563 Applications: The Deal Flow Behind Fund 2
Every early-stage fund talks about deal flow. Cohort 14 gives us a very practical way to show what ours looks like: 563 applications sourced through our team and a network that stretches across South Asia, Southeast Asia and well beyond our immediate circles.
We are now in the final stage of selection. Around 1% of the original pipeline has reached final interviews with Craig and Amra, and the companies selected from that group will become the next investments made through Fund 2.
Before we announce them, here is what the application data tells us about the pipeline they came through.
Commercial traction before institutional capital
64% of the companies are already generating revenue. More interestingly, 61% of those revenue-generating companies reached that point without raising external investment.
Revenue isn't the only traction that matters at this stage. Among the companies that provided traction data, 83% already have users or clients. Some are generating revenue as well, while others are still working out how usage becomes a repeatable business. Either way, they have put something into the market and have real behaviour, feedback and demand to learn from.
That is the stage where we love to meet a founder. There is enough evidence to ask better questions about the customer, the pricing and the business model, but the company is still early enough that capital, the accelerator and access to the right network can materially change what happens next.
The fundraising data reflects the same timing. 67% are raising now, and another 25% expect to raise within the next three to six months. These are companies at the point where an early investor can still enter before the business becomes obvious to everybody else.
Experience, persistence and what changed
66% of the founders have previously run a startup. That experience doesn't guarantee the next company will work, but it does mean they know what is involved. They have hired people, sold a product, changed direction, run out of time or discovered that a market behaves very differently once real customers are involved.
Another 26% have applied to Accelerating Asia before. Reapplying after a rejection takes grit, but persistence on its own isn't the reason a company moves forward. The first things we want to understand are what the founder learned, what changed and what they did differently as a result.
We actively track repeat applicants because the gap between two applications can tell us a lot. The product may be stronger, the team may have changed, the company may have found traction or the founder may have solved the problem that held them back the first time. Several companies in our portfolio were accepted after applying more than once.
We saw that again during this selection process. Several founders who reached the later interview stages had applied before. That gives us more than two applications to compare. We can see how the founder took feedback, what they did with it and whether they returned with a stronger business.
A rejection is a decision based on what we know at that point in time. It isn't always the end of the conversation. Sometimes the company changes, sometimes the timing changes and sometimes we learn something that makes us go back and look again.
Regional reach, without relying on one startup hub
South Asia accounted for 48% of the application pool, led by Bangladesh at 21%, India at 16% and Pakistan at 7%. Southeast Asia contributed another 26%, led by Singapore at 9% and Indonesia at 7%.
The remaining 26% came from further afield. The United States country field represented 13% of applications, 8% selected "Other" because they operate across multiple or unlisted markets, 3% came from Australia and roughly 2% came from the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and China combined. The US number is particularly interesting because these companies aren't necessarily US businesses in the traditional sense. Many are headquartered there while their founders, customers or intended markets sit in Asia. They also tend to be thinking globally from the beginning, rather than building for one local market first.
We don't think the split between South Asia and Southeast Asia is only a recruitment result. It reflects a broader shift we are seeing in the market. Startup and investor activity has cooled across parts of Southeast Asia, while South Asia is producing more companies with stronger traction and attracting more attention from Middle Eastern investors. For South Asian founders, that is also creating a clearer pathway to raise capital and expand into the Middle East.
This is one of the advantages of investing across both South Asia and Southeast Asia. We aren't tied to one startup hub or dependent on one market staying hot. We can follow where the founders, traction and capital are moving while still building a diversified regional portfolio.
What founders are building, and how they plan to sell it
AI was the largest primary industry at 21% of applications, followed by SaaS at 12%, education at 7%, medtech at 6% and agritech at 6%. But 21% isn't the full measure of how much AI is being used across the pipeline. A company doesn't have to call itself an AI company to use the technology to build, test, automate and deploy faster. Many of the founders who selected a completely different primary industry are already using AI inside the business, rather than putting it on the cover of the pitch deck.
The rest of the pool covered finance, marketplaces, e-commerce, enterprise technology, biotech, cleantech, mobility, logistics and many other sectors.
The applications spanned 43 categories in total. That number is high because the application taxonomy is deliberately granular and several categories overlap. We don't read it as 43 completely separate industries. The more useful signal is that no single category dominated the pipeline. Even AI, the largest, only represented 21% of applications.
The business-model data was more concentrated. 43% of the companies were B2B and another 36% were B2B2C, meaning almost four in five planned to sell directly to businesses or reach customers through business partners. 18% were B2C. That gives the pipeline a strong bias towards companies building distribution through commercial relationships, rather than relying only on direct consumer acquisition.
