Turochas Fuad will talk about real world examples of what it takes to raise funds.

Turochas “T” Fuad is the CEO and founder of Spacemob — a regional co-working space provider.

A seasoned entrepreneur who ventured into the world of startups after working in Silicon Valley, Spacemob is the third business that he’s established.

Fuad’s first startup was WUF Networks, Inc., a convergence software company which Yahoo! acquired in 2005. He went on to take charge of Yahoo!’s mobile division in Southeast Asia before joining Skype as its managing director.

Whilst working at Skype, Fuad founded Travelmob — an online marketplace for private accommodation and vacation rentals. In 2011, Fuad left Skype to concentrate fully on Travelmob, leading the Singapore-based company to a successful acquisition by HomeAway, Inc in mid-2013. HomeAway acquired 63% of Travelmob in an undisclosed, all-cash deal.

Fuad’s business interests and expertise include enterprise software, e-commerce, mobile, travel and consumer internet services.

We spoke with T Fuad to find out more about his thoughts on speaking at the upcoming Singapore Business Review's 20 Hottest Startups Panel Briefing 2017, happening on July 11, 2017, 8:30-11:30AM at the Meeting Room 3345, Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre.

What are your previous experiences and positions held that contributed to who you are as an entrepreneur today?
I founded Travelmob — an online marketplace for private accommodation and vacation rentals that was acquired by HomeAway in mid-2013. Passionate about the sharing economy and its potential for disruptive change, I saw an opportunity in the highly cluttered co-working space business. I see Spacemob as a natural continuation from Travelmob.

During my time at Travelmob I gained a profound understanding of how hotel operators work with property owners. I saw an opportunity to bring this model into the co-working industry. Spacemob was born out of the premise that space is secondary, what’s most important is the support we provide to members, and the ecosystem we build within the space.

What are your key business philosophies?
Build a strong team you can trust, understand your market and how you can differentiate yourself and constantly add value to members. Another big part of business in this part of the world is to always expand regionally, but remain locally relevant. With a landscape as varied as Southeast Asia, this can never be emphasised enough as an underlying philosophy that will sustain a company's growth in the long run.

Can you give us a glimpse of what you will talk about at the 20 Hottest Startups Panel Briefing 2017?
Real world examples of what it takes to raise funds, and what goes on in the minds of investors when evaluating a business. But more importantly, the role of capital in a company's lifecycle, and how an entrepreneur can manage that while having to do the tough job of running the company.

If you are interested to attend, you may contact Nikki Quiniquini at [email protected] or at +65 3158 1386 ext 238.

To learn more about the event, click here.

This home-grown start up helps jobseekers find work aligning with their schedules and commitments.

"We pioneered the concept of shift-based hiring," says Calvin Sim, CEO, Freeboh. "This means that individual work-shifts, with all the salient details, including timing and wages, can be offered to jobseekers."

With Freeboh, jobseekers can select all the shifts they can work from one or several employers in what is known as shift-bidding during the application. The work-shifts themselves are extracted from actual work schedules. This approach seamlessly links hiring to operations on an ongoing basis. This can be managed via Freeboh’s Schedo-it HR management system. Schedo-it is an online HR platform that enables employers to seamlessly integrate hiring, time-keeping, leave management and payroll. "For users, this enables them to schedule work that fits their life commitments, be it studies, childcare or caring for elderly parents," says Calvin.

Calvin founded Freeboh with Alex Pang. "We noticed a trend that there was increasing time-scarcity in our society, but tools for transacting in time were not broadly available. Broad-based, peer-to-peer real-time interaction was finally achievable with the rise of smart-phones and HTML5’s ecosystem of technologies," says Calvin. "With the labour crunch severely affecting businesses, we decided to look at offering a more transactional approach to matching employer demand and jobseeker supply."

Meanwhile, Freeboh’s Schedo-it software streamlines all management processes seamlessly, from hiring right through to payroll and post-payroll. This significantly reduces time and overheads to achieve flexibility in the workforce, from human resource allocation to pay. The system is able to roster not just part-time but also regular full-time staff. An integrated time-keeping tool helps employers capture time-stamp data of the staff to determine if the work roster has been complied with. Any changes are instantly updated and reflected in the roster. The entire team may also manage their leave and off-time using Schedo-it.

In the future, transactions will be increasingly in man-hours, not just man-days/months. Calvin notes that by working closely with businesses, Freeboh and Schedo-it can significantly reduce the overheads of organisations moving towards a more flexible workforce.

One of their success stories so far has involved working with the Singapore Sailing Federation to manage their volunteer pool. "Previously, at the end of each regatta, volunteers would be paid in cash. This led to a myriad of issues and concerns," says Calvin. "With Freeboh and Schedo-it, we not only help to find new volunteers, but those volunteers no longer required to wait around to collect cash. They can now withdraw their payout directly from the ATM as the funds would be GIRO’ed to their accounts directly."

Calvin said they have started an office in HK to serve the market there. They are also very keen on partnerships for other regions or where the underlying Freeboh technology can be applied to specific verticals.
 

After the recently closed $4.1M Series A, this start up’s total funding went up to US$ 8M.

ZEN Rooms is a budget hotel chain of the new generation, offering superior value-for money for travelers and operational efficiency through innovations for hotel partners.

