We’re thrilled to introduce Iterative’s Winter 2025 batch!
As always, we kicked off the program with an in-person orientation in Bali, bringing together 35+ founders from across Southeast Asia. Over the course of a few days, they had their first office hours with our General and Visiting Partners, learned the core fundamentals of growing quickly, and built invaluable connections with one another.
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This batch was one of our most competitive yet. We received over 1,000 applications and conducted more than 500 hours of interviews. From there, we handpicked 21 exceptional startups that are building something great.
Meet them below.
- 3cat (Malaysia) - One-stop platform to buy, sell and repair used devices
- Autoradar (Singapore) - Pokemon Go for car spotting
- BeetleLabs.ai (India) - Full stack AI solutions for BFSI sector
- Bungkuus (Indonesia) - Blindbox promo platform for F&B
- Chartera (Singapore) - Intelligent AI solutions for maritime trade and freight operations
- Check (Singapore) - Hyper-personalised AI tutors for every student
- Chhaya (Bangladesh) - Bangladesh’s first digital micro-insurance platform
- Elgo AI (Singapore) - Making AI accessible through no-code custom AI application builder platform
- Fling AI (Thailand) - A warehouse digital twin data platform for stock-checking
- Kredit Hero (Philippines) - Asia's first AI credit marketplace for businesses
- Kubegrade (Thailand) - Kubernetes cluster upgrades made simple
- LenderLink (Philippines) - Credit information aggregator for the unbanked in APAC
- Onward Health (Singapore) - Accelerating clinical research in Southeast Asia
- Peek (Singapore) - An AI-powered productivity app for personal finance
- Pulse Tech (Bangladesh) - Bangladesh's fastest growing B2B e-commerce platform for retail pharmacies
- Screened (Singapore) - Screens, interviews and engages candidates, better than a recruiter
- Seedflex (Singapore) - A pay-as-you-sell advance for cashless merchants
- Seeds (Indonesia) - Duolingo for finance
- Sembuh AI (Indonesia) - AI-powered fraud detection for insurance
- SPUN (Indonesia) - Modernising global permit & visa creation
- Walled AI (Singapore) - Guardrails for AI-Preventing hallucinations, sensitive data leak, and unsafe responses
Meet the Batch
Here's more on the companies and why we're excited about them.
3cat
Company description: One-stop platform to buy, sell and repair used electronic devices
Founders: Karl Loo, Heinrich Wendel, Garry Gong, Chris Ng
Why we're excited: Led by seasoned second-time founders and retail experts, 3cat is taking a tech-enabled approach to building Southeast Asia's largest brand for buying, selling, and repairing used electronics. What impressed us most is their execution—every 7 to 14 days, 3Cat is opening a new retail location, and has been able to rapidly build consumer trust and a beloved brand in a traditionally fragmented market.
The founders' extensive industry networks and experience in scaling operations position them perfectly to capitalise on this significant market opportunity. By bridging the trust gap through physical retail expansion, 3cat is building both a recognisable brand and a scalable business at an impressive pace.
AutoRadar
Company description: Pokemon Go for car spotting
Founders: Yoann Tilmont, Audrey Gravier
Why we're excited: If you spot a rare sports car, you snap a picture and share it on AutoRadar - they're building the world's #1 gamified social platform for car spotting. Their viral marketing and gamified experience is what drew 60,000 users to sign up up within the app's first week of launch. Autoradar's traction speaks for itself: in their first month, they hit 1 million website visitors.
Founders Yoann and Audrey have deep market insight and executed seamlessly from concept to launch. We’re confident they’ll continue driving growth at an even greater scale.
BeetleLabs.ai
Company description: Full stack AI solutions for BFSI compliance and onboarding
Founders: Rahul Singh, Aatish Kumar, Akshay Khandelwal
Why we're excited: The Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) industry is notoriously under-digitised—manual data processing, repetitive tasks, and strict compliance requirements make automation challenging. That’s where BeetleLabs.ai comes in.
Their full-stack AI platform includes two powerful tools: BeetleLens and BeetleVoice. BeetleLens analyses customer interaction data, delivering AI-powered summaries, insights, and tagging, saving hundreds of hours of manual work. BeetleVoice, an AI-powered voice agent, provides round-the-clock customer support in multiple languages with natural, human-like interactions.
