Accelerating Asia, a Singapore-based early-stage VC accelerator, has announced its 13th cohort, selecting five startups from a record 724 applications across 20 countries. Two of the five, DIGIBOX and Govaly, are Bangladeshi.
Cohort 13 was, by Accelerating Asia's own account, its most competitive selection yet, run through five rounds of evaluation. Every company in the cohort is already in market with paying customers and real revenue, several at six-figure annual run rates, per the announcement by Accelerating Asia. This marks a shift from the accelerator's earlier cohorts toward later-stage, traction-proven founders.
Two Bangladeshi companies making the cut out of five, in the most selective batch in Accelerating Asia's eight-year history, indicate that the firm continues to focus on the Bangladesh market for its pipeline.
The five companies are:
DIGIBOX operates Bangladesh's first IoT-enabled delivery-locker network, a layer of shared logistics infrastructure that any e-commerce platform, bank, or retailer can plug into. The company says its lockers cut delivery costs by up to 40% and failed deliveries by up to 80%. The company says it designs and manufactures its own hardware in-house, with patents pending.
DIGIBOX already runs 55 locker sites, has facilitated close to a million deliveries, and serves more than 123,000 users. Roughly one percent of all Daraz orders in Bangladesh now move through its network, alongside clients including BRAC Bank, Rokomari, and Carlcare.
Govaly bills itself as the largest fashion and beauty e-commerce marketplace in Bangladesh, working only with brands and sellers it verifies through a three-step process rather than competing as a horizontal marketplace.
The company says its average order value of $22 runs roughly three times the local norm, its cancellation rate of 11% sits well below the industry average near 30%, and its non-warehouse, ship-direct-from-seller model makes deliveries about 80% faster than the market. Founder and CEO Himel Faraz and co-founder Jeion Ahmed claim to have grown Govaly past 100,000 users, 70,000 orders, and 1,000 verified sellers in its first year.
Accelerating Asia has backed more than 20 Bangladeshi startups since it began investing in the country in 2019, a number that exceeds most markets in its portfolio outside Singapore, Indonesia, and India.
Past cohorts have included iFarmer, Shuttle, Markopolo.ai, Hishabee, WeGro, Chamak, and biniyog.io, several of which went on to raise institutional rounds.
Cohort 12, announced last November, had carried the second-highest Bangladeshi representation in the accelerator's history at four startups out of eight.
Cohort 13's two-out-of-five, in a far more selective pool, keeps that pattern intact.
The five companies now enter Accelerating Asia's 100-day program ahead of Demo Day, scheduled for July 15 in Singapore. Accelerating Asia says Cohort 14 applications open soon.
