We're excited for you to meet our Summer 2024 batch!
As part of Iterative’s tradition, we kicked off the batch in Bali with an in-person orientation. 24 founders from across Southeast Asia attended, where they had their first office hours with the General and Visiting Partners, learned how to accelerate their startup's growth by 5-7% weekly, heard Moses Lo tell his early day stories on building Xendit (including how he got his first few customers), and formed meaningful connections with one another.
For this batch alone, we received over 1,000 applications - there was even a day where we received 140 applications in just 24 hours! To put this into perspective, our first batch back in 2020 saw fewer than 100 applications. We've come such a long way, and we're stoked for what's to come.
From those 1,000 applications, our dedicated team spent over 500 hours in interviews, carefully selecting the best of the best. The result? 15 outstanding investments. This batch, we’ve raised the bar even higher, with the acceptance rate dropping to 1.8% from 2.7% in the Winter 2024 batch.
Here are the companies we’ve invested in for our S24 batch!
- Ara Research (Singapore) - Uses AI to help people get out of debt through personalised repayment solutions
- Beed (Vietnam) - AI document processing with workflow automation
- CapGo (Singapore) - AI-enabled spreadsheet that fills itself
- CarbonCopies AI (Singapore) - Validate your website and application front-end with AI user twins
- Emereg (Singapore) - Cloud browser infrastructure for developers building web automation
- Niyam AI (Singapore) - Using AI to help engineers design hardware 10x faster
- Okapi Solar (Malaysia) - Solar financing solutions for homeowners and contractors
- Opilot (Singapore) - Platform for enterprises to leverage AI with full data compliance and protection
- Rosalind Dx (Singapore) - Affordable prenatal testing using advanced PCR technology
- Serye FM (Philippines) - App that houses the best Filipino audio stories and content
- Sokratech (Indonesia) - Help business stop online fraud with no code in minutes
- SmartSolar (Vietnam) - Rooftop solar financing for homeowners and SMBs in Vietnam
- ThriveAI (Singapore) - AI-powered Chief of Staff for product teams
- Yuuki (Singapore) - AI-powered learning and performance coach for enterprises to retain talent
2 companies are in stealth mode.
We couldn’t be more excited for this cohort and can’t wait to showcase their progress at Demo Day. Until then, our founders are back in their home countries, fully immersed in building the future.
Learn more about the companies below!
Meet the Summer 2024 Batch
Ara Research
Uses AI to help people get out of debt through personalised repayment solutions
Why We’re Excited: Ara Research uses AI to help people get out of debt through personalised repayment solutions, while significantly reducing cost of collections for businesses. Ara’s AI agents offer 24/7 debt relief support, financial coaching, and affordable repayment plans tailored to each user. We believe that AI’s ability to personalise, scale and humanise conversations is the future of debt collections, and we're excited to back Koen and his team, who have already collected $500k in debt payments since launch.
Founders: Koen Munneke (CEO), Aravindan Mahadevan (Technical Co-founder)
Beed
Stripe for intelligent documents processing
Why We’re Excited: Beed simplifies document processing, allowing anyone to easily turn unstructured data into structured formats. With support for over 300 document types, businesses can streamline tasks like processing receipts and forms—without the usual complexity or high costs. Founders Victor and Hung are committed to making this technology accessible, especially for traditional industries and developing economies. With a focus on Southeast Asia's fast-growing market, Beed is set to make a big impact in this multi-billion-dollar industry, and we're excited to be part of their journey.
Founders: Victor Lee (CEO), Hung Nguyen (CTO)
CapGo
AI-enabled spreadsheet that fills itself
Why We’re Excited: AI is revolutionising the productivity tooling market, and the team at CapGo is revamping the entire product experience around one of the most impactful digital primitives: the spreadsheet. We believe in this massive vision, and the team’s strong technical and product capabilities to build a global product from day one. Currently, CapGo simplifies numerous workflows for business and individual users such as market and customer research, lead generation and more.
Founders: Yichen Guo (CEO), Chen Yu (Tech Co-founder)
CarbonCopies AI
Validate your website and application front-end with AI user twins
Why We’re Excited: CarbonCopies AI creates AI copies of users that mimic interactions on websites (like tapping, swiping) to help identify functional bugs and UI/UX issues before human users encounter them. As a no-code, minimal integration platform, CarbonCopies AI autonomously detect bugs, documents flows, and recommends improvements. We are excited for Isabella and Zhengzhi as they democratise product testing for digital companies of all sizes.
Founders: Isabella Yamin (CEO), Yang ZhengZhi (C(AI)O)
Emereg
Cloud browser infrastructure for developers building web automation
Why We’re Excited: Emereg’s core browser automation infrastructure combines authentication, data scraping, CAPTCHA-solving, and the ability to turn any third-party service into an API for an AI agent. The team at Emereg is deeply technical and passionate about building a world-class, open-source product for developers building AI agents across the globe. We believe that the next generation of the Internet and digital world will be mediated by agents — and that infrastructure enabling this transition is a massive opportunity.