Founders Rahul, Aatish, and Akshay have deep industry expertise and strong customer insights. We’re excited to see how they transform the BFSI sector.
Bungkuus
Company description: Blindbox promo platform for F&B
Founders: Stephen Cahyadi, David Alexander
Why we're excited: Bungkuus is an F&B platform that connects consumers with surprise food boxes from local merchants, including established brands like Old Chang Kee, Papa Jack, and Cinnamon Roll. It helps merchants generate extra revenue with minimal effort by bundling their products—ranging from pastries and skewers to fried rice and cinnamon rolls—into fun, discounted mystery boxes.
The founders have executed consistently, driving an impressive 37% month-over-month GMV growth with a 7% take rate. We’re excited to back Bungkuus as they continue scaling, building a new kind of F&B marketplace that is affordable, sustainable and delightful for customers.
Chartera
Company description: Intelligent AI solutions for maritime trade and freight operations
Founders: Dhruv Verma, Ari Jain, Jack Lee
Why we're excited: The founders of Chartera saw an opportunity to modernise the antiquated shipping industry with AI. They recognised the inefficiencies in maritime logistics—particularly how fragmented the quoting process is across different vessels—which makes it an ideal space for innovation.
By applying AI to maritime trade and freight operations, Chartera is solving a critical problem in an industry ripe for disruption. With high-potential founders tackling a deeply entrenched challenge, we see a winning combination.
Check
Company description: Hyper-personalised AI tutors for every student
Why we're excited: Check provides a holistic all-in-one AI platform for students. The founders demonstrated remarkable adaptability—when we first met them about two months ago, they had a narrow product focused only on Cambridge GCE essay grading. After our feedback about market size limitations, they returned with a significantly evolved product. The platform is now every student’s hyper-personalised AI tutor - Check generates syllabus-accurate quizzes that incorporates effective learning techniques, provides in-depth analysis and intervention on weak points and helps students better plan for exams, helping them learn faster and smarter.
The founder market fit is compelling; Andre has years of experience as a teacher and tutor to inform product development. His domain insights, access to teacher networks for early testing, and ability to execute swiftly (alongside Jed's strong technical background) convinced us of Check's potential on creating a winning solution for students.
Chhaya
Company description: Bangladesh’s first digital micro-insurance platform
Founders: Shawon Shahriar, Saiful Islam
Why we're excited: Chhaya is Bangladesh’s only licensed micro-insurance platform, providing health, life, and property coverage to one of the world's most underinsured populations. Their app-based solution simplifies insurance with clear terms, affordable premiums, and fast claim settlements—making coverage accessible to the lower middle class, a segment traditional insurers struggle to serve.
Chhaya’s growth speaks for itself—revenue grew nearly 10x in a single year. This acceleration coincided with regulatory changes enabling recurring payments, solving a key barrier to scale. As insurance adoption increases alongside economic growth, Chhaya is positioned at the forefront of this inevitable shift.
Elgo AI
Company description: Making AI accessible through no-code custom AI application builder platform
Founders: Lee Gang, Law Yun Zhi
Why we're excited: Elgo AI makes enterprise AI accessible with a no-code B2B SaaS platform. Their workflow builder allows businesses to combine multiple AI agents to automate complex tasks with high accuracy—all within minutes of setup.
The founding team has deep experience in AI, data science and how to apply these technologies to enterprise operations. This combination led to their first successful product, a document parser gaining traction in industries like healthcare (claims processing) and laboratories (report writing).
Fling.AI
Company description: A warehouse digital twin data platform for stock-checking
Founders: Michael B. Currie
Why we're excited: Fling.ai is redefining warehouse inventory management with a sophisticated data platform powered by drones, cameras, and advanced AI. By creating real-time “digital twins” of warehouse operations, Fling.ai sits at the intersection of three major trends: automation, AI-enabled visual processing, and supply chain optimisation.
Their traction is impressive—major clients like DHL and Harley Davidson are already using Fling.ai across multiple warehouses in Thailand. The platform’s 99.7% stock-check accuracy with a single drone delivers clear operational and financial benefits. With over 7,000 successful drone flights completed, Fling.ai is primed for expansion in the massive warehouse management market.
