After 3 batches, Iterative companies have raised $130M after our program and are now collectively worth over $720M. Our latest batch (Iterative Winter 2022) has large shoes to fill but we think this might be the strongest batch yet.
Iterative Winter 2022
- BeautyBuddy (Philippines) – Digitalizing salons
- DeZy (Singapore) – Crypto-enabled high yield savings
- Edsy (Thailand) – Immersive english learning
- Envio (Indonesia) – B2B digital logistics platform
- Esevel (Singapore) – Equip your remote team with one click
- Factorem (Singapore) – Marketplace for on-demand manufacturing
- LingoTalk (Indonesia) – Language learning for schools
- Litto (Thailand) – Pinduoduo for Thailand
- On Demand Deals (Philippines) – Quick commerce cloud convenience stores
- Ottodot (Singapore) – Future schools in the metaverse
- PopInventory (Singapore) – Shopify for grocery and convenience stores
- Stylebase (Singapore) – StockX for second hand luxury
- Uncommon (Singapore) – Private leadership network for female leaders
- Up Next (Philippines) – Up-skilling digital careers through community
To the founders, thank you for having us as part of your journey and we're stoked to be rolling up our sleeves to build massively impactful companies with you.
The program starts in January and culminates in a virtual Demo Day in April. To stay informed on demo day and other Iterative announcements, please sign up for our newsletter. If you're working on a startup and you're interested in joining a future cohort, apply here.
BeautyBuddy
Digitalizing salons in the Philippines.
Why We're Excited
One of the first things that struck me about moving to Southeast Asia is how much businesses communicate with their customers through WhatsApp. Whether it was making a reservation at a restaurant or booking an appointment for a haircut. The downside of businesses relying on WhatsApp are (1) it’s time consuming and (2) they can’t take payment.
That’s where BeautyBuddy comes in. Similar to Zenoti or Fresha, BeautyBuddy makes it easy for the 30,552 salons in the Philippines to accept bookings and payments online. The latter is especially important given how challenging cashflow can be for these types of businsesses.
Founders
- Victoria Riingen, CEO
- Pia Trinidad, COO
Dezy
Crypto-enabled high yield savings.
Why We're Excited
Millions of people are already benefiting from the high yields and appreciation potential in crypto and defi, but it’s still too confusing, opaque, and changing too quickly for ‘normal’ consumers to keep up. We think there’s going to be more to on-ramps than simply financial exchanges - the winners will be companies that will be able to build a trusted brand for consumer with both great software and financial education. That’s what Dezy is. The simplest way to get high yield savings via unlocking the yields in defi, for the regular consumer.
Founders
- Eric Dadoun, CEO
- Sharmini Ravindran, CMO
Edsy
Immersive english learning in Thailand.
Why We're Excited
Language learning is one of the largest underserved needs across SEA. Being able to speak English (and other languages) turns out to significantly increase someone’s earning potential and provide for their families. Unfortunately doing it at scale is still elusive. Edsy solves this with high quality teachers, through virtual adventures, in a group setting. This keeps kids engaged with their peers and allows for significantly differentiated economics. We think there will be localize winners for language and other extra-curricular learning for every SEA reigon. Edsy will be the ones to win in Thailand - and beyond!
Founders
- Parith Thiengtham, CEO
- Natthida Tansirikongkol, COO
Envio
B2B digital logistics platform for Indonesia.
Why We're Excited
As ecommerce continues to grow, the experience of tracking and receiving a package has improved. When you order something, at any time, you can find out where your package is, who has it and how much longer it will take to get to you.
The same isn’t true for businesses. For consumers, Amazon, DHL, etc. is coordinating and managing the myriad number of providers (freight, last mile, etc.) who are part of delivering your product and providing you updates. Envio wants to do that for businesses. They work with the providers and provide a unified tracking system so businesses have the same experience of receiving shipments as you would on Amazon.
Founder
- Richard Cahyanto, CEO
- Alif Amri Suri, CTO
Esevel
Equip your remote team with one click.
Why We're Excited
Equipping and procuring your new hires with laptops, peripherals, software, etc is the last thing any company wants to take care of, but is absolutely required to get great employees ramped up and productive. Throw in the complexity of remote work in this new world, and the multi-region, multi-vendor, multi-language, multi-payments issues of companies focus in SEA and you’ve got what is at least a full time job for someone in fast growth companies. Taking away all this pain with a centralized outsourced approach will be necessary and that’s exactly where esevel comes in. They’ll be an absolute must for companies that are growing quickly. With the eventual expansion into managing the entire lifecycle for employee equipment (repairs, returns, storage, etc) it’s not hard to see how Esevel can become a massive company.
Founders
- Yuying Deng, CEO
Factorem
Marketplace for on-demand manufacturing.
Why We're Excited
Getting quality parts manufactured is a painful process - especially when you need parts customized and fast. You have to deal with opaque pricing, lots of back and forth on specs, logistics issues, and oftentimes language and communication barriers since the manufacturer is not in the same country as you. Factorem solves all this by being a fully managed marketplace for companies that want custom parts manufactured with factories that have extra capacity. Being able to build and get feedback quickly was critical in majority software companies and we think it’s not long before the same will be solved for hardware.
Founders
- Alexandra Zhang, CEO
- Hardik Dobariya, CPO
LingoTalk
Language learning for schools in Indonesia.