Founded in 2015 in Jakarta, ZEN Rooms has since become the fastest growing budget accommodation franchise in South East Asia, says Kiren Tanna, co-founder and Global MD of ZEN Rooms. This growth figures in ZEN Room’s total funding, closing at $4.1M in Series A, it went up to US$ 8M. ZEN Rooms is backed by German conglomerate Rocket Internet, telecom group Ooredoo and SBI Investments Korea.

Tanna founded ZEN Rooms with Nathan Boublil, who, among other notable achievements, previously co-founded a data technology company in Cambridge in the UK, developing data/analytics solutions for local governments - gathering the backing of Microsoft Ventures and Cambridge University. Boublil and his team won many entrepreneurial awards in the UK including Entrepreneur of the Year at Cambridge in 2013. Tanna himself is a veteran of the Internet startup space in South East Asia, and was prior to ZEN Rooms founder & CEO of Rocket Internet-backed FoodPanda.com, starting the company from scratch in 2012 and growing it to the biggest food delivery company in Asia and the most recognizable brand in the space. After FoodPanda, Tanna was the CEO of Rocket Internet in South East Asia through APACIG, their investment joint venture with Indosat-Ooredoo. Tanna is also active on the startup scene in South East Asia as mentor and investor.

Tanna shares that ZEN Rooms’ breakthrough model was launched to disrupt budget hotel industry in the region, historically suffering from poor value-for-money and low operational efficiency. "Indeed, the market has been divided between thousands of no-name unreliable guest houses on one side and overpriced hotel chains on the other, with low operational innovation. The traditional hotel industry has hardly changed its face for the past decades," Tanna says. In addition, Tanna notes that every ZEN Rooms guest is guaranteed cleanliness, free fast Wi-Fi, comfortable double bed, working AC, a hot shower and 24/7 customer support. ZEN Rooms are now available in 7 countries in South-East Asia (Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Hong Kong).

Their latest industry-changing innovation includes a Pay-at-hotel feature, a first in the hospitality industry in Asia as ZEN Rooms is the 1st budget franchise to offer a 100% card-free booking. Tanna notes that this is a key move to further democratize travel in a context where the majority of the SEA population is un-banked today. They are confident that this innovation will do to hotel sector what Cash on Delivery did to eCommerce adoption.

"These days it doesn’t make any sense to pay for a hotel room more than for flight tickets. Our mission is to democratize accommodation market the way budget airlines disrupted transportation," notes Tanna.

In terms of expansion, they’re looking to grow beyond their current markets, with countries such as Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar among their potential new outposts.

“In the meantime, we are also significantly increasing room inventory by getting control of all rooms for our top performing partners,” he says. “All these initiatives are expected to contribute to entering the top three budget hotel players in our key markets and raise a Series B around the end of this year.”

It uses AI to authenticate vintage items.

The Fifth Collection is a luxury trading platform used by collectors to buy and sell various items. It was founded in 2015 by Nejla Matam-Finn and her husband Michael, who bootstrapped the startup for over two years.

The Fifth Collection prides itself for three key elements: high-tech authentication, knowledgeable curation and luxury service. Nejla Matam-Finn, CEO of The Fifth Collection, says they use artificial intelligence to analyse microscopic surface pictures to determine authenticity to an unparalleled degree of accuracy.

She further notes that every item on the site has been personally inspected, priced, photographed and written up in-house. “Our team makes a judgement on the relevance of each item before accepting it for listing - you come to The Fifth Collection for an opinion, a curated shopping experience with a personality and an editorial line,” she adds.

The Fifth Collection also strives to reinject luxury into vintage and preloved fashion. “This ranges from our bespoke ‘origami’ packaging, to our customer friendly delivery and return policies. But the ultimate service is the simplest of all – expertise with a personal touch. Try our chat next time you are on the site and don’t be surprised if one of the founders answers your questions,” says Matam-Finn.

Following the success of the startup, the husband and wife duo eventually sought external funding. “Our main investor wound up being Europe-based but actively funding companies in Southeast Asia. Aside from being a highly accomplished emerging market entrepreneur in his own right, he also had direct experience investing in our fast-growing niche of fashion technology in Europe. He remarked that our unit economics, in particular our average basket, was like no other business,” notes Matam-Finn.

In 2016, The Fifth Collection raised its first and only round of seed funding amounting to $2m.

Matam-Finn believes that when starting up a business, “the trick is not avoiding all mistakes, it’s making sure that they don’t kill you.” She shares that seven months into development, they had a poorly functioning prototype. Among many other things, pages would load so slowly that they would often time out. They did everything to compensate by adding more and more server capacity went on until, as a consultant later reckoned, they had enough server capacity to power Amazon on a slow day.

“We had to scrap everything and start over, recruiting an outstanding team of developers in the process. Since we were taking in stock and preparing other aspects of business during the day, we hired a team 12 time zones away to enable us to work round the clock - daytime we would focus on operations in the office and nighttime we would switch gears and focus on development. Believe it or not, we managed to rebuild seven months of work in six short sleep-deprived, caffeine-fueled round-the-clock weeks that left us close to collapse. In the process, we learned a valuable lesson about balancing time and money for maximum effectiveness,” explains Matam-Finn.