The filter behind the portfolio
The process starts with the application review, followed by ten-minute founder interviews, team interviews, Selection Week and final interviews with Craig and Amra. Each stage is designed to answer a different question, from whether the company fits our investment thesis to how the founders think, respond to feedback and compare with the rest of the potential cohort.
Around 32% of the 563 applications moved to a ten-minute founder interview. 18% progressed to a team interview, 6% reached Selection Week and around 1% reached a final interview.
Those percentages will be updated when the final interviews are complete, but the shape of the process will remain the same. A broad regional pipeline becomes a much smaller group through repeated review, different interview formats and several people challenging each other's assumptions.
From the outside, the process can look quiet. A founder may not hear from us for a couple of weeks. Inside the team, we are comparing metrics, rereading applications, debating the shape of the cohort, researching unfamiliar industries and asking mentors or investors with specific expertise to help us understand what we might be missing.
The stages look linear when written down. The work isn't. Companies move forward, drop back or return to the conversation when someone asks us to look again. We disagree, sometimes strongly. New information changes how we see a company or a market, and a startup that looks compelling on its own may make less sense once we consider the portfolio as a whole.
Selection Week brings more of the community into that process. The founders meet LPs, mentors, operators, investors and domain experts who can pressure-test different parts of the business and give us perspectives the core team may not have. For Cohort 14, 33 startups met 29 external mentors and investors and five members of the Accelerating Asia team across 248 meetings. That is 124 hours of conversations in six days.
By the time Fund 2 invests, the company has passed through a filter that would be expensive for an individual investor or small family office to reproduce across this many markets.
The part that makes an accelerator work
563 applications don't appear because we publish a form and wait.
Our alumni, investors, partners and friends shared the opportunity, introduced founders and tagged companies we should know about. Mentors and reviewers read applications, joined interviews and gave us hours of their time during Selection Week. They widened the pipeline, challenged our assumptions and helped us make better decisions.
Their involvement doesn't always end when Selection Week does. Two of the companies that reached final calls with Craig and Amra this time had applied before. During that earlier selection process, they met mentors who went on to invest in their companies. They have now reapplied with much stronger businesses. The immediate answer may have been no, but the process still changed what happened next.
There is also a lot of work happening that we don't see. Alumni answer questions from founders who are thinking about applying, explain what the interview process is actually like, help people prepare and put their own names behind referrals. We sometimes only find out how much of this has happened when someone mentions the number of founders who contacted them during recruitment.
We take referrals from people close to the network seriously, which means the person making the introduction does too. Putting your name behind a company isn't a casual recommendation. It is one of the ways trust moves through the community and helps us find founders we may not have reached on our own.
The founders invested a lot of time too. They completed the applications, joined interviews and worked through Selection Week while still running their companies. Thank you to everyone who applied and to every founder who stayed with us through the process.
This is the part of the accelerator model that still feels genuinely special. People with completely different backgrounds and expertise come together to help a group of early-stage companies become better businesses. The process is designed so the community can take part: refer a founder, review a company, mentor a team, make an introduction, invest or simply ask a question that changes how somebody sees the problem.
Without that community, we could still run an investment process. We couldn't run this accelerator. Thank you to everyone who made the time to be part of it.
Why this process matters for Fund 2
This is how a broad regional pipeline becomes the next group of Fund 2 investments. By the time we invest, we have seen the company in several different settings, compared it with hundreds of alternatives and brought in people who understand its market, business model or technology. The 100-day accelerator then gives us a much closer view of how the founders execute after the investment is made.
The selected Cohort 14 companies will join more than 100 startups across 16 markets in the Accelerating Asia portfolio. We don't know yet which company will become the next breakout.
What we do know is that the portfolio is being built from a wide pipeline, a genuinely competitive selection process and a community that stays involved well beyond the application form.
Fund 2 is in final close. You can review the fund and co-investment pathways at https://acceleratingasia.com/investors.
Then review the fund and portfolio, or email team@acceleratingasia.com to talk through your questions with us.
Start with the fund deck. Choose your path at acceleratingasia.com/investors and we'll send access.
Ready to invest? Book a call here with a partner.
See the portfolio. Check out acceleratingasia.com/portfolio. Filter by country, sector, or fundraising status. Request an introduction directly to any CEO.
For investors and partners. Choose your path at acceleratingasia.com/investors. Whether you're looking to co-invest in individual startups or invest in the fund, the next step is there.
* Carta Q4 2025 VC Fund Performance. US benchmarks used as Asian fund comparables remain limited.
About Accelerating Asia Ventures
Accelerating Asia Ventures is an independent accelerator and venture capital fund investing in early-stage startups across Southeast and South Asia. Founded by operators, the organisation is committed to supporting founders with capital, credibility, and a long-term community.
For interviews, data requests, or portfolio introductions, contact: team@acceleratingasia.com
