If you've been following us on LinkedIn, you'll know that we started announcing acceptances for the Winter 2023 batch before the program even began (we invest on a rolling basis!). Now that the program has officially started, we're excited to announce the full list.
We've received over 750+ applications - that's a 70% increase from the prior batch. With the help of our Venture and Visiting Partners, we spent hours interviewing companies and finally selected these 18 companies. This is our sixth batch of companies - and we think this is our strongest batch yet.
Iterative Winter 2023
- Amay (Myanmar) - Making credit accessible
- Blink (Indonesia) - 1-click checkout for eCommerce in Indonesia
- Boost Capital (Singapore) - Enables loan and financial services through smartphones
- BuildBear (Singapore) - Platform for testing dApps at scale
- CareNow (Indonesia) - Making healthcare more affordable and accessible for everyone
- Civils.ai (Singapore) - Google Maps for the underground
- Eten Tech (Indonesia) - Supply chain management system that helps F&B optimise costs
- Eubrics (India) - Improves employee performance at enterprises using AI
- Inflow (Vietnam) - B2B fashion marketplace that helps suppliers manage operations
- Issa (Thailand) - Creating the first digital ecosystem that unites migrants and businesses
- Lunara (Pakistan) - Business banking built for startups and SMEs in Pakistan & MENA
- Nuport (Bangladesh) - Full-stack supply chain automation platform for manufacturers & distributors
- PriyoShop (Bangladesh) - B2B marketplace for Bangladesh's merchants
- Scarlett Panda (Singapore) - AI-powered solution to make children the heroes of their own story
- Sellde (Vietnam) - One-stop cosmetics wholesale platform
- Supa (Malaysia) - Data-labeling platform
- Z-waka (Myanmar) - Digital platform providing doctors localised education content
- A fintech company in stealth mode.
To the founders, thank you for having us onboard your journey. We're already in our fourth year of running Iterative, and it still feels just as exciting when companies bet on us - they bet on Iterative just as much as we bet on them.
There will be a virtual Demo Day in early May. Until then, our founders are already hard at work with our General and Visiting Partners. For the latest developments, sign up for our newsletter.
Meet the companies below, and why we invested in them.
Amay
Amay is a digital lending platform that was growing rapidly before the Myanmar military coup, and had to go into survival mode during.
Now that there’s a somewhat reasonable return to normalcy, Amay is once again providing digital lending products to it’s Myanmar consumers with it’s core product being a step up loan. Short term small loans that allow anyone to get a quick credit decision using their smart phone. We believe the vast majority of the underbanked will need access to banking services in Myanmar and Amay will be the one to provide it.
Blink
1-click checkout for eCommerce in Indonesia.
As eCommerce continues it’s surprisingly slow but inevitable rise in Southeast Asia, we believe it needs to become easier and that requires products built by and for local markets. That was true of Xendit and we believe it will be true with Blink. Blink, the 1-click checkout for online businesses in Indonesia. Founded in March 2022, they’ve already done $150K in transaction volume and integrated with 17 payment providers.
Founders:
- Crisman Wise - CEO
- Dorro Elgratiaus - CBO
- Khaamid Abdaan - CPO
Boost Capital
Enables loan and financial services through smartphones.
Banks, especially ones in emerging markets, struggle to go fully digital. With the majority of customers using their smartphones instead of a desktop, the existing solutions don’t cut it. Boost helps banks offer loans and savings products through smartphones gathering complete loan applications and underwriting them with ease. This is how the rest of the world should be getting their financial products.
Founders:
- Lucinda Revell - Co-founder
- Gordon Peters - Co-founder
BuildBear
Platform for testing dApps at scale.
Every piece of software requires testing. While we have largely sufficient tooling for software testing for Web 2.0, Web 3.0 testing infrastructure is still nascent, with most developers using open source or self built solutions. BuildBear is laser-focused on testing infrastructure after having struggled though it themselves and provide a customised node to allow developers to test at scale and ship products faster. Anything that makes development easier is worth building in our books.
Founders:
- Dipesh Sukhani - CEO
- Emmanual Antony - CTO
CareNow
Making healthcare more affordable and accessible for everyone.
Healthcare is expensive, especially in countries like Indonesia where the vast majority of the population is uninsured. With the advent of buy-now-pay-later, we now have the infrastructure and know how to make healthcare more affordable and accessible to the masses. Can this be a stepping stone or even replacement for health insurance altogether? We’re not sure, but are excited to build and see.
Founders:
- Stefanie Juergens (Dr Nani) - CEO
- Andrew Soebagijo - COO
- Alexander Anggada - CTO
Civils.ai
Google Maps for the underground.
Before any construction project starts, lots of work goes into making sure projects are feasible. Feasibility engineers have to use multiple tools and collect data from dozens of digital and non-digital sources before even beginning to analyse a particular site. We think there’s enough of a gap here to warrant a premium software solution and are excited in particular with Steven and team’s in-depth understanding of the user pain points.
Founders:
- Stevan Lukic - CEO
- Mirko Vairo - COO
Eten Tech
Supply chain management system that helps F&B optimise costs.
