Advertising and influencer marketing were a major theme of the companies chosen by Unilever

Unilever announced this week the 30 participants in its Foundry programme that provides access to their corporate network as well as the Level3 co-working network.

The startups are mostly from Southeast Asia but also hail from Australia, the UK and Israel.

They range from early-stage startups to more mature companies and represent a diverse set of sectors.

Let’s meet the startups!

billionBricks — Singapore

billionBricks is building carbon-neutral shelters for the homeless. The company tries to find holes in how societies are dealing with homelessness, then they build partnerships to try and build around the specific needs.

The company has two design studios — one in Mumbai and one in Singapore — and is trying to build solutions that lead to sustainable growth.

Crazy S.O.B

— Israel
Consider this an all-in-one grocery list. It helps users find recipes, build shopping lists and navigate to the nearest market with the ingredients. A lot of the time, the urge to cook comes randomly, and having the ingredients ready to go is rare. Crazy S.O.B. wants to make it easier to cook on a whim.

DAV – Digital Avatar— Indonesia

DAV Units are a hardware media placement for retail. They are attached to shelves and leverage augmented reality to play advertising spots for specific products. The goal is to help educate people about the product they have in their hands. People simply hold the product above the screen and the camera recognises the item and plays the related advertisement.

Emporio Analytics

A Big Data startup that is targetting shopper analytics. The goal is to use the data to adjust the merchandising strategy and shift items around the store based on the information provided. It also wants to boost the efficiency of multi-chain stores.

The company advertises its product as a way to “Create real shopper-centric Assortments, Placements, Pricings, Promotions and more.”

FOMO Pay

A one-stop shop for connecting a business with the top Chinese payment platforms. The platform helps companies on board WeChat Pay, AliPay, Baidu Wallet, UnionPay and BestPay and gives them a single platform to track their finances. Set up takes about two hours and the product works for both desktop and mobile.

As the Chinese consumer becomes evermore powerful globally, FOMO Pay could be the difference between making a sale or not.

Genero — Australia

A video production community that helps people/companies find video production professionals. The product is a cloud-based directory by which users post their brief. They are then connected with a network of professionals and then they select the filmmaker. Genero users can manage their project via a cloud product that also includes milestones.

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There are a wide range of video options; from social to travel, explainers and TV commercials.

GetCRAFT

A service to help companies with their content marketing and native advertising campaigns. The service connects people with hundreds of journalists, marketers and multi-media professionals. It also helps increase the reach of campaigns by connecting it its internal network.

It facilitates the scaling process and makes the management process easy after the campaign starts.

Happi — Singapore

Happi wants to help organisations complete consumer surveys by incentivising people to take the surveys by giving away prizes. It is a four step process that goes as such:

Select a partner or cause to support
Choose a prize you would like to have a chance to win
Take a 5 question survey for the organisation
Win prizes

Jumper.ai — Singapore

An artificial intelligence-based company that connects a startup’s social media account with messaging services to make managing customer service more efficient. For example, one of the products it offers is a digital sales assistant that automatically walks customers through a sale or promotion when they visit a social media page.

It also helps people integrate their social media campaigns in about five minutes and allow for automated check-out online.

Kobe Global Technologies — Singapore

Kobe connects companies with influencer marketers, or people who have a large social media following and use their accounts to sell brands. The company has a network of 3,500 influencers in Southeast Asia and a reach of 20 million.

The company has a service that audits social media accounts, puts companies through a training programme and then connects them with the right people for influencer campaigns.

LoopMe — United Kingdom

LoopMe is a full-suite product for creating mobile advertising campaigns. It is most video, but there are also options for native advertising and scroll-based campaigns. It uses artificial intelligence to deliver the videos to the correct audience and automatically optimises itself to meet pre-determined goals.

The company uses a strategy called a ‘purchasing loop’ to help keep people engaged with the brand even after buying a product.

Moving Walls— Malaysia

A digital—out—of—home—marketing company, Moving Walls provides brands with interactive screens to engage people at places like malls and pavilions. For example, it created a virtual penalty kick to coincide with the 2014 World Cup. It also created a giant augmented reality programme for a diamond company and a project that let kids become the Creative Directors of campaigns.

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It boasts clients like Volvo, iflix, Petronas and fave.

Narratrs — Singapore

Narratrs is a marketplace for influencers and brands. For people with over 1,000 followers on Facebook or Instagram, it helps connect them to potential paid opportunities. On the other end, it helps brands search through a network of over 5,000 influencers and a reach of 25 million.

The company has worked with Visa, UBS, Microsoft and Yahoo — amongst others.

Neuro Flash — Denmark

This company is a marketing testing firm that helps companies adjust their campaigns based on the subconscious reactions of the audience. It can be useful for understanding brand awareness across cultures and seeing where some markets focus as compared with others.

Furthermore, the company can track changes within a country or group over a ten year period. The idea is to find the association people have with certain companies so they can adjust accordingly.

Picasso Labs — United States

This startup aggregates all of the pictures a company has posted online and then quantifies how certain features within the photos perform. For example, a photo of a man carrying a bag may do 14 per cent better than a similar photo without a bag. It also lets companies know how much of their campaign incorporated certain features.

Furthermore, companies can track their competition, identify influencers and learn about industry trends.

POPxo — India

This lifestyle media company covers fashion, beauty, weddings, relationships, sex, food and other topics of the sort. It utilises the media platform to sell products like makeup, clothing and household items. There is also a video channel of the same themes and a Quora-type of forum for users to hang out.

Shippit — Australia

An uber-simple shipping platform that offers one-click options, multiple sales channels and discounted rates. Tracking and notification options help reduce customer complaints by identifying delays so the company can take action. It wants to make “click and ship” so easy that it becomes a strength of the company.

Shopback — Singapore

One of the darlings of the Singapore startup scene, Shopback is build primarily as a cash back scheme but also offers discounts and coupon codes. People integrate the company into their e-commerce purchasing and build up enough cash back to eventually but other items. For example, if someone uses Shopback while shopping on Lazada, the person gets 11 per cent cash back. Expedia is 6 per cent and Deliveroo 2.5 per cent. There are a ton of companies on the platform.

Silot — Singapore

Silot is a tool that helps offline merchants bring their sales online via a POS device. It has a payment system, business analytics, marketing technology, anti-fraud software and accounting management tools. It recently received investment from Zhenfund and is working to build its foothold in China.

Stackla — Australia

A user generated content platform that helps companies drive traffic — and ideally sales — to a company website. It curates from over 25 social media sites so companies can find content that fits their goals. Stackla is banking on the fact that user generated content is known to create a more positive brand perception than typical advertising. It feels more authentic, and thus, readers are more trustworthy of the results.

Sticheo — Singapore

Sticheo is a revenue stream for video production companies, and a way for advertisers to increase their reach. Video companies integrate placeholders into their content and get paid for the integration. The company says the ads are non-intrusive and the production companies get full control over where the ad is placed.

For advertisers, it provides another avenue to increase their brand reach. The company advertises a 12 per cent increase in purchasing, 15 per cent boos in affinity and a 60 per cent brand awareness increase.

Taptopick — Indonesia

Taptopick is an on-demand laundry delivery service with and app that helps people wash their clothing. It works like similar services. People download the app, a Pickr comes to the home and picks up the clothing and within 72 hours it gets returned, all clean. Furthermore, users can monitor their laundry’s status via the app.

The company is currently serving Jakarta and is working to expand beyond the city.

TaskSpotting — Singapore

Taskspotting wants to help companies improve their word-of-mouth marketing. It is using influencer marketing to help turn regular people into brand advocates.

For example, the pasta company Barilla used the service to send pasta kits to their consumer’s door. They were then tasked to throw a pasta party and share the experience on social media. The company says this campaign created 650 product reviews, 2,000 photos, 3,000 Facebook posts and 17,000 interactions.

Try and Review — Singapore

Try and Review is a one-stop platform for people to try and get free samples of products they can then review. It has everything from over-the-counter medicine to makeup. The service has a discover feature so people can find products they like, then they sign up to potentially receive the products. After testing, they share and review in a community of users.

UShift — Singapore

A temporary staffing platform for Singaporeans that helps companies fill temporary staffing needs. It’s extremely useful for events, a complicated project or a busy season that will eventually dissipate. For locals, it’s a nice platform for finding extra cash, possibly getting a foot in the door or finding work after a lay off.

The product integrates a mobile map so people can find work that is convenient for their commuting.

Vaniday — Singapore

Vaniday is a beauty booking service so people can plan their brow treatment, nail salons or luxury hair makeovers on one platform. It has a ton of shops to visit and lets people check out the prices before making a decision. People then book within the platform and the reservation is made.

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The company has a presence in Singapore, Australia and the United Arab Emirates.

Viddsee — Singapore

Viddsee is a platform for watching short videos with the goal of exposing small-budget interesting movies to a larger audience. It looks for local and regional films that may have a hard time standing out amid the noise. The platform itself does have some good statistics. The videos advertised on the home page have up to 50,000 views and the discussion participation is quite active.

ViSenze — Singapore

ViSenze is a company that lets people take photos of certain fashion designs and then connect people with places to buy the clothing. It uses artificial intelligence to personalise discovery and show clothes that are similar to the product being photographed.

The company is not a B2C play but rather is selling its products to other companies. Rather than trying to build up a large consumer base, ViSenze wants e-commerce platforms to integrate their product into the site. It also has a video production platform companies can use to help drive sales.

Wootag — Singapore

Wootag lets people buy products straight from within videos. Basically while someone is watching a video, a little pop-up will appear and if the viewer clicks the box, it will reveal a link to a pop-up that lets people buy the product in the video. The interactive videos can be distributed across various social media platforms and it still remains actionable.

There is also a video analytics back-end to track how the video is doing.

ZAP — Philippines

ZAP is a cash back service that leverages terminals and phone numbers to help people get their rewards. So for companies within the ZAP network, it uses a points system rather than cash. These points can then be turned-in to buy items.

It received funding from Tony Fernandes, the Founder of the budget airline company Air Asia.

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