Flocations, ShopSpot get investment offers from SingTel Innov8, says fund’s new CEO

Flocations and ShopSpot, two of the incubatee startups at the JFDI-Innov8 2012 Bootcamp, have received investment offers from SingTel Innov8, the telco company’s investment arm.

While ShopSpot has indicated that they will accept the offer, Flocations has not made a final decision as they are still in talks with other investors.

SGE was told of the news during an exclusive interview today with SingTel Innov8 CEO Edgar Hardless, who took over as the new head just under two months ago.

Singapore-based Flocations has built a web app that enables travelers to search for destinations by price, using a highly-visual interface. Users would then be redirected to partner sites to book their plane tickets and hotel rooms.

For now, they are monetizing using a hotel affiliate program with Agoda. They plan to monetize on flight ticket purchases soon, and even move towards travel insurance, flights, e-guides, flash deals and packages.

Towards the end of the Bootcamp in early May, they’ve garnered over 700 user accounts, sold more than S$5,500 (US$4,300) worth of hotel inventory, and obtained a 10 percent clickthrough rate to flights, which they claim matches the industry average. A quarter of their traffic belong to returning users.

Thailand startup ShopSpot has built a mobile app that aims to make peer-to-peer buying and selling as easy as tweeting. They’ve already received seed funding from a group of Thai investors, and their app has been downloaded about 10,000 times since their launch in April. The company will have a booth at e27’s Echelon 2012 in June, a key startup conference in Singapore.

Both startups were offered term sheets by Innov8 because of their simplicity, intuitiveness, and future potential.

“They’re offering different ways of doing things that are relevant today,” says Edgar.

Using himself as an example, he talked about how ShopSpot solves the painful process of selling items to other people on forums like HardwareZone.

He was once stuck in Sim Lim Square for 30 minutes with a 14-year-old who was purchasing his camera, and the boy, whom he met on the forum, scrutinized every part of the device.

“The whole experience could be improved,” he adds.