“We go somewhat counter to popular startup culture: we believe in building strong foundations before scaling. Many people don’t realise that a leading cause for startup failure is scaling too early, or ‘scale to fail’ syndrome. For our part, we are looking at opportunities for growth in Southeast Asia and also some potential collaborations with larger groups. We look forward to sharing more soon,” says Matam-Finn. 

Motorist.sg has sold more than $55m worth of cars in almost two years.

Motorist.sg started out in 2015 and has since disrupted the way Singaporeans are selling their cars.

"Through our car bidding platform, Motorist.sg helps drivers, sell their cars at the highest price online, without any paperwork, within as fast as 24 hours," says Damian Sia, founder of Motorist.sg. "Over the past 22 months, we have sold more than SGD55 million worth of cars."

They also have one of the fastest growing community of drivers, with more than 6,000 members currently. "With the Motorist.sg app, we offer drivers a suite of free e-concierge services, including road tax reminders, inspection reminders, summon notifications, allowing drivers to manage their cars with their smartphones," says Sia.

Motorist.sg is unique because it is one of the pioneering car quotation portal in Singapore. "One of our strengths is our ability to consistently provide the highest offer in the market for drivers as we have the most cars for bidding in Singapore every single day," says Sia.

Motorist.sg is one of the few car portals that has all its technology built in-house. It was coded from scratch by Sia, a programmer who also has more than five years experience in the car industry as a secondhand car dealer. "We are very confident that our technology is the most advanced in the industry and 100% customised for the local market," he says.

Sia, 30, completed his education with a double major in computer science and information system from Murdoch University. He started his first company when he was 24 years old and successfully made his first exit in 2015. He is a passionate serial entrepreneur, and currently develops and owns several companies.

He was also the founder of SeekSquare and Quotations.com.sg in 2011, which are platforms that helped anyone obtain quotations for anything they are looking to purchase. "For example, if you are looking to print for a box of name cards, you can just submit an enquiry through Quotations.com.sg, and vendors will reply with their quotes," Sia explains. After a while, he realised that, out of all the enquiries, car enquiries were the ones that were being consistently transacted successfully. This was where he started moving deeper into the car industry and started Motorist.sg. Damian was also the founder of DirectCars, who is now a competitor. After he sold his stake in the company, he used it as capital to set up Motorist.sg.

"Most people either have no idea how to sell/scrap a car, or cannot remember how. After all, it is not a daily activity, and it can be troublesome and time consuming. And because of this, many drivers may take months to sell their cars, getting into trouble with authorities for missed deadlines and wrong paperwork or even end up getting cheated," Sia notes.

Through Motorist.sg, with just one click, drivers are able to obtain the guaranteed highest offers in the market, without any paperwork, and sell as fast as within 24 hours. Without even leaving their carpark. 

This platform aims to make financial product buying enjoyable and simple.

It uses a predictive model that determines the reward value when applying for credit cards from major banks.

Finty is a new platform in Singapore that rewards customers for online financial purchases that goes beyond short-term and ad hoc promotions. It specialises on financial products, offering fixed, consistent rewards for customer applications.

Finty is currently operated by Kwok Zhong Li, Managing Director; Lucius Young , Marketing Director; Jeremy Lim, Technological Advisor.

According to Li, consumers perceive financial products as daunting and complicated so they developed the business to make it rewarding, enjoyable and simple for customers to shop for financial products.

Through research and development, the model was created, consisting a cumulation of data points making up three pillars that determine the rewards customers received upon each financial product application.

“To achieve this, our revenue sharing business model allows consumers to be better served in this area, while presenting a three-way financial win for them, our bank partners and Finty,” said Li.

Finty currently offers rewards up front and consolidates various credit cards from organisations including OCBC, HSBC, American Express, Standard Chartered, CIMB and Citibank, where customers can currently receive up to $50 in cash rewards for each card, in addition to regular bank promotions. This is also applicable for existing bank customers who are applying for additional credit cards.

Furthermore, contents and interface will be further developed to provide customers with a comprehensive portal of progressive offerings and financial hacks to catalyse their financial decision-making process. This also includes the development of a Finty app to further adapt to the needs of mobile-heavy millennial users.

Moving forward, it plans to expand into the personal loan space within the first half of 2017, followed by other services including insurance, home loans and deposits.
 

The software aims to improve organisational productivity.

EngageRocket is a cloud-based analytics software that collects and analyses employee feedback in real-time to advise leaders on how to build a better culture, one team at a time.

"By automating the administration and analytics behind employee surveys, linking results to bite-sized suggestions to improve leadership style, we function as a 'FitBit for management' to enhance organisational health and productivity," says Dorothy Yiu, co-founder and COO, EngageRocket.

EngageRocket was founded by CEO CheeTung Leong, 35, and Yiu, 29. Leong has expertise in performance management, organisational development, workforce analytics, and business strategy. Most recently he was director of Gallup in Southeast Asia, leading teams of consultants to grow the business by more than 20% for three consecutive years. Yiu specialises in process re-engineering, cost optimisation and change management. She served as the head of operations for Gallup (Southeast Asia) and oversaw the execution of large-scale consulting projects for clients in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Australia and Dubai.

