At Iterative, we invest across a wide range of sectors, backing the best ideas we believe will drive Southeast Asia’s growth. In the coming years, we see AI not just accelerating existing industries, but fundamentally redefining how we work and how entire industries are built. Below is a list of startup ideas we’re excited about in Southeast Asia. Some are areas we've already invested in and want to double down on. Others are wide open — and you could be among the first to build them.

AI Accenture

By Cathy Guo

Accenture has billed $4.2B in GenAI related projects since 2023. In fact, IT consulting and services firms are some of the biggest beneficiaries of the enterprise rush to deploy GenAI.

But we think it can be done 100x better. The legacy consulting model is still built around 6-month delivery cycles, high human billing hours and expertise in implementing proven technologies, not innovating at the edge.

We believe this generation’s Accenture will look totally different. On the customer-facing side, it’ll operate more like a Palantir - embedding teams directly into client organizations to rapidly deploy, customize and iterate solution. On the backend, it’ll look more like a Zapier — where you can plug-and-play pre-built components to create specific workflows, and integrate with a bunch of external tools. We are excited to meet founders who are tackling these giants head-on and building this generation’s AI Accenture.

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AI for Accounting & Finance

By Bill Achariyasoonthorn

Accounting is still painfully mechanical today. If you’ve ever spent hours reading invoice PDFs, untangling circular references, or tracking down discrepancies in the books, you know just how tedious and manual this work can be—and how ready it is for automation.

We’re looking for founders building AI-native platforms or solutions that eliminate these headaches: AI agents that reconcile accounts, parse through documents, fix broken models, catch errors before they snowball, and ensure your numbers always add up.

The Big 4 accounting firms and every finance team are realizing that simply adding more analysts isn’t as effective as empowering a lean, AI-enabled team. And this won’t stop at just accounting and au dits—imagine bringing the same automation and intelligence to financial advisory and investment banking. This is a billion dollar market ready for disruption.

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Make MSMEs More Productive

by Hsu Ken Ooi

At Iterative, I would like to fund more founders working on making MSMEs in Southeast Asia more productive.

MSMEs in Southeast Asia employ more people but generate less GDP (see GDP-to-Employment Ratio) than in the US, Japan and China. To increase Southeast Asia’s GDP, we need to make them more productive.

They are less productive for 2 reasons.

First, they lack formal access to credit. Like startups, they need capital to grow. Currently, this capital comes from friends and family or third parties with predatory terms.

Second, they underutilize technology. You may think, “MSMEs don’t pay for software” or “MSMEs aren’t tech savvy enough” in Southeast Asia. I don’t buy it. They are business owners and all business owners want to make more money. If you can help them do that, they will buy from you.

This is a difficult segments that’s been tried many times but the problem (and the opportunity) still exists. I’m looking for founders with an atypical approach derived from first principle learnings in the region.

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AI for Manufacturing

By Cathy Guo

As countries all over the world become more laser-focussed on building domestic industrial capacity, major labor shortage of skilled engineers and designers could be a critical bottleneck. So while manufacturing has traditionally been slow to adopt technology, but we see massive potential and factors that may push the industry to leapfrog to AI.

That’s why we feel we’re in a unique moment to build AI for Manufacturing. And we’d like to meet founders working on AI agents transforming physical industries: the AI process engineer or AI hardware designer.

Southeast Asia is the perfect launchpad to test these technologies, since we have a $700B manufacturing industry right at home. From electronics in Vietnam to auto-motives in Thailand and semiconductors in Malaysia - this is a great region to land pilots, refine your technology and build a company from Southeast Asia for the world.

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Technical Founders Willing to Sell

by Hsu Ken Ooi

I’d like to see more technical founders, who are willing to learn how to sell, apply to Iterative.

I’m fond of saying “if you can build and you can sell, you rule the world.” It turns out, it’s easier to teach people who can build how to sell than the reverse.

Learning to sell is a skill. And like any skill, it’s scary at first and you will probably feel embarassed but if you practice enough, you get better at it. It’s not as hard as you think.

