• Data-driven startups selected from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, and Hong Kong are building with Facebook's technology and platforms
• Nearly half of the selected startups are led by women co-founders
• Facebook and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) launch new report, presenting a series of key learnings and examples on the policy topics of notice, consent, and disclosure in digital product design

SINGAPORE, March 31, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Facebook, in partnership with the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), is pleased to announce the startups selected to be a part of the second edition of Facebook Accelerator Singapore (previously Startup Station Singapore), a six-month program, powered by Plug and Play, to support innovative, data-driven startups across the Asia Pacific region.

Following the call for applications in October 2019, 14 startups have been selected from across the Asia Pacific region - including the following from Singapore:

1. Lucep (lucep.com): A sales and marketing tool that connects leads from FB ads directly with their sales agents. The mobile app notifies the sales team and allows them to compete to be the first to respond to the new lead.
2. Outside Voice (outsidevoice.io): Helps enterprises conduct interviews with their customers at scale. We connect market researchers directly to consumers via video chatbots so research takes minutes instead of months.
3. Privyr (privyr.com): A mobile CRM built for sales professionals who run their businesses from their phone. It works with WhatsApp, SMS, email, and other popular chat apps.
4. Trabble (trabble.co): A SaaS platform that helps businesses in the Travel & Hospitality industry to automate Guest Engagement on their channels.
5. UIB (uib.ai): Created the UnificationEngine® Conversational IoT platform to facilitate frictionless onboarding and seamless communications between people and devices.

The program celebrates and supports Asia's startups by helping them grow, develop better ways of working with data and connect to a wide network of opportunity. The startups were selected based on how they use Facebook products and services such as Messenger, social commerce, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Reality. In addition, startups were considered based on how they leverage data for innovation in trusted and ethical ways, such as adopting IMDA's Trusted Data Sharing Framework, or its Model AI Governance Framework.

Virginia Yang, Director, Developer Partnerships and Programs APAC, Facebook said, "We travelled to six cities across the entire APAC region for our startup recruitment roadshow, and were not only encouraged to see the innovative use of data and technology, but a higher representation of women in tech. Out of the 14 startups selected, six have women co-founders or senior leaders, and the startups represent a diverse range of industries, from e-commerce, to eSports, to travel and hospitality. In collaboration with IMDA, we are proud to provide these startups with mentorship, connections and training to advance and mature their businesses."

Jupe Tan, Managing Partner, Plug and Play APAC said, "We are excited to join Facebook and IMDA in announcing this diverse group of startups from the APAC region for Facebook Accelerator Singapore. Together with our partners, we look forward to providing them with business development, fundraising and other strategic opportunities to help grow their businesses through this program as well as our global network."

The Trust, Transparency and Control Labs (TTC Labs) and IMDA are also launching People-centric Approaches to Notice, Consent, and Disclosure report, which looks at prototypes and solutions built by the startups from the first edition of the accelerator program who have taken concepts such as notice, dynamic consent and explainability - found in IMDA's Trusted Data Sharing Framework and Model AI Governance Framework - and implemented them.

"Singapore supports a design thinking approach towards communicating with consumers and robust practices around data governance to build a trusted data ecosystem for the digital economy. Partners like Facebook provide an excellent platform for startups to create this ecosystem while developing new concepts such as dynamic consent and AI explainability. We are heartened for a second group of startups who will take these up, and encourage other organizations to use the new report and adopt the same approaches for innovation while safeguarding consumer interests," said Yeong Zee Kin, Assistant Chief Executive, Data Innovation and Protection, IMDA.

The full report can be downloaded from https://toolkit.ttclabs.net/research/people-centric-approaches-to-notice-consent-and-disclosure.

Find out more about the 2020 Facebook Accelerator Program at https://fb.me/fbacceleratorsg.

About Facebook

Founded in 2004, Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. People use our products to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what's going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.

About Plug and Play

Plug and Play is a global innovation platform. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, they have built accelerator programs, corporate innovation services and an in-house VC to make technological advancement progress faster than ever before. Since inception in 2006, their programs have expanded worldwide to include a presence in over 25 locations globally giving startups the

necessary resources to succeed in Silicon Valley and beyond. With over 10,000 startups and 300 official corporate partners, Plug and Play has created the ultimate startup ecosystem in many industries. They provide active investments with 200 leading Silicon Valley VCs, and host more than 700 networking events per year. Companies in their community have raised over US$7 billion in funding, with successful portfolio exits including Danger, Dropbox, Lending Club and PayPal.

About TTC Labs

The Trust, Transparency and Control Labs (TTC Labs) is a cross-industry effort to create innovative design solutions and improve user experiences around personal data. Initiated and supported by Facebook, and built on collaboration, TTC Labs is a movement that has brought together over 200 cross-industry and design companies as well as 120 policy, academic and civil society organizations globally to focus on shared challenges.                                                     

Note to Editor

Other  startups from the region that were selected for the program include:

1. Aris (arislab.ai) / Thailand: The world's first and largest social commerce on Facebook Live trusted by over 1,000 online shops and reaching over 10 million audiences on Facebook Live.
2. Assemblr (assemblrworld.com) / Indonesia: A platform to create, discover, share augmented reality experiences. Simplified the process of making AR from months to minutes.
3. AVANA (avana.asia) / Malaysia: Southeast Asia's leading social commerce enabler that helps businesses convert social media from promotional to transactional and automate their business processes
4. Ecomobi (ecomobi.com) / Vietnam: A social selling platform in SEA that enables brands to sell products directly to end users via our social seller community and AI chatbot technology.
5. Halosis (halosis.co.id) / Indonesia: An award winning social commerce platform that integrates AI chatbot and personalized solutions to help social media sellers convert chat into sales.
6. Infofed (infofed.com) / Thailand: The leading eSports company in Thailand with both offline and online platforms. eArena.com, Infofed's online platform, combines the tournament platform along with the secure system for online tournaments.
7. Qiscus (qiscus.com) / Indonesia: A conversational platform that helps businesses embrace the power of conversations to deliver excellent CX.
8. Social Light (sociallightinc.com) / Philippines: Places WiFi in low income communities and monetizes by collecting plastics and exchanging free WiFi subsidized by brands thereby giving them sales, consumption, competition data and CSR.
9. TravelFlan (travelflan.com) / Hong Kong: The first-of-its-kind B2B2C full-suite AI Digital Solution provider utilizing AI, Big Data and Machine Learning technologies into Travel and Lifestyle Upgrade sectors.