Yiu says they started the business because they recognise that on the supply side, data analytics has become cheaper and faster than ever before and on the demand side, the expectation on information being real time has increased.

"Yet, people management still remains a challenge and we don't see a good product in the market that gives leaders real time feedback and make sense of the data from their people," she notes. "It was something we struggled with back in consulting days where we see a better way of doing things but there weren't available tools."

The problem they are trying to solve, Yiu shares, is that companies aren't optimising their most expensive asset, the people. "There are a lot of insights that can be drawn with people analytics that directly contributes to important business metrics - productivity, profitability, retention, for instance - but there aren't sufficient knowledge or tools in the market to educate leaders, people managers and HR on leverage such data," she says.

EngageRocket has already seen some wins. For instance, Yiu shares that the CEO of one of their early customers faced an issue with their retail team. He was seeing high attrition and low productivity, and brought EngageRocket in to assess the engagement level of the team.

From the very first administration of the employee engagement survey, they were able to discover specific problem areas that the head of retail could address immediately. “After three administrations, they saw significant improvement in the team's engagement and productivity,” Yiu says.

“EngageRocket has started a new level of transparency in our culture, allowing team managers to receive frequent and regular feedback to nip team issues in the bud. Using the data to coach these managers has also led to useful development conversations to strengthen my leadership bench,” says Leong.

On future plans to boost the business, Yiu says they intend to keep strengthening their analytics and advice services in line with their aim to "ditigise consulting" with the latest advances in AI and to expand globally.
 

 This gardening system is designed and manufactured in Toa Payoh.

Aerospring Gardens is the manufacturer of a patent-pending vertical aeroponic gardening system, designed for urban home gardeners who want to grow their own herbs, salads, leafy greens and vegetables in limited space. This garden employs water rather than soil to cultivate a diverse range of vegetables and greens, thus growing upwards instead of outwards, explains Nadine Keller, co-founder of Aerospring Gardens.

Designed and manufactured in Singapore (Toa Payoh), this vertical gardening system allows you to grow up to 36 different edible plants and vegetables in limited space, says Keller. "It self-waters and requires little maintenance, it’s easy to set up and every pole includes little plant seedlings so that there is a garden from day one," she says. The system includes everything one needs to start growing hydroponically, one just needs a balcony or outdoor space that enjoys a few hours of sunshine, and a power plug.

Aerospring Gardens was founded by couple Keller, 40, and Thorben Linneberg, 46, both having originally come from corporate backgrounds. Keller left a promising corporate career to join Linneberg in setting up Singapore’s first urban growstore.

"The business was born out of the desire to grow our own food at home and it started out purely as a hobby, there wasn’t any intention to start a business," says Keller. Gardening was a surprising stress buster for Keller, while Linneberg enjoyed inventing and building his own hydroponic system.

"As more and more of our friends and acquaintances saw and tasted what we were harvesting on weekends, they egged us on to develop the product further and turn it into a business. We believe our system allows anybody to grow a little of their own, easily right at home," says Keller.

She adds: "Our tagline – No soil, no mess, lots of success – has found a following amongst apartment dwelling urbanites, not keen to get their hands dirty but with lots of desire to grow their own herbs, leafy greens and veg. It behaves like any other garden though and it deserves the care and attention if you want it to grow food for you!"

Keller says that because they supply seedlings with every system, they have provided over 20,000 herb, vegetable and fruit seedlings to all of Aerospring Gardens' customers. "For the first 6 months, this was done in our living room and the grow lights we had to use for the nursery illuminated our apartment purple. We could spot our unit from afar," she shares. "Like from the next district."

Aerospring Gardens has commenced exports to selected countries and plans to launch an indoor system with lights in the next 12 months.

The future of food is at stake and conventional approaches to agriculture need to be addressed, says Keller. "We need to come up with clever solutions and community initiatives to address our own needs locally," she notes. "There is nothing fresher than homegrown and teaching someone how to grow their own is a gift we feel keeps on giving."
 

Total funding is now at US$925,000.

The first fintech to receive the Financial Sector Technology & Innovation grant from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, soCash provides digital cash management platforms for banks. Hari Sivan, CEO of soCash, says banks spend US$300b per year on enabling cash circulation for consumers and businesses.

"People queuing up in front of ATMs is a common sight in Singapore. Our platform enables access to cash beyond ATMs and branches," he notes.

The startup recently raised US$600,000 from angel investors including veteran bankers and technologists. The funds will be used to boost the company’s sales team to carry out engagement with banks in Asia to expand its services regionally.

Sivan says the recent investment brings total funding to US$925,000, with soCash now working on its institutional round. The business was bootstrapped from savings of soCash's founders, whose aim is to circulate cash efficiently by making it social and/or peer to peer.

"We are a bunch of bankers with a passion for technology and digital innovations who found this problem big and meaningful enough to quit our decade-old careers in global banks. Most of us are in our 30’s. We were born in different parts of the world (India, Singapore, Europe), but our paths crossed in Singapore," shares Sivan.

They are bent on making soCash smarter than current cash management platforms like ATMs and cash recyclers, based on data-driven insights, to improve cash distribribution and liquidity management by creating the largest cash network in the world powered by mobile devices.

