – no order tracking system, bad customer service, or your orders may even get messed up. But what if you could get them on demand at 30 percent less than the average price and have your bouquet last for three times longer than usual?

With “Fresh cut flowers in 90 minutes for Southeast Asia” as its value proposition, this is how A Better Florist stands out from others in the market. According to founder Steve Feiner, they are able to streamline operations through data analytics and with just-in-time inventory management and partnerships.

A Better Florist’s founder claimed to the judges that it beats other florists’ margins by at least 30 to 40 percent.

AlikeAudience

While we have shifted into the era of digital marketing, AlikeAudience believes that the potential of social and mobile are two aspects that have not been fully tapped by marketers, resulting in several missed opportunities.

With the growth in mobile commerce activities, AlikeAudience wants to empower advertisers in effectively reaching its target audience through mobile. With over 100 million audience profiles in Asia consisting of socio-demographic data, purchase intent, and purchasing power, the company is able to mine these data points and provide clients with the best channels to effectively reach their audience.

According to co-founder Ronald Kwok, the startup is able to help marketers decrease their cost of acquisition per customer by as much as 40 percent.

Smart Commerce

Smart Commerce prides itself in being one of the platforms that provides the simplest way to create multi-channel commerce. The do-it-yourself cloud-based software helps retailers create effective personalized social media commerce, ecommerce, and mobile commerce all in one.

Users are able to select an e-store theme and populate their content via multiple campaigns all within the Smart Commerce platform, a feature that other content management systems are unable to provide at this moment.

With the mobile commerce industry expected to grow to US$31 billion in 2016, Smart Commerce wants a slice of the pie and is confident that it can help retailers multiply sales through its product.

Who gets to strut their stuff at Tech in Asia Jakarta 2015?

While each startup delivered a great pitch and had clear business models, the judges ultimately decided to crown A Better Florist as the winner of this leg of the tour. They were intrigued by the startup’s novel business idea and model.

The team from A Better Florist won themselves a sponsored trip to Tech in Asia Jakarta next month, where they’ll join eight other tour winners and hundreds of other promising startups in exhibiting their product at the ever-popular Bootstrap Alley segment of our conference.

Want to be part of the action too? If you’re a tech startup with a working prototype and have raised less than US$1.5 million of external funds, you still have until October 21 to grab a free booth and showcase your product to over 2,000 entrepreneurs, investors, corporates and media.

Or if you’re one of those who’d like to see what these exhibiting startups have to offer, get your passes to Indonesia’s ultimate tech conference at 15 percent off. The code to use is tiajkt15, valid until October 25, 2359 (GMT +8). See you there on November 11 and 12.

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