Manis Leting and Triphie top the 1337 Ventures' Alpha Startups Pre-Accelerator

The pre-accelerator programme received hundreds of applications from early-stage startups nationwide when applications were announced early this year with 26 promising startups selected to join the cohort. This was narrowed down to the top nine finalists.

The Alpha Startups Demo Day, hosted at Google Malaysia, marked the programme's culmination, providing participants with a platform to gain hands-on experience to pitch their ideas to potential investors and launch their startups.

Manis Leting and Triphie subsequently won the cohort and will receive pre-seed funding of up to US$10,813 (RM50,000).  

Amirah Jasmine and Atirah Danial's Manis Leting create Healthier Alternative Food Products that use zero white sugar. "Alpha Startups has boosted our confidence as startup founders in the food and beverage industry. The mentors in the programme provided much-needed guidance and support, giving us more clarity on how to bring Manis Leting forward," said Atirah. With the funding from 1337 Ventures, the duo now plans to focus on licensing and certification, production, operations, and marketing to scale.

Triphie is an AI-enabled, all-in-one, personalised, collaborative trip-planning platform that helps travellers discover, plan, and book their holidays. "We're at such an early stage, and that too in a very competitive travel and tourism market. Being part of the Alpha Startups pre-accelerator programme gave us a clear vision of how to differentiate ourselves from our competitors," said Nour Araar, founder of Triphie. The other startups that pitched at the demo day were Beseek, Cocojack, Kita, MyDeliva, Odar, SAPOT, and TigerCampus. They raised their ideas to a panel of judges, including Freda Liu, author and radio personality; Bikesh Lakhmichand, founding partner of 1337 Ventures; and Alpha Startups™ alumnus  from 2020, Gokula Krishnan, the founder of Vircle.

"It's hard to get to the core of your business when you only have a short time to pitch and convince investors. Everyone worked hard, and as a first-time judge who has interviewed a lot of companies, it was a great experience for me," Freda said. "Reflecting on my journey as an early-stage startup during the pandemic, Alpha Startups™ quickly helped me validate and finetune the idea of Vircle. It was a great stepping stone to where Vircle is today. The pre-accelerator also created invaluable connections and mentors that are still supportive today," Gokula said. All the startups from the recent cohort will receive perks up to US$17,300 (RM80,000) worth of digital credits from Google Cloud, CloudMile, Airtable, Swipey, Notion, Stripe, WORQ and more. MRANTI, Digital Penang, WORQ, and Google support the latest cohort of Alpha Startups.  

Watch the live stream of the Demo Day here. 

Early-stage startups keen to participate in the upcoming cohort can register interest here.