The platform enables users to withdraw cash from merchants such as neighbourhood shops by placing an order on the bank’s app, selecting a cashpoint nearby, and picking up the cash at the outlet. Sivan, who says the cashless narrative needs to be re-visited, notes that the goal is to enable convenient access to cash whilst eliminating the cost of cash processing for banks, especially in urban centres.

Sharing a pitch experience, Sivan recalls, "One of the senior bankers asked us if we can enable convenient access to cash for the elderly and mobility-challenged in Singapore’s housing estates. Her logic was that neighbourhood coffee shops and mama shops are trusted participants in the community and are obviously nearer than ATMs."

Sivan says it was an interesting and socially beneficial application of the soCash technology. "It was also an eye opener for us that Singaporean banks are really connected to community and they have the vision to come up with technology-led solutions relevant to the society."
 

Total is now at US$4.4m, as Ematic prepares for its Series A round.

Singapore-based SaaS provider Ematic Solutions has raised an additional US$2.4m, closing its pre-Series A financing. According to Ematic, this latest round includes new investor Walden International, as well as existing investors Wavemaker Partners, MDI Ventures, and Convergence Ventures. This brings total investment to US$4.4m to-date.
“This latest pre-Series A investment underlines our investors’ continued confidence in our business model, technology, and pace of growth," says Paul Tenney, CEO and founder of Ematic Solutions. "The Series A funds will accelerate everything and power the deployment of more features to make our product suite more efficient in raising engagement and generating email revenue for digital brands.”

Ematic is a cloud-based digital marketing platform designed to increase companies’ email revenue through artificial intelligence. The platform analyses past engagement to identify, predict, and engage consumers with the highest probability of taking action.

It offers an Email Intelligence Cloud, helping digital marketers nimbly build and deploy sophisticated and high-ROI email marketing programmes. Ematic also has Bye-IQ, an application that facilitates smart visitor interaction, automation, database enhancement, and repeat purchase features; and Hi-IQ, an automated application that enhances email subscribers.

Ematic, which is now actively talking to several investors for Series A funding, said the funding will be used to enhance its product suite with a stronger mobile offering, and to build out a highly scalable self-service model for the platform. It also wants to cement its market position in Southeast Asia as well as accelerate expansion across Asia Pacific, recently opening an office in Hong Kong to serve as a launch pad for North Asia.

“Our growth is tripling year-on-year, and since October 2015 monthly recurring revenue has continued to double every six months," says Tenney. "We have also completed our first year of market expansion in Southeast Asia – Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines – and our staff has more than quadrupled from 20 in early 2016 to more than 80 now.” 

Their name says it all.

InstaReM is a Singapore-headquartered digital cross-border payments company focused on Asia. “We enable individuals, SMEs, and financial institutions to send across payments at the lowest possible cost and fastest possible time,” says Prajit Nanu, InstaReM co-founder and CEO.

Nanu and his co-founders started the business because they felt there was no real cross-border payment leader in Asia for retail and businesses. Their product aims to solve the transparency and speed issues around cross-border money transfers.

He explains their value proposition for each customer base. For retail, Nanu shares: “Unlike our competitors who charge a transaction fee and an FX spread, we charge a percentage of the amount. If you are sending $1,000, our fees will be 0.5%, so $5 which includes FX and transaction fee.”

For B2B, meanwhile, using their local payout mesh in Asia and Europe, financial institutions such as banks, payment processors, and corporates can leverage InstaReM’s platform to make local payments. Payments are processed on the same day and there are no deductions, says Nanu.

InstaReM, which currently holds remittance licenses in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Canada, is applying for licenses in other jurisdictions including the USA, which will allow them to increase their customer base massively.

The payments company has also started a project with a banking partner that will allow it to create a digital bank that will serve individuals and businesses. A new product for the Singapore market that will focus on blue-collar foreign workers is also being developed. “Both products are outside of our remittance core but both will include remittance payments as an offering. By doing this, we are going to attract many new customers from many new and non-traditional sectors,” says Nanu. 

The startup helps make transactions easier and transparent.

“Sourcing for quotations is highly repetitive and tedious, and could take up to three to four weeks,” shares Ted Poh Chen Wei, chief executive officer and founder of Pegaxis, a Singaporean online property management platform. “There is also a lack of transparency over the procurement process, as much of the process is done manually,” he adds.

Pegaxis, which claims to be Singapore’s first and only B2B (business to business) property management marketplace, was founded by a relatively young team consisting of Poh (28), Lim Jun Roong (29), and Jacky Chong Foh Wooi (41). Starting out as a listing directory of local contractors called sgFixIt.com, the business then adopted a marketplace model, using the name Pegaxis in 2016.

Pegaxis helps property managers obtain quotations for property-related services in a structured and transparent manner, and the entire procurement process is trackable. Pegaxis also provides management tools to boost efficiency. “We make it a point to build a platform that is inclusive and user-friendly so that everyone can leverage on our technology if they want to,” notes Poh.

With current funding of S$260,000, Pegaxis is hopeful to further grow in the next few years. Amongst its newest clients is SGX-listed LHN Group. Poh says their plan is to expand the platform offering by implementing new features and expand to more countries.
 

The startup provides technology-augmented, algorithm-based portfolio management services.