Founders: G Kalaiarasu (CEO), Edwin Ong (CTO)
Niyam AI
Using AI to help engineers design hardware 10x faster
Why we’re excited: By applying LLMs to electrical schematics, Niyam provides real-time feedback, predictive insights and comprehensive risk assessments on hardware component compatibility and design manufacturability. The team has strong insights in the electronics manufacturing domain, and their tool already reduces hardware prototyping time by 10x. We believe that as LLMs get smarter, AI tools will increasingly be able to take on specialised, technical work, and Niyam AI is using this shift to build end-to-end hardware design capabilities for the $400B EMS market.
Founders: Samarth Shyam (CEO), Agrim Singh (CTO)
Okapi Solar
Solar financing solutions for homeowners and contractors
Why we’re excited: Zhern Yung and Christopher are experienced startup operators who are building for the growing rooftop solar market in Southeast Asia. We believe that rooftop solar is undergoing an inflection point — with adoption being catalysed by rising electricity costs, growing consumer awareness and favorable regulations such as direct rebates and net metering mechanisms. Okapi is growing rapidly, with 10% of the rooftop solar installers in Malaysia signing up for their POS financing within 1 year of launch.
Founders: Lai Zhern Yung (CEO), Christopher Kwong (COO)
Opilot
Platform for enterprises to leverage AI with full data compliance and protection
Why We’re Excited: In the last 18 months, enterprises have woken up to the promise of GenAI yet are unable to deploy effective solutions due to data privacy concerns. We believe that Opilot is taking a very unique approach towards a “fully private, compliant enterprise LLM co-pilot” by utilising on-device computation and data storage without need for a full-fledged on-premise deployment. We are impressed by the team’s strong technical background and differentiated approach in the growing enterprise AI market.
Founders: Julien Lauret (CEO), Theodore Garson (CTO), Angelica Handover (CGO)
Rosalind Dx
Affordable prenatal testing using advanced PCR technology
Why We’re Excited: Ella is a brilliant scientist on a mission to make non-invasive prenatal testing accessible at the breakthrough price of $100, 90% lower than the current market rate. Rosalind DX’s approach combines proprietary technology alongside cutting-edge digital PCR platforms to deliver reliable pre-natal tests at a fraction of the cost. We believe that pre-natal testing is a massive market ripe for disruption, with 40% of women in the US opting for pre-natal genetic screening. We are excited to back a highly technical founder in this field, especially with Ella’s passion to ensure that every woman has access to vital prenatal care.
Founder: Ella Fung (CEO)
Serye FM
App that houses the best Filipino audio stories and content
Why We’re Excited: Ron is an experienced operator in the Philippines audio content market, having grown Podcast Network Asia into one of the country’s leading podcast producers. His deep understanding of local audio content trends and customer behaviour shaped the vision for Serye FM, a standalone audio serials app. We believe that audio serials is a highly engaging form factor with high monetisation capability in emerging markets; we are excited to back Serye FM as they tackle this mass-market consumer opportunity.
Founders: Ron Baetiong (CEO), Ivy Barnachea (COO), Michael Tan (CFO), Rexy Dorado (CPO)
SmartSolar
Rooftop solar financing for homeowners and SMBs in Vietnam
The government of Vietnam has set an ambitious target for 50% of all office buildings and homes powered by rooftop solar by 2030. We are excited to back SmartSolar as Kevin builds out the critical financing infrastructure to enable this. We believe that rooftop solar is at an inflection point across the region and Kevin is a stellar founder tackling this space. Within just 1 month of launch, SmartSolar has secured multiple commercial as well as industrial deployments for rooftop solar.
Founder: Kevin Junker (CEO)
Sokratech
Help business stop online fraud with no code in minutes
Why We’re Excited: As fintech and digital lending increasingly penetrates Southeast Asia, fraud teams need technology to stay agile and effective. We believe that Sokratech is taking an innovative approach by empowering fraud analysts to directly deploy custom fraud prevention rules in real-time. Brian has spent 6+ years building fraud and credit scoring platforms across Indonesia (Taralite), Singapore (Shopee, OVO) and Europe (GoCardless); we are very excited to back him as he takes his career learnings towards building a winning solution in this space.
Founders: Brian Lee (CEO), Andy Tanu Ciaputra (CTO)
ThriveAI
AI-powered Chief of Staff for product teams
Why We’re Excited: Having worked across Slack, Palantir and Google — Brian and Ishwar have led massive product and engineering teams at some of the most influential tech companies in history. We are excited to back them as founders as they create an AI agent custom-built for product teams, eliminating repetitive tasks and freeing PMs to focus on high-impact work.
Founders: Ishwar Dhanuka (CEO), Brian Ngo (CTO)
Yuuki
AI-powered learning and performance coach for enterprises to retain talent
Why We’re Excited: We’ve followed Yuuki closely since Nihit left FundingSocieties to build out a product that he wished he had in his career journey: an effective, affordable personal development coach for first-time managers. We believe that LLMs are allowing founders to build unparalleled chat-based experiences, and we are excited to back Yuuki as a critical tool towards scaling people and organizations.
Founders: Nihit Nirmal (CEO), Nitin Dhawan (CTO)
Apply for Winter 2025 Batch
The Summer 2024 batch is underway, but that doesn't mean our applications are closed. We're always open - and we're already looking for companies for the Winter 2025 batch next year. If you're a founder and working on something, apply here.