Kredit Hero
Company description: Asia's first AI credit marketplace for businesses
Founders: Michel de Rijk, Scott Moore
Why we're excited: Kredit Hero is an AI-powered marketplace connecting small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with lenders in Southeast Asia, starting with the Philippines. Their ML-enabled platform collects and auto-scores loan applications at scale, shortening SME loan assessment from months to days.
Traditional lenders often avoid SME loans due to their low value, high volume, and complexity—precisely the kind of problem that well-designed software can fix. Kredit Hero’s founders have deep expertise in Southeast Asia’s lending landscape, and their approach creates value for both SMEs seeking capital and lenders looking for qualified borrowers. With access to capital being one of the biggest barriers to SME growth in the region, Kredit Hero is tackling a massive, underserved market.
Kubegrade
Company description: Kubernetes cluster upgrades made simple
Founders: Caleb Fornari, Tim Grassin
Why we're excited: Kubegrade tackles one of the biggest pain points in Kubernetes environments—maintenance and updates—with a specialised tool that streamlines these complex engineering challenges. The company is spinning out a proven solution that was successfully developed and implemented through the founder's previous Bay Area Kubernetes cloud consulting practice.
The founding team is exceptional. Tim’s ability to craft innovative sales strategies, paired with Caleb’s rare talent for simplifying technical complexities, makes for a strong partnership. This is also Tim’s second time going through the Iterative batch—he first joined Iterative's first S20 program in 2020 with TendoPay. We’re excited to back him again, this time alongside Caleb.
LenderLink
Company description: Credit information aggregator for the unbanked in APAC
Founders: Christo Georgiev, Dimitar Krasimirov Manolov, Dimo Hristov, Petya Dimitrova
Why we're excited: LenderLink is transforming the Philippines' credit information industry, tackling the critical problem of outdated, low-tech credit bureaus that drive up interest rates and non-performing loans in emerging markets. After successfully building and exiting FinScore in 2023, the founding team is now tackling a related opportunity: aggregating loan performance data from various consumer fintechs to build out a high-fidelity, alternative credit bureau.
Their technology-based credit data exchange platform already houses 25 million unique borrower records within just 2 months of launch. By connecting directly to consumer credit data through lender API integrations, collection agencies, and private credit bureaus, LenderLink standardises and monitors credit quality, offering lenders a single, reliable source of truth.
Onward Health
Company description: Accelerating clinical research in Southeast Asia and beyond through a tech-enabled site network
Founders: Martin Lim
Why we're excited: Onward Health is building Southeast Asia’s first tech-enabled clinical research site network, connecting hospitals with pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device, and digital health companies conducting clinical trials. Their platform digitises paper processes, standardises clinical trial operations, and leverages hospital EMR data to enable data-driven site selection for pharma companies.
Onward Health is solving critical inefficiencies in the clinical trial ecosystem—and it’s working. The company has promising early traction, having built and piloted its data collection platform, engaged a nine-hospital system, and launched a clinical research unit with 15 projects under evaluation. We’re excited to back Onward Health as they serve an underserved market.
Peek
Company description: An AI-powered productivity app for personal finance
Founders: Sherry Jiang, Jeff Min
Why we're excited: Peek is reimagining personal financial management, with the potential to improve financial literacy in ways never seen before. Imagine a gamified tool where users can seamlessly query their accounts about budgets, subscriptions, spending categories, and investments.
Sherry and Jeff make a compelling founding team—Sherry brings strong strategic vision, while Jeff has demonstrated outstanding product-building capabilities. What stands out about them is their ability to move fast and iterate constantly. We believe they have the right combination to lead in this space.
PulseTech
Company description: Bangladesh's fastest growing B2B e-commerce platform for retail pharmacies
Founders: Kazi Ashikur Rasul, Arefeen Raafi Ahmed
Why we're excited: PulseTech is transforming Bangladesh’s pharmacy supply chain as the country’s fastest-growing B2B e-commerce platform for retail pharmacies. Instead of relying on sales representatives to manually collect orders and deliver products, PulseTech offers an Amazon-like ordering experience, bringing efficiency and transparency to this critical sector.
