12 Qualified Startups to Pitch for Millions at the JFDI-Innov8 Demo Day

By Tech Wire Asia | 24 April, 2012

Fifty entrepreneurs from ten countries, accompanied by their respective mentors and equipped with convenient workspace, had 100 days to work on 12 prototype products. Funded by S$15,000 (US$ 12,000) investment, their time for preparation is nearly up. They are now ready to pitch in front of invited audience of international investors in Singapore on May 4.

The JFDI–Innov8 2012 Bootcamp is dubbed the first digital startup business accelerator in Southeast Asia to apply an investment model that created such companies as Dropbox, AirBnB and Reddit. It’s organized by JFDI.Asia and sponsored by SingTel Innov8, a syndicate of angel investors and two Singapore government agencies, MDA and SPRING Singapore.

The event will take place at TAB at Orchard Delfi 442 Orchard Road #02-29, and will be just a half-day event starting 9:30 AM. Pitches will begin at 10 AM and last for 2.5 hours. The event will wrap up with lunch and a networking session.

At several pre-events beforehand, StartupWeekend and JFDI CEO Hugh Mason said highlighted the popularity of startup pitches in Asia.

Working with local partners, we ran Startup Weekend events in Singapore, Jakarta, Manila, Melbourne, Delhi and Bangkok. Over 100,000 visitors followed us on the web, live stream and Twitter and we had over 10,000 views of the over 200 videos we posted on our YouTube channel. Along the way we met over 1,200 developers and supported over 200 teams to create prototype businesses.

Jobline International founder and one of JFDI mentors Boris Nordenstrom explains why Singapore is the choice venue.

Singapore is a fantastic place to launch a startup with amazing talent and infrastructure to plug into! It is the hub of the hyper-growing Asian economies and is rated one of the most business friendly countries on the planet. Singapore is also fascinatingly multi culturally vibrant, beautiful and safe, consistently placing it among the most attractive places to live and work.

Here are the twelve start-ups that we are going to see on D-day: