Seed accelerator JFDI.Asia presents its 7 graduates from batch two, 2013A

You could almost taste the anticipation in the air. Hundreds of people had flown into Singapore for a week of the gathering of the top startup and investor minds in Southeast Asia for a slew of events including Echelon, Crowdsourcing Week and SGE’s own meetup with SoftLayer Catalyst. That event-full week was kicked off by seed accelerator’s, JFDI.Asia‘s Demo Day on the 3rd of June.

With 180 people in attendance, many were investors who have made their way specially there. Including Japan’s Global Brain VC as the sponsor, 500 Startups and Geeks On A Plane.

Update, a more detailed breakdown is as follows:

There were over 150 active cash investors, comprising 141 private individuals and funds, 9 public sector funds and 19 Corporate investors. Of those, 112 operate at seed level, 17 at series A and 33 prefer later stage deals. Investors came from countries as diverse as Australia (4), China (4), France (1), Japan (12), Malaysia (7), Philippines (4), Russia (2), Singapore (93), Taiwan (3), Thailand (2), UK (2), USA (21) and Vietnam (1).

It was JFDI’s second overall batch of startups and the first for this year. The startups had to go through a 100-Day bootcamp, where they received numerous mentors and had to check back in with the JFDI team for milestones.

Last year saw 11 companies pitch on stage (check out our complete coverage of the previous Demo Day). This year, we saw 8 companies get accepted in this second batch but only 7 pitched. One had dropped out. (Another had been accepted along the way but opted out of this demo day.)

But the 7 pitched, and they did. The entire program was smooth and professionally done. Pitches were polished. And here we go, said pitches presented in the order of how we in the audience saw them:

OurHealthMate

“Distance doesn’t make you helpless.”

In their words:

In Brief: Co-founder Abhinav Krishna presents OurHealthMate, a company that’s reinventing a USD 10B industry: every year, 22 million NonResident Indians (NRIs) send USD 65B back home to India. USD 10B of it is intended for the healthcare expenses of loved ones. But those funds often fail to benefit the recipients, because the recipients fail to make and keep medical appointments for themselves. OurHealthMate’s web platform restructures those remittances so that funds go directly to the doctor on behalf of the beneficiary, and gives the NRI payer feedback and peace of mind. The result: improved compliance and better health for all.

Traction: More than 50 clinics signed up, with about 100 health packages in their system and a reach of about 10K patients.

Funding: Previously funded by Start-Up Chile and LeoTech.

(Originally, My Fitness Wallet.)

Collabspot

“We weld third-party CRMs into Gmail, so SMEs save time and sell faster.”

In their words:

In Brief: Millions of businesses today use CRM apps like Zoho, Highrise, SugarCRM, and of course Salesforce to manage relationships with customers. But, to communicate with customers, they use email. The two worlds do not connect. There is a gulf between CRM and Email. Collabspot bridges the gulf between email and CRM, increasing sales team productivity for SMEs.

Traction: Already more than 500 paying customers and USD 6K in monthly recurring revenue. Was SugarCRM’s Third Party App Of The Month in March 2013.

Funding: USD 20K for winning Google Apps Developer Challenge 2012, Laurent Gasser (now VP, Business Dev) with USD 80K during course of the Bootcamp.

UserScout

“Your Virtual Research Partner”

In their words:

In Brief: Co-founder Ariff Munshi presents UserScout, a web based platform that brings together researchers and study participants. It provides tools to researchers to source, screen and schedule the participants for their research studies. The software does profiling of the participants to match them to the projects. Research studies on UserScout include market research projects, usability studies, games testing, psychology experiments and even clinical trial recruitment.

Traction: 300 participants signed up over the last two weeks as they launched before Demo Day, with 16 projects in trial.

Funding: Nil (apart from JFDI, of course)

(Originally, Referoll.)

Read: UserScout’s Ariff Munshi reflects on rebranding and pivot, and lessons learnt along the way

Duable

“We help adults learn Chinese by turning every web page into a vocabulary lesson.”

In their words:

In Brief: Co-founder Nik van der Ploeg presents Duable, which helps adults learn to read Chinese as a second language by turning their web browser into a personalized vocabulary classroom. While they surf the web, we mark up web pages with dynamically generated Chinese translations of key phrases chosen to match their vocabulary level. That lets adult learners go comfortably at their own pace while acquiring the specialized vocabulary that’s relevant to their personal and professional lives. This combination disrupts traditional language lessons, which are artificial and awkward, and leads to a breakthrough in learning effectiveness.

Traction: Landing page describing the product and offering pre-orders booked USD 2K of revenue in two weeks.

Funding: Nil (apart from JFDI, of course)

Klinify

“Evernote for Private Medical Specialists”

In their words:

In Brief: Co-founder Krishanthan Surendran presents Klinify, a document management system that helps private specialist clinics manage patient records while preserving their existing workflow. It takes 20 minutes to set up the software, scanner, and tablets. The clinic can stop paper from entering the clinic by substituting paper processes with Klinify’s tablet app — without any downtime.

Traction: In the past 6 weeks, met with 30 doctors, received 10 expressions of interest and closed 3 sales.

Funding: Nil (apart from JFDI, of course)

(Originally, DocTree.)

Scrollback

“We help anyone with a website create compelling communities through beautiful text chat.”

In their words:

In Brief: Co-founder Aravind Ravi Sulekha presents Scrollback, pioneering a new medium: “micro-forums”. It offers the fastest, most frictionless way to build and sustain open communities through text chat. Think Facebook or Google Docs group chat, but embeddable on any website using a single line of HTML code.

Traction: Currently in beta, tested with 2K users in over 50 communities acquired over the last two months.

Funding: Nil (apart from JFDI, of course)

(Originally, AskAbt.)

Krake

“We’re like an X-Ray for the Web.”

In their words:

In Brief: Co-founder Gary Teh presents Krake, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) cloud service that helps web developers reach through third-party websites to extract the data within. Our proprietary web-scraping technology is able to crawl, index, and convert any website into easily consumed XLS, CSV, JSON, or SQL. When Internet companies outsource this task to Krake, they save time and money on mission-critical work.

Traction: Over last month, 101 signups, about USD 238 in revenue so far.

Funding: Nil (apart from JFDI, of course)

(Originally, DayTripR.)

Apart from the 7 above, two alumni from the class of 2012 also presented: Flocations (it recently pivoted) and Fetch Fans.

JFDI is opening applications for their third batch of startups, 2013B. This next 100-day bootcamp will start in August 2013. Learn more and register here.