Singapore’s rapid economic growth in recent years has led to robust demand for various wealth management services, particularly in the financial technology (fintech) sphere. However, most of these services were still not at par with the demands of customers and were not time-efficient, cost-efficient, universally accessible, or simple.

Bambu – a B2B (business to business) digital wealth management service firm providing automated, technology-augmented, and algorithm-based portfolio management services – was established just last year to address these issues, “offering financial and non-financial firms the ability to integrate and benefit from the shift in digital wealth.” Services include digital strategy and backend integration.

“Bambu provides an innovative, cost-effective, and efficient entry point into the world of investing and wealth management,” said Ned Phillips, Bambu’s founder and chief executive officer. “Based in Singapore and Hong Kong, we market our services Asia-wide,” he added.

According to Phillips, who has an extensive background in fintech in Asia, Bambu began in March 2016 as a prototype based on a similar robo-advisor in the region. “There was huge interest. It was clear there was demand for a B2B robo-advisor,” he said.

Together with Phillips, Aki Ranin also forms Bambu’s main leadership team as chief operating officer. They plan to aggressively build Bambu’s presence in Asia. Bambu will be expanding its team and business in Hong Kong, its second market after Singapore, and invest in research and development around future technologies. As of August 2016, Bambu has raised US$400,000 in funding from a seed round.

 

Over the past 6 years, it has grown its boot campers from 10 to 10,000.

When UFIT Founder Darren Blakeley led his first fitness boot camp in Fort Canning for 10 clients in 2008, he was sure that he would not go the traditional run of the mill operation that was all about machines and monthly memberships. As he gathered a growing band of boot camp clients, who heard about his classes by word of mouth, Blakeley met Dean Ahmad, Jeff Halley, and James Forrester, who would soon be his partners in his venture.

Unlike any other startups in the digital age, what these men offer is something not really disruptive. Instead, they are going to the roots of fitness and nutrition coaching while at the same time employing a 360° approach in offering technical skills and experience for its boot campers.

“From day one the goal was to offer physiotherapy, nutrition and fitness as these in my mind are the cornerstones of a healthy lifestyle. And we recognised our target market would want proper attention to detail, for example not having to queue for showers," Blakeley said.

Meanwhile, Ahmad recalled, "Darren and I knew that quality was lacking in Singapore’s fitness industry and we wanted to change that. So I took my chances and went with it. We didn’t spend any money on marketing, the business just grew from word of mouth, and still today that’s how we get most of our business.”

After raising capital and attracting shareholders, Blakeley, Ahmad, and Forrester, with Halley as an adviser and investor, incorporated their company and opened the first UFIT gym in Amoy Street in August 2011.

Forrester said, “I didn’t have a big vision of where it would go. I recognised there was an opportunity to improve the standard of PT in Singapore. I thought we could offer it at a higher level. It was driven by a desire to do something I enjoyed more than a grand plan to grow a business”.

That philosophy was shared by Lisa Clayton, who had grown a casual outdoor fitness program for her friends into a thriving business, OZFIT Bootcamps. “For me it was something that grew from my heart, I wanted to train people well whilst making it fun and social.” In 2014, her business merged with UFIT, bringing hundreds of new clients into the UFIT community. Her exuberant leadership led to the more recently rebranded SHEFIT classes winning Shape Magazine’s 2017 “Best Outdoor Bootcamp Class” award.

In this exclusive interview with Singapore Business Review, Forrester, one of UFIT's founders and now its current CEO, shared how their vision has played out in the past six years. There is also a slideshow at the end of the article showing UFIT's milestones in their journey to making Singaporeans fit and healthy.

SBR: Since UFIT’s foundation, what has changed in the way you operate your business?

Forrester: We started with a single boot camp in 2008, and since then over 10,000 clients have used our services, so inevitably we’ve made some key changes to facilitate that growth.
Firstly we’ve adopted a franchise-type model, where exceptional staff are promoted to develop and independently manage new business lines. These employees are our star performers who have demonstrated great vision and client focus and are offered equity in their businesses to incentivise successful leadership. That approach has paid off with the success of the one-north gym which opened in 2015 under Stephen Greenan, followed by the UFIT Clinic under Declan Halpin, CrossFit Tanjong Pagar with Dylan Goddard, and UFIT Orchard under Nathan Williams, Glenn van der Veen and Tsvety Ivanova.The UFIT Nutrition group has similarly seen huge success, led by Wendy Riddell, also Director of Bootcamps.

Over the last few years, we’ve also encouraged our staff to follow their entrepreneurial instincts which is how the specialist UFIT Education group (Frazer McArdell), UFIT Youth Academy (Joe Williams and Tom Clarke), and the UFIT Clean & Lean Challenge came about. We have so much talent and passion across UFIT and really support our employees’ creativity and lateral thinking when it comes to business development.

And to become accessible to new markets we’ve developed online nutrition and fitness services for clients overseas, and our corporate business for companies wanting to offer a healthy lifestyle element to their employees - so our business model has progressed from traditional fitness into broader but related areas - both person-to-person and online. Not only has all this innovation resulted in our business growing but enables career progression for talented staff, leading to excellent staff retention.

As our team has grown we’ve used a collaborative approach to define and uphold our corporate culture - Passion, Excellence and Work Ethic - which has infiltrated all of the UFIT.

