Eleven teams from APAC and North America have graduated from Google’s first accelerator program for circular economy startups.
In the past few years, startups throughout South East Asia and Pakistan have been steadily growing and taking on the regions’ most pressing challenges. From agriculture to healthcare, these startups are building digital solutions to tackle their area of focus.
Recently, the digital audiences in these regions have expanded significantly. In South East Asia alone, 80 million new users have come online since March 2020, boosting activity for startups developing digital products and services across a variety of industries. And we’ve seen that growth as venture funding reached new heights in both South East Asia and Pakistan. In South East Asia, deal activity hit a record US$11.5 billion in the first half of 2021. Meanwhile in Pakistan, startups raised US$350 million in funding in 2021, five times the amount in 2020.
One explanation for this acceleration is that Pakistan and South East Asia both have a thriving youth population. More than half of the population of South East Asia is under 30 years old. In Pakistan too, the median age is only 22. These young people tend to be tech-savvy, have an interest in entrepreneurship, and are more in tune with global trends. With that mindset, they’re often more inclined to use emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and blockchain to solve problems and build digital products.
Government support across the regions has certainly helped as well, as local governments have recognised the critical role of startups in their economies — specifically in digital transformation and creating job opportunities. Government-driven initiatives like Thailand 4.0, Indonesia’s 1000 startups, Singapore’s Startup SG Founders, as well as Pakistan’s Prime Minister’s Youth Program, will continue to help aspiring founders get their startups off the ground.
Google is excited to nurture this next wave of tech startup founders with the Google for Startups Accelerator (South East Asia and Pakistan), particularly those that are focused on e-commerce, finance, healthcare, SME-focused B2B solutions, education, agriculture and logistics.
We’re looking for 10 to 15 startups based in Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand or Vietnam, that are in the seed or Series A stage. The Accelerator will support these startups by providing the best of Google’s resources: Googler mentors, a network of new contacts to help them on their journeys, and the most cutting edge technology.
Interested startups are encouraged to applyby Oct 7, 2022.
Southeast Asia’s startups have helped build a thriving internet economy. Now, they have an equally important role to play in the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic—and in tackling some of the biggest challenges Southeast Asia faces around education, health, e-commerce, logistics and financial technology.
Over the next few months, these startups will receive mentorship on both technical and business challenges. We’ll also connect them to teams from Google and the wider technology industry, and provide workshops focused on designing products, customer service and leadership development for founders.
Here’s the full list of startups. We can’t wait to help them move their ideas forward as they make a difference for Southeast Asians over the next decade and beyond.
Advance (Philippines) is a credit platform that provides short-term salary advances for Filipino employees.
DeafTawk (Pakistan) has created a digital sign language interpretation service platform that breaks down communication barriers.
GIZTIX (Thailand) is an integrated logistics platform that helps customers grow their businesses and reduce operating costs.
Hacktiv8 (Indonesia) helps train beginner developers, supports them in finding jobs and provides a new, fairer type of student loan.
Kata.ai (Indonesia) has developed a conversational artificial intelligence platform that enables more natural conversations between businesses and their customers.
MHub (Malaysia) is an end-to-end property transaction platform which makes the process of buying a home easier by linking property developers, real-estate agents and potential customers.
Riliv (Indonesia) has created an online counseling and meditation app to help people with their mental health.
Rumarocket (Philippines) has developed an AI tool that helps companies make hiring decisions using behavioral science.
Sehat Kahani (Pakistan) is working on providing access to affordable, technology-enabled healthcare via a network of qualified home-based women doctors.
SenzeHub (Singapore) offers a wearable, AI-powered device that determines a patient's location and does vitals reading and crisis detection.
Shoplinks (Singapore) provides consumer-goods clients with tools to digitize their customer engagements and promotions.
Smartfuture (Singapore) is a telemedicine platform and self-monitoring diagnostic kiosk that allows users to check key health vitals
Thuocsi.vn (Vietnam) is an online platform to buy medicine, first aid and dispensary items
TopCV (Vietnam) is a recruitment platform that better connects recruiters and candidates.
Walee (Pakistan) is a trading app to connect businesses looking to sell items online with social influencers who want to collaborate with them.
