Coach and Grow Programme participants pitch to Singaporean investors

• Ten top-performing Malaysians companies selected for Singapore demo day
• Bansea angel investor gives pitching tips to entrepreneurs

TO STARTUPS, little is more important than business validation received from investors and mentors. Proficeo, which specialises in coaching tech entrepreneurs, also provides its mentees a shot at fundraising upon completion of its 12-month long Coach and Grow Programme (CGP).

The CGP Demo Day was held on Aug 1 in the PayPal Innovation Lab, Singapore. The ten companies that were selected by Proficeo to pitch to Singaporean investors were Signature Market, PTT Outdoor, Tripcarte.asia, SenangKIRA, Turbo DMS, Subhome, Bloomthis, ATX, Glueck and iResidenz.

The selected ten companies were among the 32 from Proficeo's Investment Readiness Programme (IRP), which are part of CGP’s fourth and latest cohort. Prior to the Singapore Demo Day, 14 of the IRP the companies also pitched to 24 investors at a Demo Day hosted in Kuala Lumpur.

According to Proficeo, the IRP is designed to prepare top-performing companies from the 12-month long CGP for fund-raising.

“The programme is run parallel with the CGP where only 20% of each cohort is selected to learn about all aspects of fundraising – from preparing financials, to valuation, legal documentation, preparation of pitch decks, projections and executive summaries.”

Proficeo the Business Angel Network of Southeast Asia (Bansea) joined hands to organise the CGP Demo Day.

Bansea executive director Michelle Kung said, “We are impressed by the teams’ performance in terms of presentation skills and responses to tough questions by angel investors and venture capitalists in Singapore.”

Suresh Mahadevan, a Bansea angel investor, shared “The entrepreneurs are seasoned and matured while the products have proven market fit with good revenue traction.”

To Suresh, two companies in particular that stood out were Signature Market and Subhome. Signature Market is a growing e-commerce company selling organic, healthy food at wholesale prices.

As for Subhome, it converts condominium units to hotel standard accommodation and markets the units on AirBnB. With 70-80% occupancy and Tune Group’s investment into them, the company is currently expanding with an additional 100% more rooms in the past five months.

Tripcarte.asia, an online ticketing and booking platform which earned revenue of US$250,000 in 2017, also attracted some attention. Kung shared, “Some of the investors followed up with Tripcarte for further due diligence meetings after the Demo Day.”

Ken Tan, another Bansea angel investor, said the teams did an excellent job in presenting their ideas despite a short time frame of seven minutes. “The Malaysian teams managed to garner questions from the floor – meaning investors were keen.”

However, Tan also suggested, “Entrepreneurs should better frame their selling pitch towards the mindset of angel investors.”

He said some question entrepreneurs should answer in their pitch are:

1. Why invest in your company?
2. What else are you looking for other than cash injection?
3. What exit plan do you envision in the future, especially since IPOs are rare?

“Instead of just focusing on addressing a problem, tell a short story about starting the business. This will help investors gauge the founder’s motivation level,” Tan advised.

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