The good, bad, and ugly of web startups at DEMO Asia

While mobile apps may be all there rage right now, startups are still doing very interesting things in the web space. Here, we present you the good, bad, and ugly of the web technology companies that presented at DEMO Asia 2012 yesterday.

Fitness Buffet, Singapore

As a business, Fitness Buffet shows a lot of promise. I’ve written about them once before, and I’m glad to see that they’re getting validation from the Sages, who have a lot of good things to say about them.

In a nutshell, Fitness Buffet is a service that offers a wide variety of special deals at a fixed price of US$99. Customers who sign up will receive a whole list of deals which they must redeem by a set date.

The founder, New Zealander Callum Laing, explains that his company wants to make exercise fun again by offering really interesting activities.

From a business standpoint, it makes a lot of sense as they’re able to generate revenue very quickly. It’s also scalable — all it needs are local partnerships to secure the deals in various countries. It also appears to be a first mover; I don’t see many websites doing similar things.

He emphasized that his company is different from Groupon in two ways: 1) While Groupon brings many customers to one deal, Fitness Buffet brings one customer to many deals (he calls Fitness Buffet the “AirBnb of the fitness industry”; 2) While Groupon refused a buyout from Google for US$6B, Fitness Buffet would not.

I do think both the group buying business and Fitness Buffet have one thing in common though: They’re both easily copied. Which means Fitness Buffet must aggressively expand to multiple markets. They seem to be doing that: Callum announced that they’re aiming to reach 500 cities by the end of the year. They’re in 44 right now.

Heyawanna Labs, Singapore

Their product, Heya! Wanna?, is a web app to make event planning with friends more fun. It’s also an event discovery tool that allows users to share and join activities.