12 Startups For JFDI’s 2012 Bootcamp Unveiled

A lazy afternoon, and my hands are oily as I munch my bak kwa while I work. But something interesting just arrived at my inbox with the subject line “JFDI Announces Startups.” There isn’t much information about the startups themselves, but the short descriptions of their ideas look pretty neat. Basically these are the startups who will be joining the JFDI–Innov8 2012 Bootcamp which starts next week in Singapore, on January 26. The bootcamp is a 100-day program which will help selected entrepreneurs accelerate and turn their ideas into prototypes.

Below are the 12 startups chosen over the numerous Startup Weekends and bootcamps held in the last couple of months across Asia (descriptions from JFDI):

1. Fill8 from Thailand is a social commerce application for mobile. JFDI met this team at AIS Startup Weekend Bangkok.

2. Flocations is a travel discovery service that has been featured on the BBC. Based in Singapore, its founders come from France, Canada and Singapore. They love to travel and are scratching their own itch.

3. Gradeful is a Singaporean startup that creates a mobile app to help parents, students, and teachers work better together.

4. Hobby Mash was the top team at Startup Weekend Manila. The team is building a web app to connect communities with shared interests, using monetization models that Meetup.com can only dream about.

5. Jobs Bolega was chosen from Airtel Startup Weekend Gurgaon. The startup is building a voice-based social network aimed at blue-collar workers throughout Southeast Asia.

6. Kark Mobile Education won first place at Telkomsel Startup Bootcamp in Jakarta. It is an established mobile gaming company and will be exploring new directions in educational games.

7. Wildby puts toys in the cloud. No one is more passionate about toys than these Singapore-based founders, and they have much experience in robotics and design. They built the resident robots that live in Hackerspace.SG.

8. Ontheroad makes a mobile app for traveling sales professionals. The founding duo hail from New Zealand.

9. Rocket Science Concepts are traveling the farthest to join JFDI. The Dutch trio are building a collaborative travel application to help friends decide where to go together. In fact, they used the app to decide to come to Singapore.

10. Qryo is a team of chain-smoking ubergeeks from the Philippines. This will be their first time outside the country, but they will see nothing of Singapore because they will spend all their time in the JFDI bunker building apps based on QR codes that threaten to revolutionize the future of print.