Today, the majority of F&B players in Indonesia are still using excel to manage their inventories. This oftentimes means ~20% of their margins are lost due to not knowing when to repurchase items as well as items expiring. When there’s no visibility in inventory and order statuses at the central kitchens, it means lost sales for the retail stores. Eten solves this with their software.
Founders:
- Debbie Winardi - CEO
- Fakhri Guniar - COO
- Yoshua Elmaryono - CTO
Eubrics
Improves employee performance at enterprises using AI.
Most enterprises struggle to maintain high performance from their employees due to a lack of time and guidance. Eubrics has automated this by mapping employee issues to personalised plans that help them build better habits. Learning and development are one of the highest ROI spends for employers, we’re excited to see Eubrics tackle this important problem.
Founders:
- Nikita Jain - CEO
- Maxim Dsouza - CTO
Inflow
B2B fashion marketplace that helps suppliers manage operations.
Vietnam is one of the top 3 manufacturers of fashion in the world, yet buyers and suppliers still struggle to find the right manufacturer to reliably produce goods for them. Inflow helps by digitalizing these manufacturers to connect demand directly to the fashion supply chains - allowing them to source faster, reduce sample approval times, and reduce communication overheads. We think the future of fashion looks like manufacturing on demand and are excited to see inflow solve this problem.
Founders:
- Khanh Lê - CEO
- Raghav M S - CTO
Issa
Creating the first digital ecosystem that unites migrants and businesses.
Immigration, labor compliance and work qualifications are some of the most complicated and anxiety inducing parts of migrating between countries. Unfortunately, for many people around the world, migration is a necessary step to a better life. As an immigrant myself, we’re excited to work with Issa to make the migration process more efficient, transparent and humane through software.
Founders:
- Aaron Yip - Co-CEO
- Sakson Rouypirom - Co-CEO
Lunara
Business banking built for startups and SMEs in Pakistan & MENA.
Business banking is broken in many emerging markets. It takes weeks to get up and online, most payments still operate with check books, payments are unreliable, businesses have to get transaction data printed out, and rarely will banks offer business cards. This means frequent visits to bank branches and many many many delays. We’re excited to help Lunara bring some of what we enjoy with business banking in the US to Pakistan.
Founders:
- Talha Kamran - CEO
- Ahmad Khan - CTO
Nuport
Full-stack supply chain automation platform for manufacturers & distributors.
The logistics industry has been and will continue to be an obvious beneficiary of software. Whether that’s by connecting every part of the supply chain, automating repetitive tasks or having the necessary information to make key decisions. The trick is going to be bringing that software to every part of logistics in every part of the world. We’re excited to work with Nuport to do that for Central Asia.
Founders:
- Fahim Salam - CEO
- Chris Li - CTO
PriyoShop
B2B marketplace for Bangladesh's merchants.
Small businesses are the backbone of many emerging economies who for the most part are still using paper/pen for most of their inventory needs. They have to deal with many inefficiencies in sourcing products with no transparent prices and very limited availability of credit options. The demand is so great multiple players have been built in the past few years and it’s still only reached <1% of the merchant base. We’re excited to see the growth of PriyoShop and the sector in the next few years.
Founders:
- Asikul Alam Khan - CEO
- Dipty Mandal - CMO
Scarlett Panda
AI-powered solution to make children the heroes of their own story.
Imagine children being able to create their own stories with themselves as the stars, in a world of their making. That used to be the type of thing that only existed in their imagination but with the recent advancements in ChatGPT and others, Scarlett Panda can now build tools to help children do just that. Choose the character, the setting, etc. and Scarlett Panda will generate a unique story with artwork for children. That’s cool.
Founders:
- Vivien Bresson - CEO
- Ellis Crosby - Technical co-founder
Sellde
One-stop cosmetics wholesale platform.
Sourcing inventory is one of the most cumbersome tasks as a retailer. Still mostly done manually over chat and email. With one of the strongest business and technical founding teams in the market, we're excited to help Sellde transform this legacy process into a digital marketplace.
Founders:
- Karan Adhikari - CEO
- Ryan Le - COO
- Rajesh Kumar Behura - CTO
Supa
Data-labeling platform.
Data labeling is one of the biggest problems that AI companies have. Without a good set of labeled data, no algorithms get generated. The number of uses cases continues to grow for AI companies - eCommerce, robotics, autonomous vehicles, agritech, manufacturing, and even general AI, etc which means the need for good raw labeled data will increase as well. Supa’s ability to flex labelling using a distributed workforce and create custom solutions for more efficient labelling will make it an indispensable service for AI companies.
Founders:
Z-waka
Digital platform providing doctors localised education content.
In developing countries, medical guidelines for patient care are often incomplete or non-existent. It’s also not as simple as following guidelines from more developed countries because they often don’t have access to the same equipment or types of medication. That’s why what Z-waka is doing is so important. They provide localised education content for doctors in their developing countries and an online professional network between doctors, universities, medical societies and hospitals. Better care through connectivity.
Founders:
- Dr. Khine Pwint Nwe - CEO
- Dr Aung Thura - CTO
