Chinaccelerator shows off a diverse batch of 10 new startups at demo day

After 90 days of mentoring and molding, 10 startups graduated today from Shanghai-based Chinaccelerator. They’re the seventh batch to emerge from the program since it started in 2009.

At a crowded demo day in an auditorium at the newly-established ShanghaiTech University, William Bao Bean (pictured below), the Chinaccelerator managing director and SOS Ventures partner, hailed the fact that the current batch is made up of 50 percent female CEOs and 43 percent female founders.

Here are all 10 multi-national teams that presented to a mix of investors, fellow entrepreneurs, and curious students.

School Match

School Match is an app for prospective students to get one-on-one mentoring sessions. The CEO said she could have used such a service when she made the leap from Mexico to UC Berkeley, where she initially struggled to acclimatize. That kind of unease can lead to students dropping out, she explained.

School Match finds mentors at top schools around the world so that kids and their parents can grill them with questions on anything from the course workload to the best area to live off-campus. It already has 200 mentors on board.

It’s aimed at Chinese students heading overseas. About five million students prep each year to go into higher education in other countries, and about 460,000 get in.

The startup takes a 15 percent cut of the paid mentoring sessions. Judging by the app screenshots, a session typically costs RMB 200 (US$32) per hour, which is about on a par with what it costs to get English private tutoring in China.

iCE Angel

iCE Angel founder Richard Law started the pitch with a photo of his mother. He explained that she died suddenly out on the street and he wasn’t by her side at the end because the emergency services didn’t contact him. That’s the kind of situation the service wants to help avoid.

This is being offered directly to people via an emergency response app, which a first responder can supposedly access (though that raises issues if a phone is locked – and if a paramedic or doctor has no clue what to look for in someone’s phone). The startup’s other approach is to form partnerships with travel companies or any business that involves going far from home. That company will then give its customers iCE Angel ID bracelets or cards that will serve as the emergency contact in the event of an accident.