Due to regulatory differences between distributors and manufacturers, PulseTech can also offer better pricing than pharmaceutical companies themselves. Their solution tackles a real market inefficiency in a large, growing economy—and we’re confident they’ll play a key role in evolving Bangladesh’s healthcare ecosystem.
Screened
Company description: AI that screens, interviews and engages candidates, better than a recruiter
Founders: Wen Chen, Adan Vielma
Why we're excited: Meet Ryan, an AI-powered recruiting assistant created by Screened that streamlines the entire top-of-funnel hiring process. The origin story of Ryan is this: Founder Wen Chen used to be a recruiter, so she knows what it's like manually spending hours sifting through CVs and conducting first calls — it's like finding a needle in a haystack. It's why she and Adan built Ryan, an AI that efficiently screens resumes, conducts interviews, engages candidates, and delivers qualified referrals to hiring managers—all while mimicking natural recruiter workflows.
We were blown away by the team's early demo of Ryan - from the ease of the conversation, to the nuance of its insights. AI is poised to transform recruiting from the ground-up, and we believe Screened will lead the way.
Seedflex
Company description: A Pay-As-You-Sell Advance for cashless merchants
Founders: Ritwik Ghosh, Sauvik Datta
Why we're excited: SeedFlex provides embedded lending to merchants across online marketplaces, F&B businesses, and retail stores. By aggregating cash flow data across multiple platforms, SeedFlex provides merchants with flexible, evergreen credit limits that adjust based on sales performance.
Their B2B2C model leverages partnerships with payment gateways and vertical SaaS providers to efficiently reach 80,000+ merchants across Malaysia and Indonesia. Founders Ritwik and Sauvik bring deep domain expertise, having previously built Grab’s embedded finance application. We’re excited to back this seasoned lending team as they redefine cashless commerce.
Seeds
Company description: Duolingo for Finance
Founder: Willy Tan
Why we're excited: Seeds is building the "Duolingo for finance"—a social gaming platform that makes financial literacy accessible and engaging. Users can learn about investing and finance through gamified experiences like trading tournaments, quizzes, and a structured learning academy. Seeds also partners with corporations through sponsored educational games.
Users love Seeds, with 57,000 monthly active users on the platform. In a world where financial education is often inaccessible, Seeds’ gamified approach offers a refreshing, effective solution that resonates.
Sembuh AI
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Company description: AI-powered fraud detection for insurance
Founders: Claudio Perlini, David Jendra, Yosefraim Setiawan
Why we're excited: Sembuh AI is tackling a problem that crops up in healthcare: insurance fraud. Their solution? Leveraging advanced AI to help insurers detect fraud, optimise claims, and reduce overpayments. Instead of spending hours on processing claims, Sembuh AI cuts it down to 15 seconds.
With deep insights into the Indonesian healthcare system and its operational challenges, the founding team is well-positioned to create meaningful value in the industry.
Spun
Company description: Modernising global permit & visa creation
Founders: Christa Sabathaly, Dilla Anindita Purnawan
Why we're excited: Getting a visa to travel, study, or work is notoriously difficult. Requirements are unclear, mistakes lead to costly rejections, and the follow-up process is exhausting—especially for those with restrictive passports.
Spun is changing this. It’s the most reliable visa platform, supporting 150+ visas and permits globally—24x faster than traditional methods. Instead of spending hours on an application, users can complete it in just 20 minutes with Spun. We’re excited to back them in solving this unnecessarily painful problem; the Spun team is starting first in Indonesia, then the world.
Walled AI
Company description: Guardrails for AI-Preventing hallucinations, sensitive data leak, and unsafe responses
Founders: Rishabh Bhardwaj
Why we're excited: Walled AI tackles one of the biggest challenges in artificial intelligence today: hallucination detection. Their team of technical researchers has taken a pragmatic approach to AI governance, developing solutions that not only detect hallucinations but also provide essential tools for PII encryption and redaction, as well as guardrails. They have achieved SOTA benchmarks on multiple solutions, highlighting the strength of the technical team.
With deep technical expertise (the founder also has a PhD in NLP) and strong strategic partnerships, we believe they’re well-positioned to address the growing demand for reliable AI system.