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AI to unlock logistics and supply chains

by Brian Ma

Southeast Asia’s logistics market is projected to reach USD 478 billion by 2030, fueled by booming intra-regional trade, manufacturing expansion, and a rapidly growing e-commerce sector. It has also already become a critical global trade and logistics hub central to global supply chains, especially as companies diversify away from China and seek alternative production and export bases.

However SE Asia faces distinctive and, in many respects, larger logistics and supply chain challenges compared to other regions:

(1) It is made up of thousands of islands and diverse terrain, making cross-border and domestic logistics inherently complex

(2) Differing customs procedures, trade policies, and regulatory standards between countries create friction, delays, and added costs for cross-border trade, and

(3) It still suffers from significant infrastructure deficits—roads, ports, railways, and storage facilities are often underdeveloped or unevenly distributed, especially outside major urban centers

With advances in AI in understanding and reasoning about largely offline data stored in documents, we think there’s plenty of opportunities to sell into logistics companies to help with advanced demand forecasting, inventory management, route optimization, supplier risk management, anomaly detection, decision support, or even things as mundane as coordinating routine tasks, jobs, and manual workloads.

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AI-Enabled G&A Services

By Cathy Guo

Southeast Asia is the G&A capital of the world. Each year, we export tens of billions of dollars of accounting services, legal services, HR services and customer support or Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services.

We’re in a unique moment where all of these can be reimagined with AI. And startups are perfectly suited to rapidly evolve alongside the technology: starting with co-pilots or agents that automate repetitive tasks but keep humans in the loop, while gradually progressing to full autonomous handoff to specialized agent systems. And it’s not just about technology — founders will need to re-design teams, org structure and workflows that suit an organization where AI is the primary delivery mechanism, versus humans.

We’ve already backed founders working on AI recruiters, AI whatsapp sales and support, and AI legal services. We’d love to work with founders who are pushing the boundaries in building AI-first service firms, going after established categories and budgets that are already outsourced to Southeast Asia.

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AI for Live Commerce Sellers

By Bill Achariyasoonthorn

Live commerce is taking Southeast Asia by storm, with 20% of our online GMV today driven by video- or livestream-based commerce. Just look at how TikTok is changing the game, much like what happened in China. Shoppers aren’t just browsing; they’re tuning in, chatting, and making split-second, impulse buys right from  stream.

While there are plenty of tools for sellers on marketplaces and brands selling on their websites, little are focused on helping live commerce sellers sell better. Most merchants are left guessing about when to go live, what to feature, and how to keep viewers engaged enough to hit “buy now.”

We’re looking for founders building the next generation of e-commerce enablers for live sellers—tools that help them pick the best time slots, choose the right products, and engage audiences & chat in real time. Maybe it’s a platform that analyzes trends and viewer reactions, a copilot that suggests what to sell or do next, or even an AI-native agency that helps sellers plan their streams. If you are working on something like this, we’d love to talk to you.

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AI to unlock personal and business finance‍

by Brian Ma

Over 60% of Southeast Asians remain underbanked or unbanked, with about 225 million people lacking bank accounts and 350 million without access to formal credit. Micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs)—which account for a majority of employment also struggle to access capital due to lack of formal credit histories and cumbersome requirements. Even those with formal financial access are often limited to basic savings accounts, with low uptake of insurance, investment, or advanced financial products due to lack of awareness and affordability.

Surprisingly, mobile phone penetration (~65-90% depending on country) is massively higher than bank account (50%) and credit card penetration (20%). Consumers and businesses are primarily using mobile wallets (50%+) to leapfrogg traditional banking infrastructure.

With new advances in AI to understand documents, risk, and engage with customers over simple UIs, there’s a massive opportunity for AI to help unlock many areas in the emerging market finance stack include: personalized customer engagement, AI driven credit scoring, alternative data mining, inclusive risk assessments, financial literacy, loan underwriting, and more.

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