10 startups I liked this summer pt.2

This summer I wrote a series of weekly posts in which I introduced small businesses I had discovered that solve small but specific problems or pain points. There is so much cool stuff happening in Southeast Asia, and I just wanted to share some of the activity that might be less well known. These are 100% unsponsored and all opinions are my own. (read part 1 here)

#6 - Pebblely

I have been meaning to sell one of my bicycles on Carousell but I kept putting it off because I wanted to take a nice picture of the bike to make it look extra appealing, which would have required a bunch of effort and time. All this time I could have just used Pebblely.

Pebblely is a Singapore-based startup that “helps create Instagram-worthy snapshots of any product with the click of a button.” It’s literally that simple: you upload a picture of your product, some AI removes the background, and then let’s you choose different, more beautiful backgrounds for your product — see my watermelon picture. I even tried to use Pebblely “wrong” and uploaded a picture of myself which was cut off at the knees: it added my legs before putting me in a lavender field!

Why I love it:
This looks like a great e-commerce tool for SMBs. I come from a marketing background and have been part of very expensive product shoots. Now you can generate your Key Visuals for pennies. The ROI on investing in something like Pebblely (it’s pay-per-use) is unquestionable.

I would be curious to learn who their target customers are. I believe that many if not all large e-commerce marketplaces already have a similar complimentary tool for their merchants — the one at Shopee allows you to remove the background only, as far as I know. Perhaps independent online merchants are the way forward.

Also, one of the founders, Alfred Lua, has a cool newsletter in which he talks about his founder journey — a recommended read.

#7 - Talk Your Heart Out

There was a recent article in Singapore about how youth suicide rate was at an all time high. Ever since the pandemic we have been talking more and more about mental health but there is still a long way to go. Talk Your Heart Out (TYHO) 💜 is an end-to-end therapy platform that makes it easy for anyone to get quality online mental health support. Focusing on Singapore, if you are looking for support you simply choose your therapist/counsellor from a very curated list, make a booking, and attend the online session.

Why I love it:
This is a great example of business as a force for good. As a platform it increases access to mental health professionals, and for therapists/counsellors it is a great way to start an additional revenue channel besides their standard practice. One of the largest competitors, betterhelp, helps you find your counselor by having you fill in a survey in the beginning — so I didn’t have to go through the trouble of looking at all the profiles. I tried it out and was very happy with the therapist I was given. The biggest drawback is that he lives in the UK, so finding times that work for me can be tricky because of time-zone differences.

From a business model perspective this has got to have very little overhead, since it is a matching platform, so margins are likely high. Unlike betterhelp, which is subscription only, B2C customers can choose whether to book one-time sessions or go on some sort of monthly plan or buy a pack. They also offer financial assistance for low-income families, students, and people who are unemployed, which speaks volumes about their mission.

The B2C market in Singapore is likely limited. It seems like rather than going abroad they are trying to penetrate the B2B market first, which should help stabilize recurring revenue.

#8 - Urban Company

I don’t have a live-in helper but I still want some help cleaning my apartment. For a while I didn’t have anyone, so I used a fantastic on-demand service called Urban Company. On their website I just had to schedule my preferred time and describe the unit I wanted cleaned (i.e. number of bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, etc.) so that I could get an adjusted quote. It was super professional and I was very satisfied. Cleanliness is next to godliness!

Why I love it:
The boys at UC clearly have a vision and they are going after it. I last used Urban Company not that long ago, but since then they have upgraded their product offering considerably. Beyond cleaning services, you can now also book mani-pedis, women’s massage, and air-con servicing (the latter you are required to do once a quarter). Their tag line is now “home services, on demand.” Indeed, in the other markets where they operate (India, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and the US) they also offer services like salon for men and women, home painting, and appliance repair.

This is a very similar model as Bike Hero, which I covered a few weeks back, but further down the growth track. I had mentioned I felt like Bike Hero didn’t really need investment dollars to grow. I stand by that statement, but I also note that UC has raised nearly total of $450m, and it is clear that the UC team has been able to use that money wisely to grow geographically (in Singapore they are clearly beating the incumbent competition like Luce Home and Baoshi) while increasing their product offering.

#9 - Kegmil

Last week I mentioned that air-con servicing is mandatory in Singapore once every 3 months. You typically have to arrange it yourself, and there’s no shortage of companies that offer these services through whatsapp and phone bookings. Managing the operations of businesses like this quickly gets tricky, yet they are still often done in a manual way. Kegmil addresses this problem through their mobile-first, workflow automation tech, which aims to empower the millions of deskless professionals to increase operational efficiency and service performance.

Why I love it:
There’s a relative shortage of labor in field service management, so it’s important to be as efficient with your human resources as possible. Automating the scheduling process or updating contracts and customer accounts are very low-hanging fruit that can balance workload and maximize utilization. It’s a win-win for both the workers and the employing company. They seem to have a lot of other features that are probably useful for other types of clients, including the more industrial sector, but the core offering seems so simple and solid they can probably take it to other markets with relative ease.

#10 - Plato Medical

Health tech startups like DA have capitalized on some real business delivery innovation like video consultation or delivery of meds. However, there is some interesting stuff happening in health that while may not have the same pizzaz is still improving the way healthcare gets done. This is the case of Plato Medical. They are an online clinic management system that has become the one-stop shop for running your clinics in Singapore.

Why I love it:
The incumbent in this space is the typical legacy software that everyone complains about but has no choice but to accept…. until Plato. They take a much more user-centric approach to build and expand their product. They are eating their competition alive — next time you go to a clinic/dentist in SG, take a peek: chances are they are already on Plato. Their integrations and additional features make them increasingly stickier. I’d be curious to see how they expand outside of SG — I am not sure how much product localization would need to be done in this space.