MedTech was the most popular sector, but two energy moonshots stood out as being particularly interesting
Investors, Founders and startup community members descended on the Google APAC office in Singapore yesterday to watch the second-ever Demo Day for Entrepreneur First (EF) in Singapore.
The programme attracts significant interest in large part because of its unique approach to entrepreneurship. EF takes ‘invest in people’ to its logical extreme and the goal of the accelerator programme is to bring together incredibly smart people — some of whom have never met one another — and watch them create magic.
“EF was founded on the principle that it really matters what the most ambitious individuals do with their lives. In Singapore, the default career path was not to found a company…We are a different kind of investor, we challenge the structural reasons why this was the case,” said EF Co-founder Alice Bentinck.
“We are a talent first investor. We don’t need you to have a team, we don’t need you to have an idea, we don’t need you to have a startup.”
The accelerator programme is 6-months long and one of the perks from this year’s cohort is they have all received small investment offers from SGInnovate to help them with resources as they work to get that first seed or angel funding.
This year’s startups were dominated by HealthTech, but there was also advertising companies, an edtech product and two energy moonshots.
Let’s meet the teams!
See-Mode
Founders: Sadaf Monajemi and Milad Mohammadzadeh
See-mode is a company that melds technology with imaging modalities to help doctors predict strokes. Currently, doctors point to a narrowing blood vessel as a signal that the person is at risk of a stroke, but there is not tool to quickly take into consideration the patient’s medical history and blood flow analysis.
“At see-mode, we see a world without strokes,” said Monajemi during her pitch.
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The company is raising S$1 million (US$755,000).
Hertzwell
Founders: Bhaskar Jyoti Dutta and Ram Vignesh Palaniswamy
Hertzwell wants to become the computer vision used in autonomous cars moving forward. The startup claims that the current standard, LiDARs, are not technically sufficient for mass driverless vehicle adaption.
The team says their technology, which leverages software-controlled radio waves can help cars, “see better” and grow into the gold standard for autonomous vehicles. The product is about the size of a smartphone and it is already running two pilot programmes in Singapore.
“Finally with Hertzwell, driverless vehicles won’t see some objects some of the time, they will see all objects all the time,” said Palaniswamy during his pitch.
BetaSight
Founders: Martin Sawtell and Corey Manders
Betasight is using eye-tracking technology (typical in the VR industry) to try and catch/diagnose diseases. Currently, it is starting with Glaucoma — the leading cause of irreversible blindness globally.
However, the team believes the technology can be used to detect a broader set of diseases, including neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s. The team has set up a research partnership with the Singapore Eye Research Institute.
Betasight is raising S$1 million (US$755,000).
Portcast
Founders: Nidhi Gupta and Lingxiao Xia
Portcast is a data analytics company that wants to help logistics companies use global market signals to predict how much cargo should be shipped between two locations. For example, currency markets, politics and economic situations have an impact on supply/demand but logistics firms are often using slow-moving data sets.
Portcast wants to offer real-time analytics to reduce inefficiencies in the industry.
“”Our first trial showed prediction results that were 95 per cent accurate, saved 1,000 working hours and over US$1 million in potential revenue,” said Gupta.
The company is raising S$800,000 (US$600,000).
Qritive
Founders: Aneesh Sathe and Kaveh Taghipour
Qritive is using machine learning to help doctors improve their efficiency when making cancer diagnosis. What it does is analyse microscopy images (usually of cells in this case) along with a patient’s medical history more efficiently than a doctor could perform the same task. On the medical history, Qritive uses natural language processing and its algorithm has already processed 90,000 text records for hospitals.
Basically, the system can quickly understand if it is looking at an elderly woman or a young teenager.
The team plans to take the product live by Summer of 2018.
42Lab
Founders: Yasaman Nemat and Data Ng
42lab is a student-focussed protable biotech lab to help kids learn science, technology and software.
The product allows students to combine hardware like they are Legos and use an intuitive software product that doesn’t require much teacher oversight. Educators get access to a backend service that allows them to score and grade the class.
“Using our product, teachers can give students access to hands-on STEM education,” said Nemat.
The revenue model is a yearly subscription fee per student.
Affable
Founders: Nisarg Shah and Swayam Narain
Affable is using artificial intelligence to help brands find micro-influencers for their marketing efforts. Micro-influencers usually refers to social media accounts with between 10,000 and 100,000 followers.
