ConfirmU wins Tech in Asia’s latest Pitch Battle

On March 22, we held Tech in Asia’s latest Pitch Battle in partnership with global employment platform Globalization Partners.

Six startup finalists stepped up to the plate and pitched to a panel of three investor-judges, namely Charles Ferguson, Asia-Pacific general manager of Globalization Partners; Menka Sajnani, head of investor relations for Asia and Middle East at B Capital Group; and Nicole Li, head of alliances and private equity for Asia Pacific at ADP.

At the event, the finalists only had five minutes each to sell their startup’s vision and investment potential. They were then given another five minutes to field the judges’ questions.

The winning pitch was delivered by ConfirmU, a data analytics startup specializing in alternative credit-scoring services. For its efforts, it walked away with US$5,000 in cash. The runner-up was Boltay Huroof, which developed software that converts regional and international text into braille – it won US$2,500 in cash.

Here’s an overview of the six participating startups.

Wakalu

Unexpected bills and financial commitments – like paying for a surprise hospital visit – can have an outsized impact on lower-income individuals who are barely making ends meet. Stressing about finding the cash to cover these payments can distract them from performing their best at work and may even lead to borrowing from unsavory sources, which opens up a new can of worms.

Malaysia-headquartered Wakalu is aiming to solve this problem with its earned salary access solution, which allows employees to withdraw their earned wages at any time instead of having to wait till payday.

Surplus Indonesia

Food waste is a global problem, and that’s no different in Indonesia. About 23 million to 48 million tons of food – worth about US$39 billion in total – is wasted every year in the archipelago.

Surplus Indonesia wants to help solve this problem by providing a marketplace for secondary products. The platform allows merchants like hotels and farms to sell their excess stock to those who want to buy them. It’s a win-win situation: consumers get food at lower prices, while merchants reduce disposal costs and open a new source of income – all while saving the environment.

Oditly

Following health and safety regulations is a necessity for many organizations. However, it’s easy to get lost in bureaucracy and lose countless hours when relying on manual processes and fragmented tools.

Oditly, a digital platform for conducting audits and inspections, aims to replicate and digitize existing processes and workflows, automating the management of product quality, workplace environment, and health and safety operations.

Bluente

When learning a new language, it’s important to know that there’s a huge difference between casual and business conversations. And with cross-border business increasingly becoming the norm, the need for business-level multilingualism is on the rise.

Singapore-based Bluente is a mobile app that specializes in helping users pick up professional-level Mandarin. It does this through a variety of methods, including using flash cards with business terms, offering a question bank of 2,000 practice questions, and hosting role-plays of business scenarios.

Runner-up: Boltay Huroof

A remarkable 96% of visually impaired Pakistanis are unable to complete their undergraduate studies, and 71% are unable to find employment. Much of this is due to the lack of resources and study materials in braille.

Built around the concept of inclusivity, Boltay Huroof is the firm behind a software that converts regional languages into braille to make inclusive books that are readable by both the sighted and the visually impaired. The application, which offers inclusive features like audio feedback, incorrect word indication, correct word suggestion, and a dictionary of over 100,000 words, can be used independently by visually impaired individuals.

Winning startup: ConfirmU

Traditionally, banks and other lending institutions have judged the risk profile of a potential borrower by their credit history. However, this presents a disadvantage for the sizable unbanked and underbanked populations of the world. How do people in this segment take their businesses and lives to the next level when they have no credit history to speak of?

Singapore-headquartered ConfirmU is trying to bring financial inclusion to these populations. It provides a means to assess people’s credit-worthiness through short games that determine their psychometric data, helping underwriters judge who they are as a person and look past their credit history or lack thereof.

Stay connected

Pitch Battle is just one of the many events that Tech in Asia runs. For example, there was a workshop on March 31 on how to launch an NFT collection. You could also watch the playback of this Ask Me Anything session with Circles Life co-founder Rameez Ansar on employee stock ownership plan buybacks.

Our events are crafted to present attendees with quality content, valuable business lessons, practical working templates, and the chance to get acquainted with other people in the region’s bustling tech and startup ecosystem.

If you’d love to connect with like-minded people and learn all the tips and tricks from experts in the region’s tech sector, then you have to subscribe to Tech in Asia Live. At just US$0.16 per day, this subscription gives you access to all of our masterful workshops, private meetups, and Tech in Asia’s annual signature conferences.

Globalization Partners enables companies to quickly and easily hire anyone from anywhere via its AI-driven and fully compliant global employment platform, which is powered by in-house HR experts worldwide.

Build your remote teams with Globalization Partners – find out more by scheduling a demo today.

This content was produced by Tech in Asia Studios, which connects brands with Asia’s tech community. Learn more about partnering with Tech in Asia Studios.