Importantly, we've enhanced our systems and processes to sustain our growing client base and demands of running a larger business, and now have in place a support team of accountants, marketers and administrators. As our business is centred around client relationships, we’ve developed a more sophisticated communications strategy to “value add” and update our clients frequently on the latest industry thinking, training tips, success stories and promotions. In addition to that we’ve aligned ourselves with respected wellness and lifestyle partners to enhance and broaden our clients’ overall experience with UFIT.

While we have grown from being a small business to a more “corporate” one, some things remain unchanged at UFIT - the provision of the highest quality training and advice to our clients, by a carefully selected team of professionals, whilst maintaining strong personal connections with our close-knit community. Essentially, the culture, core values and principles of UFIT will always remain. No matter how big we grow we’ll ensure we always feel like UFIT.

SBR: What are the major milestones UFIT has achieved in the past years? How wide is your customer base currently?

Forrester: UFIT has experienced outstanding growth since we opened our first gym in Amoy Street in 2011. We are now Singapore’s largest boutique fitness company, with over 80 outdoor weekly boot camps, a rehab clinic, and five gyms, the most recent one opening on Orchard Road in January 2017. 

In Singapore’s competitive fitness market, we had our biggest year ever in 2016 and our client base of over 10,000 keeps growing within and beyond Singapore, serviced by over 80 employees. 

Over that time we’ve become a complete fitness, rehab and nutrition service across every stage of the life-cycle and for all fitness levels. We call that our 360° approach.

SBR: What makes UFIT different from other fitness organisations in Singapore?

Forrester: We offer a complete wellness service which has the highest of standards, delivered by a hand-picked team of highly-qualified professionals who listen and are accountable to their clients. Our service can’t really be matched in Singapore in terms of quality. Many clients go to our competitors for their facilities or to balance out their training, but they keep coming back to us for the quality of coaching, holistic approach and the community.

The fostering of our close-knit community is a huge part of our success. On any day of the week, you can see large numbers of UFIT clients sprinting up and dominating the hills of Fort Canning at 6.30am, planking on the grass by the lake in the Botanic Gardens as the sun rises, and grunting, straining, laughing and chatting in any of the gyms. They train and compete together in Spartan races, running events, CrossFit championships and triathlons. In small groups, they travel to Bali for fitness retreats where they sweat it out in a tropical paradise. Bonds are formed – friendships begin and social events are arranged and well attended by glowing, fabulous looking friends. “My closest friends in Singapore are those I met at UFIT” is a common sentiment across the community.

Our coaches are well known to SMS their clients after sessions to see how they found them. Our gyms and clinic have a vibrant and inclusive environment. Several parents collecting their kids from the UFIT Youth Academy classes are active PT clients or boot camp participants, so entire families are well-known right across the business. Our coaches push our clients through their third round of jump lunges by reminding them, for example, “this is when the magic’s done”, or finishing with a little ritual at the end like “thank your body for all it’s done today”.

This has been backed up by testimonials from grateful clients who have won races after personal training, recovered from injuries at the clinic, enjoyed the team building at corporate boot camps, or lost weight at the UFIT Clean & Lean Challenge - in many instances their UFIT experience has been life-changing.

Our extensive network and partnerships have also unleashed many associated lifestyle benefits to clients. It’s a combination of tangibles and intangibles that make UFIT so unique.

SBR: What are your business philosophies? How do these philosophies help in running the business?

a. Quality training and consulting
We have very high standards and don’t believe in a set formula or one-size-fits-all approach. With the depth of knowledge and variety of coaches we have, the training our clients get is geared towards them as individuals and hugely about trust and partnerships. We’re also particular about form and physical correctness. It helps make the training more effective and minimises the chance of injury. And we don’t believe in fads, we follow fundamental philosophies which are honest and effective, all based on science. Our approach to fitness and nutrition outlasts fads.

b. Team culture
We’re well known for our quality hires, and have great coaches from a huge diversity of backgrounds. But what is really important to us is staff with an amazing work ethic and good listening skills, and we educate and upskill them, as appropriate. Being a great team player is also important.

From James' perspective, “Rugby taught me a lot. It’s well documented it’s massively a team game. Unlike cricket where one man’s performance can win a game, in rugby, you are relying on all the people around you. That’s the same with this business. It’s what we have tried to make UFIT all about”.

c. Just do it approach
We’re quite a modern company and very much in touch with our clients, so when something feels right, we follow our gut, and when backed up with an analysis we just go for it and do it. We’re big enough to have the internal intelligence and experience to know when something will work, whilst small enough to not be hindered by committees. We encourage entrepreneurship and always try to look at ways to offer our clients a complete service with the latest thinking.

d. We are here for our clients
Our clients appreciate that we don’t take anything for granted, and we want every single client to feel they are special. Most are here by referral and we strive to make a positive difference in all our clients’ lives.

e. A passion for fitness and good nutrition
All our employees actively train or engage in sport very frequently, so not only look the part but understand the mindset and challenges of the clients they train. Many are winners of races and championships they’ve competed in. Right across the business, we have staff who are really dedicated. They love to come to work and love what they do. They want to do it well, it’s their passion.

