Three startup winners get USD $82,700 worth of cash and in-kind prizes to boost their growth
Roiquant (roy-kwant), an intelligent decision support system for early-stage startup founders, proudly announced the winners of the 2023 roiquant preseed startup competition at the closing of its virtual startup conference it hosted on December 1, 2023.
Powered by rule-based machine learning built on business text AI, roiquant’s analytics and business intelligence (ABI) platform provides data-driven business development, risk management, and capital fundraising consultancy services to help early-stage startup founders grow fundable businesses.
Virtual startup competition
In empowering founders to innovate, roiquant is hosting stage-based virtual startup competitions to showcase top global entrepreneurial talents, to support underrepresented founders (women and people of colour) in accessing smart capital funding, and to accelerate early-stage startups to competitively build fundable businesses.
As the stage-based (preseed and seed) startup competitions are virtual, because they are conducted on (powered by) roiquant cloud-app (software), roiquant aims to annually host its competitions for tech startups around the world (geo-agnostic).
Through its startup competitions, roiquant systematically guides early-stage startup founders to scientifically build healthy, creative, and prudent businesses.
- Qualifying round: to ideate and refine conceptual business ideas
- Semi-final round: to prototype solution offering for early customer validation
- Final round: to demo and pitch to a panel of judges for constructive feedback
The 3 winners
After evaluating 11 finalists who pitched at roiquant demo day on November 27 and 28, 2023, the judges selected two Malaysian and one Filipino startups as winners.
- First prize USD $30,000 winner: “roiquant helped us to improve our business strategy and messaging, as well as our numbers and projections, as we prepared for the final round”, said Jeshua Choong, Founder and CEO of carching, a mobility startup in Malaysia that rewards drivers with cash as they drive. “Being in an international competition gave us the push to really think about being more than just a local player”.
- Second prize USD $13,000 winner: “Aside from roiquant’s equity-free prize money, the competition helped us to think clearer about our business plan and exit strategy”, said Raymond Rodis, Co-founder and CEO of Digest.ph, a legal-tech startup in the Philippines modernising online legal services for startups. “It also helped us to reflect on competing internationally since this was our first time joining the international startup scene”.
- Third prize USD $7,000 winner: “We learned to review our business plan and restructure our digital strategies to compete and grow further”, said Willie Ng, Co-founder and CEO of Global Cerah, an agri-tech startup in Malaysia producing alternative protein sources from agro-wastes. “We also learned to understand ourselves from different perspectives and are grateful to be a part of roiquant community for continuous learning”.
The 11 finalists
Apart from the winners, the other eight startups who qualified through to the final round hail from the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Lithuania.
- Salesforge (Lithuania): an all-in-one sales execution solution empowering sales teams to hit their targets with higher probability.
- Finful (Vietnam): a personal finance learning app with bite-size modules empowering financial literacy in Vietnam and beyond.
- HealthPro (Indonesia): an on-demand healthcare workers startup where LinkedIn meets Uber for healthcare services.
- RealmChat (Malaysia): a one-click checkout built within its ecosystem of ecommerce platforms to reduce shoppers drop-off.
- Jurist AI (Philippines): a legal-tech startup revolutionising the legal industry with its AI co-pilot assisting lawyers on research, writing, and contract analysis.
- WeShare (Vietnam): a platform empowering teams to easily raise passive funds and donations through cashback.
- Wear Forward (Philippines): a circular fashion tech startup offering premier Clothing-as-a-Service.
- Leasy App (Malaysia): a bill splitting app in Malaysia.
At 1337 Ventures, we’re constantly seeking out innovative and groundbreaking ideas in their earliest stages. Judging roiquant’s preseed startup competition has not only been a privilege but a reaffirmation of our commitment to nurturing early-stage startups”, said Bikesh Lakhmichand, Founder and CEO of 1337 Ventures, a Malaysian venture capital firm investing in early-stage startups. “The talents and potentials I’ve witnessed are exactly what we at 1337 Ventures are passionate about investing in — fresh and dynamic ideas that have the power to disrupt industries, as well as to create new market opportunities”, he added.
Virtual startup conference
With the theme of ‘the ugly truths of innovation’, roiquant meets 2023 (name of the virtual startup conference) was held on 30 November and 1 December 2023 in conjunction with its 2023 preseed startup competition.
14 international speakers from seven countries, expert operators in their respective fields, shared insightful experiences and actionable advice over the two days virtual conference (view recorded videos on roiquant’s website).
In order to foster spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation among the youth and aspiring entrepreneurs to solve real-world problems that align with one or multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, roiquant will organise educational virtual startup conferences in conjunction with every virtual startup competition it hosts.
Why it matters
Most of the inexperienced founders who have never built a venture-backed startup business do not understand how the venture capital mechanics work.
“Moreover, there are many greedy investors who are not well-versed in venture investing, and are deploying investment strategies that are destroying income generating businesses”, said Paul Lee, Co-founder and CEO of roiquant.
“This is why roiquant is built to serve both sides of the table, by filling the gap of misalignment between founders and investors, where founders can freely build sustainable or hyper-growth businesses with valuations that match the risk-or-return profiles of aligned investors”, said Lee.
What’s next
Roiquant is hosting its 2024 preseed startup competition in April to June and its 2024 seed startup competition in October to December – final dates will be announced in due time.
The company aims to regularly host its stage-based virtual startup competitions in every quarter of the year from 2025 onward.
How to get on board
Roiquant invites global partners for partnerships to increase the quality of its competitions’ programming, to widen its reach for participation, and to simultaneously run multiple startup competitions globally every quarter of the year from 2026 onward.
Those who are interested to partner or sponsor may write to competition@roiquant.com. For more information about roiquant’s award-winning solutions, visit www.roiquant.com.