Why We're Excited
Lingotalk falls under our thesis of language learning being one of the largest underserved needs across SEA. It’s still true that knowing multiple languages (English, Chinese, etc) allows people to substantially increase their earning power and provide for their families. Indonesia’s school system recently removed language learning as a core requirement in their curriculum which unleashed a wave of demand from parents wanting to supplement their kids learning. LingoTalk is in a unique position to capture the demand from this change with their partnerships with schools.
Founders
- Andre Benito, CEO
- Hardi Wijaya, CPO
Litto
Pinduoduo for Thailand.
Why We're Excited
Having grown from 0 to 824M customers in just 6 years, Pinduoduo might be the fastest growing consumer internet company in history. We (and others) have been looking for similar models in Southeast Asia, especially given the acceleration of ecommerce because of COVID. We can debate (and do!) about whether group buying is unique to China but we believe shopping is a social activity and companies that build around that will do well.
Despite being bullish on the model and space, we knew the logistics would be challenging. Having seen many similar companies, we were impressed by how well the founders had already executed in setting up suppliers, warehouses and their own logistics infrastructure.
Founders
On Demand Deals
Quick commerce cloud convenience stores.
Why We're Excited
The secret to being able to enable quick commerce (delivers in < 15 minutes) is to have warehouses/stock everywhere. On Demand Deals enables this by allowing anyone to be a ‘franchisee’ from their home. Franchises get unique discounted access to inventory, local demand, and operational efficiencies via software while ODD focuses on the things that can make every franchise’s business better. The combination means faster deliveries and better service of convenience goods to customers and more profit potential to franchises. We think the future looks like enabling anyone to spin up a convenience store to get goods into consumers hand within 15 minutes.
Founders
- Fernando Ramos, CEO
- Gabriel Angelo F. De los Reyes, COO
- Adarsh Kumar, CTO
Ottodot
Future schools in the metaverse.
Why We're Excited
For children between 7 and 12, the best online learning experience isn’t through Zoom, it’s through games. Learning over Zoom are unengaging and lack opportunities for self-expression and socializing. Games are the opposite, they’re so engaging you have to force children to stop, they’re self-directed and are built to be played with others.
The problem has always been can you make educational games fun? We think Ottodot can. In the last 4 months they created an educational game on Roblox, where players collect and answer trivia questions about animals, that’s been played by over 91,000 people.
Founders
PopInventory
Shopify for grocery stores.
Why We're Excited
All retail will come online because consumers demand convenience - and local grocery stores are no exception. In fact, we think as quick commerce from large tech companies becomes more mainstream, there will be one winner who’ll be able to aggregate the long tail of grocery retail to collectively put their purchasing power and geographical coverage online for consumers. PopInventory is well positioned to be this player. Just just a few taps, they will eventually help grocery store owners become fully digital with their own online store, inventory management system, procurement and operational workflows, integrated payment methods, delivery vendors, etc. We’re excited for PopInventory’s impact on the small grocery store owner’s bottom lines.
Founders
- Mingming Wang, CEO
- Raktim Hazarika, COO
StyleBase
StockX for second hand luxury.
Why We're Excited
StockX, a marketplace for streetwear that was recently valued at $3.8B (link), has been wildly successful because they (1) offered products for a fast growing market (streetwear), (2) validated the authenticity of products and (3) increased the reach of both supply and demand.
Stylebase is doing the same thing for an even larger market, secondhand luxury goods.
- Growing Market – Since 2017, the luxury market has grown 12% but the secondhand luxury goods market increased 65%. It’s currently estimated to be worth $37.2B [1].
- Verified Authenticity – Fake Chanel bags have been around for decades and the good ones were almost indistinguishable. As a result, people had only purchased from people they knew or trusted dealers. The downside is that severely limits the supply available to you which drives up the price. Stylebase has professionals who validate the authenticity of each item so you people can buy from a wider range of people and get products at cheaper prices.
- Price History and Transparency – Since most transactions today happen offline and privately, it’s hard as a consumer to know whether you’re getting ripped off. By buying through a transparent platform, consumers get actual data on how much other people have paid for a similar product.
Asia is already the fastest growing market for luxury goods. As Southeast Asia continues to develop, so will its appetite for luxury goods.
Founders
- Elsa Levy, COO and CPO
- Mathieu Kremeth, CEO
Uncommon
Private leadership network for female leaders.
Why We're Excited
We’ve seen an explosion of professional development focused programs and communities (OnDeck, Maven, etc.) in the last few years. As the world gets smaller (remote work) but lonelier (smaller networks because of remote work), professionals are looking for ways to stay competitive and communities to belong too.
Similar to Chief in the US, Uncommon focuses on one of the largest underserved group of professionals, women. Starting with women in leadership positions, Uncommon hosts Core Groups which are small in-person, monthly sessions hosted by a professional leadership development facilitator. In addition, they host workshops, events with top female leaders and help develop their members professional networks.
Founders
- Yolanda Lee, CEO
UpNext
Up-skilling digital careers through community.
Why We're Excited
Similar to Uncommon, we believe professional development focused programs and communities will be a huge opportunity. We’ve seen this with OnDeck and Maven in the US but believe the opportunity in Southeast Asia is even bigger. As the region continues to develop, people in the region will increasingly motivated to capture these new opportunities by improving themselves. Recently, a friend who owns a bookshop in Vietnam told me 7 of the top 10 books he sold last year were professional development. People want a better life and know they’re going to get it through professional development.
That’s UpNext’s opportunity. By partnering with well-known practitioners, they host programs that teach you practical skills and build a community around it. Think programs like becoming a social media coordinator, doing B2B sales and their latest program Building Scalable Growth Loops.
Founders