This is in line with our corporate mission statement: ‘At UFIT, we exist to inspire and guide our community of members to realise levels of fitness and confidence beyond what could be possible by themselves. Fitness isn’t our job, it is our way of life’. In doing so we strive to make our clients Fitter, Leaner, Stronger by employing our cultural values of Passion, Excellence and Work Ethic.

f. Aspiration
We have very high benchmarks. We have huge aspirations and a desire to inspire our staff, retain great talent and give all our clients 100% in everything we do, from the service they receive from our staff to the quality of the expertise they are paying for.

Step aside, celebrity bloggers.

The advertising and marketing industries have always relied on the expertise and prowess of so-called influencers in order to represent products and services. These influencers are responsible for dictating and promoting the values of the advertised items. However, at the end of the day, these preferences may be subjective.

The advertising trend, however, is now shifting. Businesses are now looking to adopt a more democratic approach, such as the one adopted by Kobe Global Technologies, an advertising marketplace that pairs advertisers with relevant everyday influencers. With this method, Kobe Global leverages on their ability to broadcast messages to millions of users so that businesses can get represented in front of their target audience in a credible manner.

“By democratising influencer marketing with aggregation and pricing algorithms, we’ve successfully made influencer marketing accessible to more businesses; hence our client base includes companies such as local food outlets and start-up mobile apps, which are atypical to the usual companies that used influencers such as fashion, and cosmetic brands,” shares Evangeline Leong, 31, chief executive officer and founder of Kobe Global.

According to Leong, this comes as a lack of digital advertising and marketing know-how has stymied growth among small businesses.

“Being in the digital marketing industry focusing on small and medium enterprises for almost 10 years, we’ve seen how slow small businesses' adoption of digital solutions had been due to unfamiliarity of digital marketing solution. Our self-serve, easy-to-use platform cracks the slow moving long-tail market,” she explains.

“What sets us uniquely apart is also the usage of artificial intelligence technologies for influencer profiling instead of traditional way of one-sided submission of interests by influencers,” Leong emphasises.

Under Kobe Global, everyday influencers replace celebrity bloggers in delivering better credibility and higher engagement with users. Further, influencers’ interest and psychographics are paired to advertisers on top of demographics, resulting in precisely-targeted audiences.

Based on initial research among industry players, Leong, 31, launched Kobe Global in a modest way, joining accelerator programs and securing a government grant. Now a nine-month old revenue-generating company, Kobe Global boasts of a seven-man team, plus a positive profit and loss figure and stable structured growth to boot.

In the next few years, Kobe Global is looking to expand—slowly but surely.

“This year is really about foundation strengthening – to get ourselves into a right linear momentum in our revenue growth and building a strong team culture. Next, it’ll be a expansion into neighboring markets,” Leong says.
 

It's the “Internet of Things” for expats.

ExpatChoice.Asia, launched in September 2016, is a digital review and recommendation resource offering search results that are rated out of 8, ranked, voted on, and reviewed by 1000s of locals, expatriates, PR’s and visitors to Asia.

It cuts through the digital information overload to deliver search results in the form of unbiased reviews on thousands of nominated business, product and services that cater to the unique needs of people living and working away from their home country.

“Expats make buying decisions more pragmatic when living away from their home country,” says John Gordon, co-founder of ExpatChoice Asia. The site was also founded by Simon Warner, a British PR in Singapore who is also an angel investor. “This is why www.expatchoice.asia has organically developed to be your one-stop digital destination for all things expat – be it simply to locate your nearest shoe repair shop, who don’t charge like a wounded bull, or to connect with people who are, honest, positive and willing to help.”

Gordon says the platform addresses the unique needs of expatriates living and working in Asia, by delivery qualified search results that have been recommended by other community members across the ExpatChoice.asia network. “ExpatChoice.Asia provides a platform for community members to connect, follow, be followed, and message one another both publicly and privately. It addresses the need that people want to find everything they want, fast, and make a buying decision based on qualified recommendations,” he says.

ExpatChoice.Asia, says Gordon, provides thousands of businesses a default profile on a digital platform, all free of charge, that can generate a conversation across a community of registered users, about goods, products and services.

“We have already worked with hundreds of local businesses based in Singapore who reach out to the expatriate community with solutions for their everyday needs,” says Gordon. “ExpatChoice.Asia is ‘The Internet of Expat Things, or a “TripAdvisor for Everything Expats.’”

Gordon says they plan to launch expatchoice.asia in five Asian regions by September 2017 with the introduction of a customised app in June 2017 and expand the expatriate network reach to 250,000 users.
 

Fintech and property dominate 2017 list.

This is our sixth edition of the hottest startups issue where we present notable and up-and-coming local startups. To compile the list, we first looked at the weekly startups we feature on our website, https://sbr.com.sg, and we then filtered by amount of funding raised.

We do not include startups where funding is not disclosed, and the companies must have formed in the last three years. Then we checked our list with eight industry players to weed out any companies that do singapore’s hottest startups 2017 not make the grade. This year’s hottest startups average funding was $3.2m compared to $1.5m last year.

We don’t claim that this is the most comprehensive list, and whilst we have tried to verify funding quantums, we cannot verify all amounts declared. Nevertheless, we feel this list represents the most talked about startups in Singapore. Enjoy the read and send feedback to [email protected].