GrabTaxi, KFit, Bukalapak among first batch of special 500 Startups ‘growth hackathon’

US-based venture capital firm 500 Startups and Malaysian partner MaGIC have unveiled the first batch of seven startups that got accepted to the Distro Dojo program in Southeast Asia. The batch includes Malaysia’s homegrown tech heavyweights – taxi hailing app GrabTaxi and gym pass startup KFit.

Others that made it to the program are fashion discovery and shopping app Shoppr and coding bootcamp NEXT Academy from Malaysia, fundraising platform Kitabisa and C2C ecommerce marketplace Bukalapak from Indonesia, as well as Monkimun, a language learning app for kids that’s based in Madrid.

Each batch of Distro Dojo will undergo a 10-week program where the startups and their teams will work with mentors to further scale their businesses – in particular, acquire more users and grow their revenue.

Startups eligible to participate should have raised at least US$150,000 in funding to date and allocated budgets of a minimum of US$3,000 to spend for marketing and customer acquisition per month.

“We’re looking for startups that are faced with a growth challenge that is immense, are prepared to take it on, and are calling for additional brains and brawn to achieve the impossible,” Khailee Ng, 500 Startups managing director, told Tech in Asia.

“As you see from the ‘Batch 1’ companies, some of them have raised multiple rounds of financing, some of them their very first round. However, they all share the above in common – they know that immense growth is a challenge and they are ready to commit the time and resources to make this happen.”

Ng said they selected the first batch by looking at existing portfolio companies and soliciting recommendations from other VCs as well as co-investors in the 500 Startups network. They also tapped into MaGIC’s huge database of indexed startups, while only a few were selected from public applications.

Growth hackathon

On August 10, Distro Dojo will hit the ground running. Ng said the program for each startup and their selection of visiting instructors were tailor-made to support the startup’s growth.

“We have already started baselining the maturity, challenges, and focal points for each company, and started on analytics audits for their prep work. We will be setting specific growth targets with each company,” he explained. “Think of it as a 10 week-long growth hackathon.”

Daniel Riaz, former head of mobile acquisition of Lyft and former mobile marketing manager of Zynga, and Chandini Ammineni, distribution hacker in residence at 500 Startups, will be the primary instructors for this first batch, according to MaGIC CEO Cheryl Yeoh. The rest – from companies such as Google, Facebook, Stripe, Freelancer, and Mint – will either be visiting or conducting virtual office hours with the startups.

“We have really accomplished instructors that will be working closely with these companies to accelerate their growth,” she told Tech in Asia.

500 Startups and MaGIC have a three-year partnership for Distro Dojo, the terms of which will see 500 Startups invest US$50,000 in each company in exchange for equity. For its part, MaGIC will provide the space and facilities in its Cyberjaya campus and cover administrative costs.

Distro Dojo aims to graduate a total of 100 growth-stage startups focused on ASEAN.