The company looks at images of the person’s followers and analyses demographics and interests so brands can better predict which influencers would be good for a marketing campaign. For example, selling an expensive watch through a guy who has built a hippie following is not ideal but being able to find the next hot fashionista would be a boon for a company.
Affable’s cloud-based dashboard helps companies analyse this information quickly.
The startup is raising S$700,000 (US$530,000).
Kinexcs
Founders:Abhishek Agrawal and Mahdi Rasouli
Kinexcs has developed a system to help people finish their rehab after a hospitalisation. It is a monitoring product to incentivise people to actually accomplish the tasks prescribed by their doctor. While not a commonly discussed issue, a reality of the medical profession is that patients often don’t actually do the rehab exercises their doctor’s prescribe.
The company claims it achieves optimal recovery 40 per cent fasts and at a cost that is 30 per cent more affordable. A lot of patients are able to stay at home to perform some of the exercises and the tool helps physiotherapists track and monitor the results.
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Kinexcs is raising S$1.2 million dollars (US$900,000).
Vebits AI
Founders: Marcus Chen and Fujiao Liu
This duo wants to use AI to help prevent accidents in bus transportation. Vebits has built a small devise that provides real-time feedback to a driver so they can track how well they are driving. It predicts optimal behaviour for various situations and gathers an immense amount of data.
Eventually, this data could be integrated as cities try to integrate autonomous buses into their city infrastrucutre.
“We want to increase drivers performance using AI and computer vision,” said Chen.
The startup is raising S$800,000 (US$600,000).
Medios Technologies
Founders:Bhargav Sosale and Florian Savoy
One of the unfortunate symptoms of diabetes is Diabetic Retinopathy that can cause blindness. For people who work in this field, a pain point is that physicians rarely have the expertise to diagnose the disease and must send the patient to eye specialists.
Medios Technologies uses deep learning to help doctors diagnose Diabetic Retinopathy during a typical diabetes check-up. It works by taking an image of the eye, running it through a software programme which then provides an almost-immediate diagnosis. At the very least, the product would be useful for doctors to filter between which patients should visit the specialist.
The company has partnered with leading retina imaging companies and will make India its first market.
RESync Technologies
Founders:Emir Nurov and Jayantika Soni
While solar energy is starting to take off globally, buildings that use the technology still usually need to use multiple sources (diesel being an example). RESync Technologies makes buildings that use multiple energy sources more efficient with a hardware and cloud-based IoT solution.
“We are currently deploying our prototype in one of the leading eco-resorts in Bintan,” said Nurov.
The startup generates its revenue with a fixed monthly subscription fee.
Medo
Founder: Dornoosh Zonoobi
Medo wants to make ultrasounds more accessible for the average person and simply the use for both common and critical conditions. Currently, the technology exists to make ultrasounds more accessible, but reading the images can only be done by experts.
The startup wants to use digital imaging to lower the barrier to entry and improve the efficencies of using the device.
“We enable clinicians to make fast and confident diagnosis,” said Zonoobi.
TransferFi
Founders: Aashish Mehta and Mohammad Reza Vedady
TransferFi is tackling the white-whale of wireless charging. The startup is using the strategy of focussing radio frequency beams towards the targetted device which will transfer the energy form the source to the device without wires. The duo says they have leveraged a waveform that can carry the power.
As of now, the demo has been able to charge sensors at a distance of 7.5 metres and by the end of 2018, the team hopes to achieve wireless charging at 100 metres.
“Our vision for transferfi is to provide access to power for anyone, anywhere, at anytime,” said Mehta.
Involt
Founders: Rostislav Doganov and Natarajan Srinivasan
Involt is a company that has figured out how to build batteries that last significantly longer than the standard of today. Right now, it is targeting the renewable energy market, because while they help make a greener world, they rely heavily on batteries that need to be switched constantly.
Involt hopes its solution can make it so renewable energy sources can run on the same batteries for years, thus reducing waste.
“The world needs new electricity storage,” said Rostislav.
Commercially, smartphones are the golden goose for battery companies, but Doganov says its product is still a few years from being viable in that industry.
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Correction: An earlier version of this article had the fundraising amount in USD. It should have been in SGD.
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